post-2051

Analytics – The Value – Part 1

ModSquad

This past week I had the opportunity to spend some time in Austin at the GDC Online conference and the buzz words of the conference (besides Wellington Sculley!) was “predictive analytics”. This sounds sexy doesn’t it? The ability to predict who will play your game, what they are going to by, when they are going to buy, and most importantly why … all within your grasp at last!

However, before I dive right in and have a flurry to our consulting services trying to leverage predictive analytics, I thought I would start with the basics of why you collect any information and suggest a process that most companies should go through before investing in any technology, contractor, or strategy when it comes to metrics. Ideally this is done before or during the production of the product/service so that you are logging the metrics even if you aren’t using them.

Start by asking your team the following questions. And by team, I don’t mean just development; I mean your business folks, marketing divas, engineering aficionados, QA gurus, and community creators. All have a stake in the information being collected and for different reasons.

1. What data do we already collect? Where is it stored? How is it stored?
2. What data do you want to collect?
3. Why and what is the value of this data?
4. How long do you want to keep this data?
5. What types of decisions will be influenced by the data?
6. Who will be looking at the data?
7. Does the data need to be presented in raw form? Aggregate form? Reports? Dashboards? Trends?
8. How often do you need this data? Real-time with SMS alerts? Weekly? Monthly? Quarterly?
9. What is your budget for the project? Do you want a Cadillac software tool or would you be fine with plain text emails?
10. Does this data require extra protections (kids, privacy, financial)?

Starting off with these fundamentals will later help you leverage your existing metrics, analytics tools, and the ultimate goal of predictive analytics.

Once you have this information you should be able to better understand whether you need a contractor/consultant who can pull ad-hoc reports or a software tool that sits over your database and log files, or a system architected for you from end to end.

As always, would love to hear from you on how you are using metrics in your day to day or any questions/comments that you have on the topic. Please shoot me an e-mail if it’s more convenient. regine@metaversemodsquad.com

Cheers!

Regine Weiner