Even small changes in response times can have significant effects. Google found that moving from a 10-result page loading in 0.4 seconds to a 30-result page loading in 0.9 seconds decreased traffic and ad revenues by 20%. When the home page of Google Maps was reduced from 100KB to 70-80KB, traffic went up 10% in the first week, and an additional 25% in the following three weeks. Tests at Amazon revealed similar results: every 100 ms increase in load time of Amazon​.com decreased sales by 1%.

Citations omitted. Via A List Apart.

¶

Data can be a powerful tool to help you optimize just about anything—from your online marketing to your company’s personnel decisions.

When Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer decided to end remote working, she relied on data to help make her decision:

After spending months frustrated at how empty Yahoo parking lots were, Mayer consulted Yahoo’s VPN logs to see if remote employees were checking in enough.

Mayer discovered they were not — and her decision was made.

It’s not just businesses following using data for decisions. The Obama campaign obsessively measured its every activity, and sports franchises collect volumes of data about their players’ performance.

Data can help you, too—if you know what to do with it

“Data is an incredibly valuable resource for organizations,” Rob Bluey reports from the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, “but you must be able to communicate its value to stakeholders making decisions—whether that’s in the pursuit of athletes or voters.”

That value, though, isn’t inherent. Marketing and behavioral data, which exists in unimaginably vast quantities, drives no decisions on its own. It’s essentially useless without smart people asking good questions.

Start with a good question

At Yahoo, data did not make Mayer’s decision for her. She started with a business question—are employees actually working from home the way they’re supposed to?—and then used data to arrive at an answer.

Likewise, piles of data about Barack Obama’s online supporters didn’t, of itself, make decisions for the Obama campaign, either. Instead, their marketers started with a question: whether their gut instincts about web design or e-mail behavior were right. They then set up a test to answer the question, and used behavioral data to draw conclusions.

Your question doesn’t need to be revolutionary. In fact, it can be mundane. But without a question, all the data you collect will just sit there collecting dust.

The effective use of Twitter hashtags like #StandWithRand helps explain the popularity of Rand Paul’s filibuster, Ericka Andersen writes: “Hashtags corralled a legitimate, constructive conversation by multiple thousands into one space. The only way it could be accomplished was with hashtags.”

¶

Roger Craver points to a new study suggesting that premiums may not lift donations:

In a paper appearing in the Journal of Economic Psychology, “The counterintuitive effects of thank-you gifts on charitable giving”, two Yale University behavioral scientists describe a series of experiments showing that, contrary to expectations, rewarding contributors cuts donations in most circumstances.

The Yale researchers who conducted the study, George Newman and Jeremy Shen, found that the most likely reason for the negative effect on contributions was “crowding out”. In essence, the prospect of receiving a gift activated a feeling of selfishness which, in turn, reduced altruism and consequently cut the average donation.

¶

Workers are increasingly purchasing their own services and apps, like DropBox or Remember the Milk, to better complete work tasks. Using outside services this way can create challenges for firms trying to secure their data. But limiting these outside apps can be costly too, as Netflix’s Bill Burns tells the New York Times: “If you try and implant software that limits an employee’s capabilities, you’re adding a layer of complexity.”

¶