Monday, June 14, 2010

Are You A Slave To Numbers?

Relatively speaking, I'm still new to the online craze.  (Oh, this wacky internet!)  I'm scared of it, yet am oddly attracted to it.  I haven't progressed to a hand-held computer yet and my cell phone doesn't even have a camera, although I did make the leap to a laptop a couple of years ago and Husby and I entered the 21st century and dumped our dial-up service for high-speed cable access mere months ago. 

My fearful and lazy attitude toward the internet and technology in general doesn't make sense as I have a blog, an online store, and am hooked up with Facebook and Twitter.  And here's where we get into my conundrum...

Statistics


With everything one can be connected to there are related statistics, and lots of them.  There are sites that track the statistics for your blog, online store, and Facebook interactions.  And those are only the ones I know about. 

The statistics are fascinating, especially for someone like me, a relative hermit.  There are people from all over the world reading my blog and visiting my shop.  I wouldn't even know about that if it weren't for the statistics sites.  However, fascination can turn to obsession, which can be detrimental to a business.

Are you a slave to statistics?  Do you check them multiple times a week/day/hour?  What information do you gather from them? 

I tend to look at the big picture.  How many people visited and where did they come from.  I don't know how to navigate a lot of sites usefully, like Google Analytics, except for those generalities.  And still I find myself rivited to the numbers.

This post is nothing more than a reminder to myself and others that statistics can be useful, but can also be a distraction to what's going on in real life.  Don't let the numbers get you down if they aren't what you expect or hope for.  Don't get overly excited over high hit numbers as it could just be a fluke.  Don't get sucked into the numbers at the risk of losing valuable production time.  Interestingly enough, the less attention you pay to statistics, the more desireable they look when you do check them out.

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