Monday, April 20, 2009

Feelings – Nothing more than feelings…


Welcome to the Napkyn blog. It has been an exciting month, with new clients coming on board, a brand new website coming out within the week and fantastic feedback and results on our unique approach to understanding your digital business.

All the work we have been doing at Napkyn during this recent period has been executed alongside a clearly defined plan. To some extent, we know (give or take a little) where Napkyn is based on our 2-year plan, and what we need to be doing to meet and exceed our targets.

I know, that’s “business 101” stuff.

The reason I mention all this is because this level of planning, reporting and analysis is still sorely lacking for most companies at the digital level.

Every day I talk to business owners and executives who are still focusing on traffic generation and website uptime, and making all other decisions based on gut-checks and guesses.

One company I am in talks with is a fast growing pure play retailer in the apparel industry. They have had substantial year over year growth in sales because of their quality product and attention to customer service. However in a discussion a few weeks ago, their CEO asked me if I thought they should terminate the agreement with their search marketing company because he ‘felt’ that their results had been slipping.

From a seasoned executive who knows his inventory to the product and calls customers personally, this is a pretty odd question to ask. The reason was because they had no historical understanding of what this vendor had accomplished and no baselines set when they came on board. Is this simply because the economy is poor right now? Would you be in worse shape if this vendor hadn’t been driving qualified traffic? Are they a wasteful spend?

A holistic approach to digital analysis is vital for any business that spends more than a dollar a month online. Otherwise you don’t know where you came from, and you sure won’t know where you’re going. Thousands of dollars will continue to get spent on nothing more than feelings.

Cheers,

The Napkyn Team

This week’s takeaway: When you make a major change to your business, like adding a new vendor, establish some firm baselines for metrics they are supposed to influence. It will help you ‘feel’ a lot better once you have to start justifying the bills.

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