Lou Rosenfeld - @louisrosenfeld - Marrying Web Analytics and User Experience

• WA and UX people should not work in silos. They need to be managed and integrated together.
• UX is about the WHY: user motivations. WA is about the WHAT: user actions.
• It's not useful to know what is happening if you don't know why. Conversely, it's not useful to know why users act if you don't know what it is that they're doing.
  • What are the most common search terms on your site? Why are people searching for these items?
  • Use these search queries (what) to drive your task analysis (why)
• WA use a top-down approach with data: defining metrics and analyzing them. UX use a bottom-up approach: looking at data to find patterns and conclusions. Both of these approaches are necessary! Top-down makes sure you're achieving you goals, bottom-up catches outliers.
• Stay away from them middle data--look at the short head instead of the long tail.
• Canned reports such as Google Analytics are only a starting point. Use this data as an opportunity to do top-down and bottom-up.
• UX need to get comfortable with measuring the unmeasurable.
  • Measure your site content's quality. Although this is subjective, use parameters and systems (currency, authority, popularity, feasibility) to objectify them a bit.
• WA need to get comfortable with stories: intuition and mistakes.