I often encounter a surprising amount of resistance from business owners when I mention these 2 laws, and that is why I haven’t shared that information with anyone for some time now. But these 2 laws remain true, and that’s why I have been using them secretly on my clients to help their online marketing efforts.
The 1st Investigative Law of Web Analytics
This first law is the most controversial for reasons that evades me. That law is:
“A ‘Why’ always leads to an obvious solution”
In this article, a “Why” is defined as a “reason why” a problem exist, and it’s used as noun.
So if you were to investigate why you have low conversion rates, you would only stop your investigation once you find a why that leads to an obvious solution.
Let’s take a basic example to demonstrate. Let’s say you have a car that’s not running well. So you take it to a car repair shop. The mechanic tells you that it’s because your car is old. Well that doesn’t lead to an obvious solution so it’s not the real why, so you tell that mechanic to keep looking. After a little time, he comes back and says, your fuel pump is busted. Well that does lead to an obvious solution: replace the fuel pump and the problem should resolve.
This law is common sense in some industries, like with mechanics, but it’s totally ignored in other industries, like in business as well as the health industry.
If you don’t believe me, ask yourself when was the last time your doctor told the reason WHY you had asthma, allergies, diabetes, or cancer, which lead to an obvious solution that resulted in a permanent cure. He probably diagnosed illness and then prescribed a drug. The doctor rarely address the source of the illness. That is one reason why many will keep their illness for years and others will see their cancer reoccurring. They never addressed the underlying why.
Other doctors (integrative doctors as well as naturopathic doctors) can actually cure people of their allergies, diabetes and cancer so they don’t come back – as long as you follow the rules. I know I’ve digressed a little.
Business is the same…
One person will tell you: “it’s the economy”. That’s not a why, it’s an excuse. Some businesses are flourishing in this economy, WHY is yours not flourishing? keep digging until you find the real why.
Another employee tells you: “The competition is to fierce”. That’s not a why, it’s once again an excuse. Some of your competitors are flourishing, so what makes them more successful than you are? The answer to that question will lead you to a why that in turn will lead you to an obvious solution.
So the 3rd employee comes to you and says: “You’re missing a guarantee”. All your competitors have a great guarantee. Now that’s a why which leads to a solution: Add a guarantee that you’re willing to honor!
But is it the real why? The answer is in the second law…
The 2nd Investigative Law of Web Analytics
The real why will always lead to improved statistics. So don’t just implement a why and then forget about it. If statistics go down, then you need to realize you didn’t get the real why. You need to go back to that first law and keep digging until you find another potential why that leads to a solution.
What if you have multiple whys?
Often time, you’ll have multiple whys. You’re missing a guarantee, your copy doesn’t address your prospects objections, your sales process is flawed, etc. You could have a combination of whys that you need to address.
Even in these situations, you’ll see the two laws work. You’ll find one potential why and while you didn’t fix the others, you should still experience an improvement in your statistics. When you experience that improvement, then you know you found one of the whys.
You then continue to investigate to find the others. Following these two laws of web analytics, you can systematically fix each why one by one until your see your statistics soar.
It’s an amazing experience when you have fixed most if not all the whys and you see your statistics move in an almost vertical line.
Can you fix more than one why at the time?
I guess you could, but it’s not recommended, unless they are obvious whys. By an obvious why, I mean, your shopping cart isn’t working or bogs down in the middle of the buying process, or takes 10 minutes to load to the next step of the buying process. These are obvious reasons that you need to fix.
Otherwise, I advise you to fix one why at the time.
If you fix multiple whys at the time, you may see your statistics rise, but you won’t know which of the solutions that you’ve implemented is causing the improvement in your statistics. Maybe one of the changes you made is actually suppressing statistics and that’s why you’re only experiencing a slight improvement instead of that steeper rise you were hoping for.
A better approach is to make one change and then look at your analytics. If stats rises, then keep that change and implement the next change and so forth.
I hope you found this article useful. Please leave your comments below . I’d like to know your opinion and your questions on the subject.
