week 1 Reflection

From class discussions and the readings, I have already learned some new concepts and ways that analytics get used for business's and marketing. Some big concepts that I didn't understand before hand were how metrics were used and how the best ones were chosen, A/B testing, and barrier cultures vs catalyst cultures when it comes to analytics.

Metrics can be calculated in so many ways that I learned its important to only choose the metrics that are going to help for what you are trying to accomplish. Because their is so many, it would be easy to use and analyze metrics that don't help an organization ultimately figure out how much the marketing and metrics are working.

We also discussed A/B testing extensively in class and I learned that, that is the idea of showing two different ideas to a consumer and seeing the results as to which one does better. One consumer may see one thing while other consumers see others and the data will show to which one is more successful. An example of this would be when a laundry detergent company uses a red label and a blue label to sell a product. At the end of a period of time one colored product label will do better than the other. Another example of this is on a website, the controller may only choose half the consumers to see the website one way, while other consumers see a different variation of it to get information on which site should be used.

The last big take away from class discussions and reading was the barrier vs catalyst cultures to using metrics. I found this to be really interesting because some organizations see metrics as not as important, and may only use few or no metrics at all to analyze data, while other organizations  use it rigorously to continue bettering their business. Those who use it constantly use metrics as a catalyst to help boost success, and those not doing that are considered to be the barrier.

First reading and class discussions were very interesting as I got to learn a little about metrics and the importance of them before we dive into the class for the semester.