Recent personal and professsional experiences have inspired this post, which may slightly resemble a rant.
One of my dogs underwent knee surgery a couple of weeks ago to repair a torn cruciate ligament; when my husband and I picked him up, we knew right away something wasn’t right and he shouldn’t have been released from the vet’s. But it was a weekend, and we were told that everything we were concerned about could also be normal in a recovering pooch. Our guts kept telling us something was wrong, and sure enough when we finally saw the surgeon again several days later, he took one look at our dog and agreed with us. Our poor guy had to have a second surgery and ended up suffering needlessly for several days.
On the professional front, I’ve been comparing some advertising results for a client for several different sites. While I’ve previously discussed the difference between clicks and click-throughs and why you will see discrepancies, sometimes the discrepancies jump out at you enough to question them.
This is the case with one particular site. The client’s tracking system and the vendor’s show very different numbers for clicks and click-throughs, as high as 150% or more when you start to break down the data week by week. A discrepancy of this size immediately set off alarm bells in my head… and my client’s.
We’ve been back and forth with the vendor numerous times, and after iniitally discounting us, they are now taking us seriously. Given this is the only site of many we’re on showing this discrepancy, it’s clear that something isn’t working. Whether it’s the client’s or vendor’s tracking system remains to be seen, but both parties now agree that this must get resolved because something is amiss.
The moral of this story? Trust your judgment. You have good instincts when it comes to things you know – like your website. If something doesn’t feel right, question it. Keep on doing so until you feel satisfied with the answers you’re receiving. My husband and I should have pushed more (and sooner) with our dog, but we were out of our element – we didn’t know enough about the subject, so just trusted what others said. At the end of the day, he’s our dog, we know him best, and while we may not have known what exactly was wrong, we knew something was, and it turns out we were right.
The same can be said for my client who knows the number of click-throughs they normally get from advertising campaigns, and the types of discrepancies they normally see between their tracking system and a vendor one. They aren’t giving up until this is sorted out because the discrepancy is large enough to make or break this campaign (on this one site) for them. It will determine whether or not they advertise with them again in the future. So until we know for sure, we’re going to keep digging and keep questioning.
As G.I. Joe says.. “Knowing is half the battle.”
Photo Credit: Stuant63; Flickr
Rebecca Atkinson (Muller) is a freelance web marketing/analytics consultant with more than seven years of direct experience helping businesses create and implement online marketing and communications strategies. Her clients come from all industries including finance, technology and not-for-profit. She specializes in helping her clients determine how to improve their advertising programs, focusing on visitor behaviour – beyond the inital click-through. Full bio available
Agreed. Sometimes we just gotto trust our instinct. It doesn’t come everyday, but when it does, don’t overlook it. It may serve as a warning, in fact.
Thanks Rebecca, a tip for us to keep an eye open for our blogs at all times. Take care. ^^
Thanks Ching Ya. You’re exactly right though. As soon as you know something isn’t right – you have to turn around and speak up – even if you’re just asking question after question..
So true, Rebecca, and yet, how many times do we doubt our instinct, that little voice inside our head and then we kick ourselves later for not listening to it? Imagine how long a deer would live if she’d talk herself out of hearing a noise! So, why as humans, do we talk ourselves out of listening to that same instinct?
Great question Glend. I think a lot of it has to do with confidence. There’s so much noise out there that tells us to second guess everything we think or hear or read. We have to remember that eons ago people and currently animals survive on instinct alone (normally) so it’s not a bad thing to listen to that little voice in our head every so often.