Member Spotlight

Name: Hugh Gage
Company: Engage Digital Ltd
Job Title: Owner
Website: www.engage-digital.com
Twitter Handle: @hwjgage

What is your favorite blog?
I'm not sure I really have one to tell you the truth. These days I'm more inclined to get my industry and personal interest news from Zite or Twitter. I set up searches and filters to make sure I get the stuff that's relevant but I like the serendipity of these two channels and often I get to read things that I would have missed if I just read a selection of blogs which I don't really have time to do justice to anyway.

How is big data impacting your daily job?
Hard to say. What is "big data" anyway? I've heard it described as anything from more data than you can retain in your short term memory at any one moment to the aggregation of all data output from all data sources within any given organisation. I think "big data" has been around for years it just didn't have the moniker.

What analytics tools do you find most useful?
Google Analytics is the tool I use most but right now I love Usertesting.com. It's not really an analytics tool in the normal sense of the meaning but it's an excellent service with which you can get some nice little 10 to 15 minute usability tests done at very short notice. In a few month's time it'll be something else I expect.

What analytics myth is the most common?
That a high bounce rate is universally bad. It's not. Not sure if this is the most common but it's certainly one of the worst in my view, fortunately I think that people are wising up to it.

What is the greatest challenge facing the industry?
To get beyond the seemingly monogamous love affair with stats and data science and think more like analysts. We're human beings and we will always be unpredictable to some extent, I don't think numerical data alone can give us the answers to everything.

What is the greatest opportunity facing the industry?
To just get on with it. We all read about the best practice people and the cutting edge practitioners but they're in the small minority, scratch below the surface and it seems to me there are still a vast number of people and businesses out there who have yet to make the most of even the (increasingly sophisticated) free stuff that's available to them both from an analysis standpoint and from a delivery standpoint. 

Imagine if all the millions of smaller organisations around the world (and some of the larger ones) that have a web presence really started taking it seriously.... I think those of us that work in the industry breath our own exhaust so much of the time that it's sometimes hard to imagine there's an even greater number of organisations that have yet to really engage with their online presence in the same kind of data analysis driven way. They have GA on their sites because it's free but they aren't using it for even a fraction of what it was intended.