All clients, internal or external, are looking for quality insights. Definition of quality is how actionable the insights are and the positive impact the insights will produce. An analyst has to be confident in the data that is being delivered to business stakeholders. Analytical insight confidence comes from the Reliability and Validity of the insights.
Reliability
Reliability of the data comes from understanding the sources of data. It is mostly about the consistency of your data sample. Data that has a very large and diverse distribution may not be reliable for what you are looking to accomplish. Large variances in data are not consistent and will throw off the reliability of your insights.
In web analytics, it is important to double check the sources of your data and how it is collected. This involves doing some diagnostics to make sure your web analytics code is available on the pages you are conducting analysis. This sounds fundamental, but often web analysts forget this step and find insights that are unreliable as data samples are not accurate. Reliability of your data takes the initiative to double and triple check that your sources of data are accurate.
Validity
Ask yourself, are the findings we just discovered matching of the expectations we had hypothesized? Expected, or unexpected findings can be good if they are valid. To validate your insights, you need to do some more digging. Multiple sources that validate your point will help you convey the value of your insights to the stakeholders.
Web analytics, there are several ways to do this. Use cases that arrive at the same results as your insights. Doing an A/B test on a sample of your traffic to validate the results is another. Using off site vendors or conducted industry research. Your goal is to always take the time and present the validity of your findings.
Conclusion
It is no longer enough to just present an insight and a plan to fix the issue. Corporations want to have the confidence that your web analytics insights are Reliable and Valid. For more information on how to become a great web analyst, or which web analytics platform to use, click on the links in the text.