Ahh data.

Whether you’re a nerd or not, there’s beauty to its order and to making sense of it.

Quantitative or qualitative, you need both.

Running AB tests to validate your headline or button copy?

Scouring the depth of your analytics platform to get to the gold that will increase conversions 100x?

Sending an email survey to your customers in hopes of understanding why they churn?

All interesting data points.

But no data can be the solution 100% of the times.

Sometimes it’s very hard to prove our point merely using data.

One example comes to mind.

Ever heard about the Riemann hypothesis? In a nutshell, it says that, in theory, we should be able to predict where every single prime number in existence lies, up to infinity.

Something nobody has been able to mathematically prove, yet.

The issue is that to prove it’s validity, you’d need to find the only case that doesn’t match. Which would require a computer capable of calculating to infinity.

Not in the foreseeable future.

It’s kind of like saying, just because you can’t prove that ghosts don’t exist, it doesn’t mean they do exist (or viceversa).

My point here?

Numbers and probabilities help with fixing conversion issues up to a point.

The work that makes a difference is studying the innumerable facets human beings present.

What separates good analysis from an amateur job, is the nuance behind it. The understanding of human behavior and decision making. The psychology.

The stuff that still has to change and will take ages to change.

That and lots of trial and error.

Reason why I love running customer interviews. Yes even if I always considered myself an incurable introvert.

The stories at the base of each experience, if you’re able to dig them out, will be your strongest tool to prove and fix any business issue.

Want to learn how I do it? Get in touch.