The Data Evolution<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
As Stanford\u2019s Ramesh Johari notes, \u201c100 years ago, data was expensive and slow and practitioners were trained statisticians. Today, data is cheap and real-time, and everyone is a practitioner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the increased access to data, leaders are antsy to put that data to work. We regularly speak with leaders who want to transform their company\u2019s relationship to their data: they run heat mapping tools on their site, have numerous analytics tools at their disposal, and their teams have dabbled in A\/B testing<\/a>. But many still struggle to make sense of the abundance of data and choose the right path forward. They struggle to move from data-informed to data-backed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And being data-backed isn’t about just having a good data story<\/a> to support your argument for why another treatment is better. You have to go beyond that and do the evaluative research to actually PROVE it to create a culture that is data-driven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though the language is similar, we make a crucial distinction between data-informed and data-backed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many organizations aspire to be data-backed, but they often fall short by primarily relying on generative research methods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Generative methods are great for understanding what\u2019s happening on a website and forming hypotheses about what would work better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Generative research methods include things like: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Alternatively, evaluative research can be used to substantiate ideas with evidence. Evaluative research methods include things like: <\/p>\n\n\n\n When we ask so-called \u201cdata-driven” companies what data they use, they typically list a number of generative research methods. Only about 25% of them list any evaluative research methods and rarely do they go beyond A\/B testing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Generative research, those methods on the left, are great for understanding what\u2019s happening on a website and forming hypotheses about what would work better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But in order to move forward with confidence<\/strong> that your solutions will actually work, you need the methods on the right. Evaluative research is how we move from data-informed to data-backed and eventually develop a company culture that is data-driven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"graph](\"https:\/\/thegood.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/image2-57.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nGenerative vs Evaluative Research<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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![\"generative](\"https:\/\/thegood.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/image1-64-1024x447.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWhat to continue learning? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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