I’ve been spending more and more of my time looking at all the data I have surrounding my life and my business. Its interesting to see whats going on at a very granular level, and then zoom out and see the forest itself.

Its also intriguing to see how other people use data. Some people use charts and graphs to tell a story that doesn’t necessarily play out with a closer look, while others take a close look and find something you wouldn’t necessarily see on the surface of the data.

Take for instance Business Insider’s Chart of the Day , they have all sorts of interesting charts compiled from all over the web. Sometimes they are completely outrageous, sometimes they are insightful (mostly they are just charts though). What is interesting is how the headline of the Chart often varies from the data in the Chart. Take this for example:

Yes the people who don't want one doubled, but the people who do want one tripled

Yes, the percentage of people who don’t want one doubled, but the percentage of people who “would like to buy one” tripled, and the percent of people who replied “No, I’m not interested” was cut in half.

Charts are fun ways to take a snapshot of some set of data and to quickly illustrate a point. But is really interesting to see what kind of crazy stuff comes out of the data, not the parts that complement the story you are telling, but the data points you had no idea you’d find.

Look at this chart comparing the last 4 weeks of traffic on one of our sites. The chart covers the exact same days of the week, from a year ago in January. There are no significant events that would drive traffic, other than a slight spike at the end from Valentines Day searches.

Look how each day lines up, fascinating to me

Look how the trend of the days of the week follows so precisely. The first thing I saw when I looked at this chart was the fact that we are down about 7% y-o-y, but then I looked closer and saw the parallel movement across the chart. Look how the dips correlate, and the spikes match up. I’m now intrigued enough to put together a chart of all the data from all our sites and see how this matches up.

I’m not sure what to takeaway from this type of find, but if you just look at the headline, you miss the real gems.

There has been a lot of chatter about local business data recently in the local blogosphere. (Here and here ) I’m in the business of local business data and I agree it sucks. I spent this week at Search Marketing Expo attending sessions from some of the best in the business and the search engines themselves. And what I realized is that everyone is just trying to create a technology that will eliminate personal interaction and direct updates.

There is no one size fits all anwer to the local data question. How do local businesses represent themselves online. Well first you need to educate them on why they should be online. (here’s a good resource for education) If they know they need to be online chances are, they don’t know where to start. They don’t know where to start. Some have ideas, some have misgivings and some are misguided. One of the biggest problems I find is that there were people that came to them in 2003 and told them they were the next big thing. Small businesses paid up and never heard from these guys again. They are weary and rightfully so. Today there are about a hundred local search options out there, thousands if you incorporate all the offline media they could be buying.

The real query that hasn’t been indexed is how do you gain trust, build a really SOLID local business database and make money while doing this all. Not an easy question. Automation is nice, but you aren’t going to get a bar owner to self-service, not in 2009, maybe not in 2012 - maybe not for along time. The issue is time and ROI and trust. Small businesses don’t want to waste their money on advertising, but they know they need to advertise so they are willing to do that. What they really don’t want to waste is their time.

So if you are venturing into the local search space, you need to recognize one thing. These guys are busy and they are afraid to try new things. If there is one thing thats on our side though, its the fact that they can’t keep justifying increasing print rates with declining circulation and escalating printing costs. So they are going to have to try new things. Alot of companies charge for customer support, so why can’t you? Because you don’t have it.

No algorithm will ever replace handshakes and personal contacts. Walk your prospective clients through your product, educate them on why its valuable and you’ve got a client. Give them a self service portal that injects their business into a Live Nation infested noise fest, they’ll never take action.

Moral being, talk to your customers.  Be there for them. The web is strange enough for these old tymers don’t be a full voicemail box and an anonymous email. Be a person, don’t forget - they’re people too.

Thanks to Darren for bringing my attention to this great new tool. Woopra is the latest analytical tool I’ve seen. And its wicked cool.

It has a really nice interface that allows you to see, in real time, who is on your website, how they got there, what they are looking at and where they go from here. On top of this exceptionally interesting data, compiled live and as it happens, it has an exciting feature - chat. You are able to have a conversation with the person who is visiting your website, in real time.

This really got me fired up. I was done with “work” and home with my girlfriend, and I got the invite from Woopra, set it up and as soon as I was up and running I was “wowing” every few seconds. Watching visitors come to our site, how they got there, what they were looking at and for how long, and where they went from there. It’s very interesting data, and very exciting to see happening live!

The implications from this (at least to me) are nothing new, but the fact that this is live for FREE is a great. I’m not sure what their revenue model is going to be (assuming s Freemium model of some sort), but I can see alot of value in the site. Imagine if advertisers were able to monitor this data in real time, and engage in a conversation with my visitor (yes the big guys have similar chat features…), or if I was a smaller site who could see a potential customer on our site, be able to track where they came from and what they looked at and most importantly what call to action was most, or least, effective.

Its a very fun interface to use, and its exciting to see how visitors interact with the web, in real time. It makes typical analytics look like SportsCenter compared to a live game.