

Ask HN: Practical Advice on Data Analysis - ptahdunbar

Building a unique startup, how would you go about adding "data analysis" capabilities to your app so you can better judge your startup's value, success rate for campaigns etc?
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babul
Not limited to just unique startups, but simply record and measure the metrics
that are important to you.

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babul
I'd say if you want to determine value and success rates, define your criteria
(money/ROI/users/market-share/etc), set targets (spend $x and get y users in z
time), and measure the performance (x spent on adwords/marketing/ads/other
getting y users n% of whom pay $m) and where you are not meeting targets
evaluate if they are realistic, and if so, why and what you can do to improve.

Sometimes even the best of services/apps do not perform well despite best
efforts so really the bottom line on how to value a startup is how the users
value it.

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ptahdunbar
That's a good point. But again, the whole "measure the performance" part comse
back to knowing exactly what their doing on the app.

Example: Youtube's flash player: Pageviews won't really tell you much, but
knowing how many people click on "replay" button, or "share" button after the
video finished, or use the flash interface to find related content. How would
one go about adding those kind of data tracking capabilities so you can
analysis it later or something? That's what I'm looking for... Although your
comment did shine a light on other ways I haven't thought of yet. Thx.

