Trade Me generates an insane amount of data.
We work hard to turn this data into information and then into suggested changes and improvements to the website.
It’s too easy to get bogged down in silly debates. So, when this happens we ask what the numbers say.
This quickly separates fact from opinion.
Most ideas can be quickly proved or disproved using numbers.
When we make changes to the website we can quickly see whether the impact is positive or negative.
Paying attention to the data has allowed us to develop a much better understanding of our product and our customers. This gives us confidence to make changes that we believe will be positive, even when they might not be popular.
Where sensible, we make this information available to users too.
For example, on the community pages you can find the details of the busiest day of the week and hour of the day.
Even the sell-thru rates (the percentage of listings that sell) for every category are public.
Ever since the very early days (when the numbers were very small) we have published a count of the number of members, the number of current listings and the number of people online at that exact moment.
This transparency means that there has never been a gap develop between what people assume the numbers to be and what they are in reality.
Related posts:
- Mercaptan, on error logging
- The rise and rise of IE7
- Trade Me browser stats for May
- How long?
Other posts from the Trade Me Manifesto series:
[...] #9: Measure everything [...]
[...] #9: Measure everything [...]
[...] #9: Measure everything [...]
[...] Another even more effective way for us to understand people is to track what they actually do (see #9: Measure everything). [...]
[...] About Rowan « #9: Measure everything [...]
[...] Whatever it is, make sure you base your decisions on facts not opinions. [...]
[...] #9: Measure everything [...]
[...] of the things I’ve focused on is establishing a measurement culture and making sure we’re making product decisions for the right reasons. It’s great to see [...]
[...] Me will be amused by the comments, but mostly interested in the numbers. They will probably already know if these changes have had a positive or negative impact on page [...]
[...] is happening and from this coming up with actions to improve the situation. As Rowan’s 9th Rule of the Trade Me Manifesto points out you can quickly separate fact from [...]
[...] Published December 22, 2008 Web Development Tags: ab testing, measurement Measuring everything doesn’t necessarily have to involve complex analytics tools, or lots of [...]
[...] Eat less As part of my weight loss, I watch what I eat. I count everything. It is amazing how oblivious I was to the amount of crap going into my body. When you carefully measure the inputs you can get very predictable outputs, and this is the secret to success for most things. If you don’t measure the inputs, how can you possibly expect the right outputs. As Rowan once advised, measure everything! [...]