How Much Data Do You Need to Be Data-Driven? [Rant]

Do you need to be a big company and need large volumes of traffic to be data driven?

No.

Even a single visitor is a piece of data that you can act on. A single survey response is better than nothing.

Sure, if you have less than 100 visitors / month to your site or just 10 survey responses, it can be difficult to separate outliers from the trend. But it’s still way better than no data.

Somebody commented in our Facebook group that “No data (ie traffic), no party.” That you can’t be data-informed without having a high volume site. That’s such bullshit.

You can do unlimited qualitative research – interviews, surveys, polls, user testing. If you only have 10 customers, you can meet up with each one of them one by one (even if over Skype or similar). If you have zero customers (no business yet), you can do customer development and interview tens or hundreds of people from the desired target audience.

With digital analytics you can still measure every action the few visitors are taking on the site. Measure macro goals (conversions) and micro goals (clicks, scrolls, interactions with widgets, etc).

All that data can help you shape your strategy, pick the right tactics and change course as needed.

You can always be data-informed and data-driven.