Sunday, 8 September 2013

Don’t Fall Victim To Analysis By Paralysis

As a webmaster, blogger or marketer, you must avoid the condition known as analysis by paralysis. Newcomers to the industry oftentimes fall victim to it, resulting in the downfall of their business. Whether you are looking to launch a blog, e-commerce website, lead-gen site or an informative, ad-supported hub, you must avoid this detrimental condition. In this post, we’re going to take a closer look at analysis by paralysis and reveal some simple steps on how to avoid it.

So, what exactly is analysis by paralysis? The term is defined as over analyzing data and information rather than taking action. Instead of building your site, you'll spend hours upon hours looking over data, hoping it will give you some revelation. Analyzing data is a key element to the success of any website, but by overdoing it could have a negative impact on your website's development.

With all of the data and research tools available for webmasters, analysis by paralysis is becoming more and more common. It's easy to stare at a Google Analytics account for hours, looking over your sites' traffic numbers, where the traffic is coming from, what kind of browsers they use, and how long they stayed on your site before leaving. Of course, webmasters may also analyze data in their Webmaster Tools along with various tracking platforms.

If you spend more time looking over data than building content, backlinks and updating your site, you need to shift your momentum in a different direction. One helpful tool that will help you beat analysis by paralysis is a Chrome browser add-on known as StayFocused. Once this tool is installed, you can adjust the settings to limit your time on certain sites. Find out which sites are taking up most of your time and place a cap on their browsing times.

Of course, you can always set an alarm on your computer to notify you after browsing a website for a certain amount of time. Perhaps you can set it for half an hour, and when it goes off, leave your analytical tools behind and go back to working on your site.

When you are forced to stay out of analytical websites, you'll naturally spend more time on projects that actually matter, such as creating new content and building backlinks. The key is to focus your efforts on building and updating your site rather than looking over data.

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