Useful Analytics, Scalability, and RSI

Today I learned:

Useful Analytics

There are a lot of things that are easy to track that are completely useless to track.

Make sure the things you track relate directly to your goals.

Sometimes the things you want to track aren’t easy (or possible) to track and you need proxies instead. This is okay.

Visible statistics like Facebook likes and Twitter followers, etc, are easy to obsess over because they are public and they are so easy to find. But don’t fall into to the trap of thinking these numbers are what really matter. Getting more followers is unlikely to be your actual goal. Purchases, downloads, or donations and what directly affects those things are what you should really focus on. The closer the things you test are to your actual goals the better.

Instead of Twitter followers, test and track your click-through rate for specific types of content at different times of day.

Instead of website pageviews, track the length of time on page and how far people scroll down through your content.

Instead of likes on a Facebook status track how many people see that status and follow your calls to action.

Scalability

You can always scale with more people or by working more hours. The trick is to design your business to scale the amount of products and services you provide without a 1:1 (or worse) increase in costs, labor or otherwise. In order to scale you want to become more efficient and more automated. When building your product/service, bake in efficiency and automation from the beginning so you can eventually move on to the next thing (or next version) while it sustains itself.

RSI

I’ve been experiencing some RSI lately in my right wrist, just below my thumb. It primarily hits when I use my mouse for an extended period. I read a number of sources and asked some friends today about how to cope with it. Here are some solutions:

Stretching and regularly stopping to do so during the day

An ergonomic mouse like the Anker Vertical or the Logitech MX Master

Varying input devices, such as switching between a trackpad and a mouse or a Wacom tablet and a mouse

Switching to a trackpad (like the Magic Trackpad 2) to minimize wrist movements.

I decided to buy a Magic Trackpad 2 and try it. The reason I went with that over a tablet or ergonomic mouse is that I can’t stand the idea of using my computer without gestures. I’d have to change all of my workflows. If the trackpad doesn’t help, I can return it within 14 days for a full refund and try one of the other mice. The past hour of use has been promising. We’ll see.