I was talking to someone who tutors school children and he commented that it can be difficult because some parents mistakenly believe that they will see significant progress only sending their child to a tutor for one hour a week and doing nothing else.

The point he tries to make is that the real success will only come when the parents and child commit to spending the necessary time during the rest of the week studying and practicing and refining skills.

The conversation reminded me of issues companies have with their web analytics programs.  Too often, organizations install analytics, and after the initial excitement, the applications go the way of Squeaky the Penguin from Toy Story 2 (he gathers dust at the bottom of a toy box).

As with the tutoring, analytics applications by themselves aren’t a panacea.  Tools like Google Analytics, Omniture, and Hitbox provide useful data (just like a tutor provides valuable help), but companies will only realize the true benefits when they dedicate the time and resources to go beyond page views and visitor counts to unearth issues such products that are getting a significant number of views but few conversions, significant fallout during the check-out process, etc.  Whether it is learning Algebra or trying to improving your site conversion, dedicating the right amount of time and effort will pay dividends.