Data is a powerful tool that can help you make better decisions and across all aspects of your business. But often, getting access to the data you need is more difficult than it should be. That’s why data democratization is so important.

Oftentimes, different teams in the same organization depend on different tools to pull data and inform their decision-making process. Unfortunately, that disconnect can lead to internal confusion and inconsistencies across your customer experience. Not only that, data is often controlled by a small subset of employees, requiring teams to go through them to get the data they need. That data gate-keeping is inefficient and slows down your teams’ ability to move quickly and efficiently.

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Data democratization, on the other hand, makes digital information accessible to everyone. It allows different departments and roles to work more closely together and empowers your employees to make smarter, data-driven decisions that drive business results. It also dramatically impacts your company’s digital agility, letting you pull data in real-time and pivot based on what your customers are telling you. 

That’s exactly why computer game and technology company NVIDIA implemented Contentsquare. Alex Keyser a Sr. Manager, Digital Experience at NVIDIA recently spoke to us on why NVIDIA wanted to prioritize data democratization and how they did so by adopting Contentsquare. 

Here’s how Alex says Contentsquare helps the entire NVIDIA team get a deeper understanding of what content is resonating with their customers and what’s not:

Could you tell us a little bit more about NVIDIA?

NVIDIA was famous first for inventing the GPU, which is an alternative way to process data. Most commonly, it’s used for gaming, but at this point, NVIDIA has really evolved into an accelerated computing company. We are accelerating all things now, not just games. We do accelerate games to the point where we now have real-time ray tracing where we can reproduce shadows and reflections in games, which gamers are loving. It’s really blowing people away in terms of experience. 

But we’ve also moved into more world-changing features of our GPUs. We’re actually helping scientists to crack the code on COVID and training AI machines so they’re quick enough to think like humans. We’re really accelerating all things computing now with our GPUs. 

Because of the duality of our business, we don’t really have a singular type of customer. We have consumers in our gaming segment and then we have non-consumers. When I say non-consumers, I mean researchers, educators, enterprise, and start-up customers. Anyone who does any form of accelerated computing is now a potential customer for NVIDIA.

 

Can you share how data has increased your team’s digital agility? 

Like most companies, we have a large team tasked with creating content for our customers and prospects. Before we had clear data on what people are using, we were just creating things, throwing them against the wall, and seeing what stuck.

We were just making assumptions on what was working and wasn’t. Having clear data on how and where our customers are interacting with our content has really helped focus our content strategy and inform where and how we promote different resources. We’re becoming more efficient in terms of what we’re creating and how we’re using what we’re creating.

What key metrics do you depend on to make informed decisions? 

We look at engagement rate frequently. Are people engaging with our pages? If it’s a landing page, we look at things like bounce rate. When we started using Contentsquare we started focusing on click rate, what are people engaging with on the page, and exposure rate, how far people are going down on the page. That’s actually one of the things we really wanted to know before we got into Contentsquare. When we started meeting with the Contentsquare team and got a demo, we realized how many other things were available to us that we didn’t even know we needed but now we really lean on.

My favorite Contentsquare metric is attractiveness rate, which normalizes click-through rate. I love it because sometimes we come up with a piece of content that really resonates with our users but we don’t have it high on the page. In the old days, we just looked at click-through rate. But, CTR doesn’t tell the whole story. Sometimes a piece of content didn’t have a high CTR because we weren’t promoting it properly on the page. With the attractiveness rate metrics, we can normalize that click-through rate for people who have actually seen that piece of content.

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For example, you can have a white paper with a click-through rate of 2%, which is OK, but not great. But when you look at all the people who have looked at that whitepaper and that click-through rate jumps to 20%, you should probably change how you’re promoting that piece of content. I love that metric because it’s so actionable.

What spurred your decision to move towards data democratization at NVIDIA? 

Data democratization wasn’t the main reason we were searching for an experience analytics platform. We didn’t think, “How do we get all this information to the rest of the company?” Initially, we just wanted the information for our team to make better decisions and inform our stakeholders. That said, we quickly realized the benefits of that democratization. 

Contentsquare has a cool Chrome plugin that is very easy to use and is actually one of the features that sold us on the platform. I remember we asked about a similar feature in a demo with one of your competitors and they said they didn’t have one. In fact, they said didn’t even think that offering was needed. I remember my colleague Tam and I looked at each other and said, “Alright, well, this one is probably not for us.” We had realized at that point that the Chrome plugin was essential to freeing our data and giving everyone in the company access to it. 

One thing that we’ve noticed is now that we have democratized data at NVIDIA and given the whole company access to these metrics if they want them, hiring managers email me all the time telling me that they just hired someone and the first thing that they want to do is get them access to Contentsquare so they can start seeing what people are doing on our webpages. To me, that proves that we’re not just pushing this information, they’re actually hungry to consume it. 

Hiring managers email me all the time telling me that they just hired someone and the first thing that they want to do is get them access to Contentsquare, so they can start seeing what people are doing on our webpages.

The other reason is that I just think people are more bought-in to the process. If people see and have access to the data, they are going to believe in the data. Before it was a function of us just telling them. “This is how your content is performing.” Just trust us. Don’t do this, do that. Now, they can see it with their own eyes. And, we don’t have to do the convincing we did in the past. They convince themselves by looking at the data. 

If people see and have access to the data, they are going to believe in the data.

 

What’s your approach for getting buy-in from people who aren’t from an analytical background? 

That’s a good question. I haven’t felt like I’ve been pushing people. At NVIDIA, people are generally very data-driven, no matter what the situation is. I think just sharing the data is helpful. No one argues with the data. Within the company, people see the data and they respect it. They ask what the next steps are and how we can use data to make us more efficient and effective.

I mentioned this earlier, but allowing people to access the data on their own lets them buy-in to the process. Before, we were sharing the data and just having them nod their heads. Now, they’re pulling the data themselves, bringing it to us, and asking us how we can make it better. They’re much more bought-in that way than if you’re just throwing it at them. 

We have over 100 people using Contentsquare at NVIDIA. The ability to give access to the entire company is what really sold Contentsquare for us. There are other companies where you have to pay for licensed users and seats, but Contentsquare said “Nope! Anyone with a NVIDIA.com email address gets to use it.” That was huge for us. 

The ability to give access to the entire company is what really sold Contentsquare for us.

Interested in learning how Contentsquare’s experience analytics platform can help your business? Schedule a personalized demo with a member of our team or explore our website to learn more about our product offerings