Companies gather and analyze data to fine-tune their operations, whether it’s to help them figure out which webpage design works best for customers or what features to include in their product or service to boost sales. Marketers, in particular, use data analytics to answer questions like this: To put people in a shopping mood, is it better to make the webpage banner blue or yellow? Or do these colors not matter? Getting the answer right could mean the difference between higher sales or losing to the competition. But new Wharton research shows that 57% of marketers are incorrectly crunching the data and potentially getting the wrong answer — and perhaps costing companies a lot of money. “We expected business experimenters [to make this error], but I was nevertheless surprised that so many of them do so,” said Wharton marketing professor Christophe Van den Bulte, who coauthored the study.…