Web Analytics Rock Stars

Adam Greco is a Director within Omniture’s Consulting team and heads up the Financial Services consulting vertical.  He is also a frequent speaker at Omniture Summit where he most recently presented on SiteCatalyst Power User Tips & Tricks which was the highest rated breakout session of the conference.  Adam is launching a new blog so we thought we would catch-up with him and learn about it…

You have been with Omniture now for a few years – how has your work changed from the time you started to now?
I would say that in the last three years, the biggest change in my area (Consulting) has been the formalization of processes.  A few years ago, each SiteCatalyst implementation could be significantly different, but now using our Omniture Fusion methodology, most implementations are consistent using proven techniques based upon industry best practices.

How did you get Omniture to let you have your own blog?  They are usually very tight in terms of controlling the brand…
I think every company has to make a decision about how open they will be.  Our CEO believes strongly in using social media tools to communicate with customers and potential customers.  This year Omniture has been investing heavily in blogs and other social media tools and our official Omniture blog already has 10 bloggers.  We hope to expand that to even more in the coming months.  I’m glad to be able to offer my expertise here and be a part of the conversation that is happening online.

At the end of the day, in anything Omniture does, the priority is to listen to customers and provide what they want.  In this case, the feedback we got from my SiteCatalyst power user session was that customers need more product education in venues that are conducive to their work style.  Given that I am part of the consulting organization, working primarily on billable engagements, there is a limit to what I can “give away” for free, but I truly believe that there are many ways that I can help customers out there without negatively impacting our consulting business.  In fact, my hope is that when customers see how easy it is for our consulting group to solve the challenges they have (but are not new to us), they might consider engaging us in a formal capacity.

I know that you work remotely from the Chicago-land area.  These types of opportunities are increasingly common.  How do you like working remotely?  What do you see as the biggest pluses and minuses?
Omniture has been great about this set-up and I believe has been a very forward-thinking organization in this area.  I think they recognized early on that, as wonderful of a place as Utah is, someone’s decision to not relocate their family there should not exclude them from consideration as an employee.  Personally, I like working remotely, but I could see how it might drive some people crazy over time.  For me, what I like about it is that I can really focus on my work in big spurts of time without the usual office distractions which allows me to get more work done than I have in any previous role.  The obvious downside is that I often feel like a web analytic hermit.  Luckily I get to visit clients, which gets me out of my house and helps keep me sane!

How has Omniture changed as a company since you have joined?  Specifically I am curious about the culture (you are not a start up any more), the vision, messaging, prospects, etc.
As a remote employee, I am not as immersed in the culture as the folks in primary office, so I am probably not the best person to ask.  I would say that the biggest changes I have noticed in the last few years are an increased focus on growth which has led to me not being able to know everyone at the company like I did in the old days.  I think Omniture has emerged from the start-up phase to become much like other companies out there, but there is still a start-up feel that persists…I know there is a desire out there to paint Omniture as “the man” when it comes to web analytics vendors, but in my mind, I will always feel like I work for the web analytics small start-up trying to make a name for itself.  We forget that we work in a niche industry and I am reminded of this when my friend ask me who I work for and only 2% have ever heard of Omniture…
So why (yet) another web analytics blog and who is the blog targeting?
The blog I am starting is called “Inside SiteCatalyst” and it targets current Omniture SiteCatalyst users.  I am starting it for two reasons: 1) Based upon my experience as an Omniture customer and knowing how much there is to learn about SiteCatalyst and 2) Because of the tremendous outpouring of response I got from my Summit session.  While Omniture provides great manuals, support and training courses, I think many people need someone who is not technical (like me), but has been using the product for years to provide a “cliff-notes” version of what they need to know to be successful with SiteCatalyst.  Initially I will start with the basics, but quickly move to more advanced tips & tricks I have learned over the years…  With Omniture now having thousands of customers, the blog format seemed to be the most logical way to share this type of information in an easy, digestible format.

How will this blog be different from other web analytics blogs?
The main difference is that my blog will be practical vs. conceptual.  This is not to knock the blogs that are out there because they are great and I think our space is one of the leaders in thought leadership in the blogosphere!  I am just casting a much smaller net in that I am focusing on current SiteCatalyst customers, primarily marketers not technical folks, who are using SiteCatalyst daily to do their jobs.  While these folks definitely benefit from hearing the thoughts of industry luminaries, sometimes they just need someone to help them learn how to answer a specific business question they have using the web analytics tool their company owns.  Due to people changing roles or organizations, many of these marketers haven’t been to SiteCatalyst training for years (if at all) and are only using a portion of what SiteCatalyst offers.  I meet too many customers who think they can’t answer a particular question, only to find out that a five minute conversation with me shows them that they could have answered it if they knew the product like I did.  Another way that I am hoping to differentiate my blog is that I am asking readers to send me the topics that they want me to cover, instead of the norm where the blogger always dictates the topic.  While I have a list of the things I find that customers need some help with, there is nothing better than having blog readers tell me what they don’t understand and having me respond to everyone with the answers.  I am also asking readers to e-mail me real-life business questions they can’t figure out how to answer and I will do my best to answer them so everyone can learn.  I have setup an e-mail address (insidesitecatalyst@omniture.com) specifically for these topic suggestions and questions.
 
Can you provide an example of these differences?
Sure.  In my Omniture Summit Power User presentation, I asked the audience (who were self-described power users) to tell me how they would go about showing their boss which internal search terms site visitors were entering into the site search box, the order in which these terms were entered and which internal search term groupings led to the most success.  No one volunteered a specific course of action they would take to tackle these scenarios.  For me, it is obvious that you would pass internal search terms to an eVar and an sProp, enable pathing on the sProp, enable SAINT classifications on the eVar and use that classification report with your desired success events (huh??).  Sure that doesn’t make a lot of sense to most people reading this interview, but if you are responsible for SiteCatalyst at your organization, you need to know how to apply the various tools SiteCatalyst provides to be successful.  The analogy I like to use is chess.   There is a big difference in knowing what each chess piece does and being able to use the various chess pieces in combinations to be successful (learned the hard way by a man who can no longer beat his son at chess!).  I hope that my blog posts will slowly give people the confidence to know which SiteCatalyst tools they can use to answer the hard business questions they get every day…
 
Where can people find the blog and subscribe?
The blog will be part of Omniture’s growing list of blogs on Omniture’s website.  Specifically, my blog can be accessed at this address (http://blogs.omniture.com/author/agreco) where users can subscribe to my feed via RSS.  For those so inclined, I am also on Twitter and can be followed at: http://twitter.com/omni_man.

Tags: adam greco, blog, omniture, web analytics
Posted in: Online Analytics by Corry Prohens
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Eventually, your web analytics career is going to hit a wall.  Learning interactive marketing as a web analyst, you start with the numbers and then seek context.  When you stop to think about it, it’s really an inside out view, isn’t it? 

You can master tags, logs and the many intricacies of implementation and that will get you so far.  If you want to go from good to great, then you’re going to have to stop learning analytics.

Advance Your Career with Action
Measurement craves action.  That’s why site testing (a/b and multivariate) has been such a huge hit.  Your success as a web analyst is defined by the impact of the changes your work inspires: more leads, higher revenue, greater customer satisfaction.

Start your search for by following the money.  In most companies, the budget is often biggest in one of these 4 channels:
1. Paid Search
2. Email Marketing
3. Organic Search / SEO
4. Landing Pages

1. Paid Search

eMarketer predicts that paid search spend will hit $10 Billion by 2010.  Each year, more money migrates from offline advertising to online buys, often starting with paid search (aka pay-per-click or PPC advertising).

Who’s to blame them?  PPC advertising, most often on AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing, is among the most measurable marketing investments you can make.  That’s exactly why web analysts need to get up to speed… fast.

The basic structure of paid search advertising is simple: you select words, bid on them, write a text ad and send them to a landing page.  The reality is far more complex.  To get started, I recommend you start with a simple 5 point PPC questionnaire:
1. How are we performing against our yearly and monthly goals?
2. Which campaigns are driving 50% of our cost?  Which ones are driving 50% of our revenue (or similar KPI, such as leads)?
3. What are our ad groups and how are they performing?
4. What is our impression share for the top campaigns?
5. How is competition affecting our brand campaigns?

This is a mix of simple questions, but you’d be amazed how eye opening they can be for a web analyst.  I threw in “impression share”, because it’s a metric that few outside of paid search understand.  It once again highlights the need to move outside of just one tool.

You can get a good overview of paid search with Marketing Sherpa’s 2009 Search Marketing Guide.  For the latest thoughts on measuring and optimizing paid search, check out the ClickEquations blog. 

2. Email Marketing

Email is a rather unsexy channel.  Most people think of it as outdated at best or spam at worst.  The truth is that email is very much a part of online marketing in a basic way (support email, order confirmation) and more advanced uses (personalized offers, abandoned cart recovery).

As an analyst, you can lead the charge to maximize email ROI by asking:
• How does email stack up against other channels?
• What’s the most effective way to grow our subscriber list?
• What have we learned from past tests?  How can we structure future tests to boost results?
• Which segments of our list are most valuable?
• What kind of from and subject lines boost open rates?

I usually turn to the Email Experience Council to find resources for email marketing.  Their Email Stat Center is a really great collection of research and some stats for comparison.  The Email Benchmark Guide is a good starting point.  For more in-depth training, there is an Email Marketing Summit coming up in March.
3. Organic Search / SEO

Of all the channels on this list, organic search is most likely to frustrate analysts.  Unlike paid search and email marketing, you can’t know or measure many of the aspects that contribute to successful search engine optimization.

Search engines are fundamentally secretive about what drives rankings to a.) keep their competitive advantage and b.) reduce the amount of gaming of the system.  To top it all off, it can take months (or more) before your changes produce results.

Even with those barriers, the value of measuring and analyzing organic search as a web analyst is huge.  A well optimized site can drive significant traffic with no per-click cost, which means more money for your company and more kudos for you.

Start with some basic questions:
• How has our organic search traffic trended year over year?
• Which pages are bringing in the most organic traffic?  Which search queries (aka keywords) drive them there?
• How does organic search drive our bottom line–profit, new customers, etc.?

Next, dig into some more advanced questions:
• What is your keyword share for our targeted search queries?
• How should we balance our organic and paid search efforts for maximum ROI?
• How do our blogging and social media efforts help SEO traffic?

I keep up with the SEO space by reading Search Marketing Gurus, SEOMoz and SEOBook.  Copywriting has a big impact on organic search efforts, which is why I read Copyblogger.  Their SEO Copywriting series is a good intro.  For something more in-depth, try this guide.
4. Landing Pages (aka entry pages)

Every marketing campaign has to point to a page on your site.  What should that page look like to yield maximum profit?  Welcome to the world of landing pages.

The immediate post-click experience has a tremendous impact on the profitability (or viability) of your tactics.  Paid search is getting more competitive and expensive, while display is as pricey as ever.  If you want to wring out the maximum results, then regular testing of your landing pages has to be a standard practice.

The good new is that there’s tremendous upside in testing for any analyst out there.  It’s all about data driven decision making instead of opinions and guesses.  Not sure which headline is best?  Test it!

The simplest way to get started is just to launch your own test using the free Google Website Optimizer.  If you’re familiar with page tagging, the setup should be pretty straightforward.  The real trick is understanding test design and measurement.

I recommend you start with Jonathan Mendez’s Expert Guide to Multivariate Testing.  Bryan Eisenberg’s blog often feature useful testing tips.  I read Marketing Sherpa’s newsletters for new ideas and they have a handbook and landing page workshop too.
Conclusion
The fastest way to advance yourself, or your own business, is to focus on action and the bottom line business goals.  The more you can partner with marketing and improve results, the more invaluable you’ll become.  Take some time to expand your horizons beyond web analytics and you’ll be a better analyst for it.

Alex Cohen has his own optimization blog, Digital Alex. As an interactive marketing generalist at Commerce360, he does a bit of everything: web analytics, multivariate testing, paid search, SEO, and account management.  You can reach him for writing or speaking opportunities at alex @ alexlcohen . com

Posted in: Online Analytics by Alex Cohen
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Question 1 (asked by Corry Prohens): 
I am amazed when I see how many things you seem to be involved in simultaneously.  Just off the top of my head: authoring books, speaking, blogging, doing the web analytics Wednesday thing globally, user group moderator, industry research, job board, panelist, consultant, CEO…   – you must be a miracle worker when it comes to time management… but it makes me curious what your core business is at this point.  What do you personally spend the most of your time on these days?  

Answer:
The core business of Web Analytics Demystified is strategic web analytics consulting; I work closely with a very select list of clients to help them better compete in the online channel by improving their use of the great technology and staff they’ve invested in. 

My work is very customized for each client and usually pretty involved, but it’s more interesting and much more gratifying than pretty much anything I’ve done before.  By virtue of my experience in the industry, my own web analytics practice, and my time as an industry analyst I have developed the unique skills necessary to help clients take a truly strategic view of their investment so that we’re able to work together to identify and fill the gaps.

The good news is that for all the other stuff you listed I am privileged to be working with amazing talent who help me get the job done.  I am co-authoring white papers with brilliant guys like Joseph Carrabis (NextStage) and Josh Manion (Stratigent); I am invited to speak at great conferences like the Online Marketing Summit and Emetrics by great guys like Aaron Kahlow and Jim Sterne; June Dershewitz from Semphonic helps me keep Web Analytics Wednesday going in the right direction; guys much smarter than I am moderate the Yahoo! group (Mike Wexler, Dylan Lewis, Jim Sterne, and W. David Rhee); and knowing that I can call you with job-related questions makes running the job board a bunch easier.  Plus, my wife Amity keeps me honest, humble, and always moving in the right direction … as you can see, I get a lot of help from my friends!

Question 2:
So much of your business seems to have been built around your personal brand in web analytics.  What is that like?  Do you think that you have more pressure - being essentially Eric Peterson, Inc. as  well as CEO of WA Demystified?

Answer:
Yeah, it’s kind of strange being as well known as I am in the digital world, but I do my best to support the community while maintaining that balance between “what is good for all” and “what is good for the Peterson/Demystified brand.”  I personally think that the Web Analytics Forum I founded in 2004, the Web Analytics Wednesday events I co-founded in 2005, my writing and research that I give away, and a bunch of the stuff I have done for the WAA are good evidence of my commitment to something larger than just me, my company, and my brand.  I have the amazing luxury of being able to give away some of my time, my work, and my expertise as I see fit to support the global web analytics community, and I try and do my best to help out those people and efforts I think are important to how this community will develop. 

I’ve committed up to $10,000 of the profits from my consulting business to sponsoring emerging Web Analytics Wednesday events around the world, and the great folks at SiteSpect and Coremetrics have both matched my commitment.  We’re taking profits right out of our brands and sinking them back into nascent global web analytics networking efforts, and with record numbers of participants (and tons of new sponsors joining us) this effort is having a tremendous impact.  I’m also working closely with members of the Web Analytics Association Board to make the WAA a Community Sponsor of Web Analytics Wednesday, opening up WAW events to the WAA to more actively recruit members in places like Beijing, Mubai, Johannesberg, Sydney, Sao Paulo, and Rio de Janerio where Web Analytics Wednesday events are happening!

What does the Demystified brand get out of my support of Web Analytics Wednesday?  Aside from slightly less profits at the end of the year, I personally get to go to be each evening and wake up every morning knowing that “Eric Peterson, Inc.” is having a positive impact on our community.  Every month more and more new people sign up for these events, and our global community becomes a little bit tighter even as it is rapidly expanding.  You’ve been to these events Corry — for what they are they are pretty cool.  No fees, no dues, no signing stuff … just (mostly) free drinks and nice people and good conversation.  Super-amazing-wonderfulness (as Avinash might say!)

If for some reason your readers haven’t heard of Web Analytics Wednesday, they should check out http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/wednesday
 
Question 3:
What are the next steps in the growth of Web Analytics Demystified?  What should we expect to see evolving there over the next 2-3years?

Answer:
A great question, but one I’m not sure I want to answer publicly.  At this point I have great business partners around the world (Semphonic and Stratigent here in the U.S. and OX2 and Satama in Europe) and am able to be pretty effective on both the strategic and tactical level thanks to their support.  I am also keenly aware of how difficult it would be to build a traditional web analytics consulting firm — both because it would force me to compete with people I really like, but also because great web analytics expertise is difficult to find and increasingly costly to keep.

My greatest hope for Web Analytics Demystified is that I will be able to continue to provide great value to my clients around the world, great value to the web analytics community through my writing, presentations, and brands, and be a good dad to my kids.
 
Question 4:
You have acknowledged (or at least I think I remember you acknowledging) that web analytics and offline marketing analytics is going to continue to  grow together in most companies.  Do you worry about what that means to “web analytics” as we know it now – as a standalone discipline?

Answer:
Nope.  On the contrary I am pretty excited about “web analytics growing up” and becoming more integrated into the larger business ecosystem.  Think about the stuff candidates tell you during the screening process, Corry … they tell stories about management not understanding web analytics, not valuing the work they do, not listening to recommendations, not being willing to make the incremental investments necessary to make web analytics work as a formalized set of core digital business processes, right?  People come to you because their job sucks and the business prevents them from being effective.

At some point, and I really do think this will be tied to getting over the idea of “internet marketing” and starting to think about capital-M “Marketing”, the business is going to grok the need for real, robust analysis coming from the digital channels.  Everyone is going to wake up to Tom Davenport’s observation that most of what we call “web analytics” is just glorified reporting and start to ask how they can do real analysis —predictive analytics, modeling, regression, etc. — against all this data pouring out of our computers, our cell phones, our PDAs, our video game systems, our interactive TVs, and so on.

Does this create a risk for some of us?  Absolutely!  But I think it creates a far greater opportunity.  An opportunity to see our efforts valued throughout the organization and rolled into Davenport and Harris’s idea of competing on analytics.  It’s actually funny you ask because my core talk in the second half of 2008 is called “Competing on Web Analytics” and it delves into the transition you asked about.  Your readers can subscribe to my speaking calendar at http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/link_list.asp?l=Speaking%20Engagement if they’re interested in learning where I will be presenting that talk.

Question 5:
As a recruiter, I am curious:  Could there have been any job on the planet (within marketing or analytics) that you would have taken had it been offered to you when you instead of starting your own firm?  If so, what could it/would it have been?
 
Answer:
Nope.  I have had the great honor of working for and with some of the most intelligent, hard working, and serious minded executives in the web analytics industry over the last ten years.  While each of them have taught me something valuable, the most important lesson I took away from my experience is that I’m pretty keen on being able to make my own decisions and control my own fate.  I suppose I like being successful and all that but, I gladly traded self-determination for financial gain when I left Visual Sciences and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

That’s actually one thing I kind of like about our industry.  With a few (unfortunately high profile) exceptions, most of us aren’t driven by money.  The best consultants I know spend as much time trying to find balance in their lives as they do find billable hours; the rock-stars that you help place are looking as much for an opportunity to have impact as they are riches; and the giants whose shoulders I stand on, guys like Sterne, Eisenberg, and Novo, have given far more back to the community at this point as they have taken out.  I think that’s great.
 

Question 6:
How real and how eminent are the legislative threats to web analytics?

Answer:
Sadly I think they’re both very real and increasingly eminent.  While I believe that Brodsky’s bill in the New York House has lapsed without action, there is apparently a new bill in the House and Senate in Massachusetts and another in Connecticut that would require notification for tracking (a good summary is here: http://www.wickedlocal.com/belmont/news/x390626994/Internet*privacy*bill*stirs*concern*among*advertisers)  As you know in my “Future of Web Analytics” (download from http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/link_list.asp?l=Presentation) presentation I gave in New York I am predicting that we will see some type of legislative action in the relatively near future.  Just the fact that it keeps coming up should be reason enough to be concerned, much less when you start to examine some of the stuff that is happening in Europe (Steve Jackson at Satama has a great piece on Phorm here: http://www.blackbeak.com/2008/06/15/bt*shows*bad*phorm*in*its*bid*to*improve*behavioral*ad*targeting/) 

Personally, having spent a fair amount of time looking at the issue of cookie deletion, I am pretty frustrated with the ongoing specter of legislation around tracking but I think it comes back to one very important idea: there is no real value proposition for the consumer associated with tracking cookies.  Better advertising?  Better web sites?  Remembers your preferences?  Keeps you logged in?  Not enough, especially when juxtaposed against inherent consumer fears about being “discovered” in what is supposed to be an anonymous medium.  Unfortunately I think it is too late for tracking cookies to recover and so it may just be a matter of time before they’re rendered obsolete — which is why I am so interested in how mobile platforms are developing.  In mobile there is an obvious value proposition for the consumer: let us track your behavior and we’ll lower your monthly bill.  The carriers can pass the cost along to the content providers and everybody wins — content providers get true visitor tracking, possibly with core demographics and geo-location included, and consumers save money.  How awesome is that!!!
Question 7:
Finally, let’s get you on record for some completely unimportant important issues:
 
Favorite Baseball Team: Hate baseball, sorry.  Barry Bonds ruined the game when he cheated his way to that record.

Favorite Football Team: Gonna have to go with the Bears, having grown up watching Walter Peyton work under Mike Ditka.

Favorite Basketball Team: Hmm, Michael Jordan’s Bulls (see previous answer) and the Portland Trailblazers (assuming Greg Oden is healthy this year.)

Childhood Ambition: Professional Skateboarder.  I was a sponsored amateur as a youth and had a full-sized half-pipe in my backyard. This is back when Tony Hawk was a kid and the Bones Brigade videos were blowing our minds.  Ahh, the fantasy of youth, huh?

What happened to the pony tail?: Donated it to Locks of Love so that a child suffering from alopecia areata can face what is an increasingly difficult world.

What kind of car do you drive?  Porsche 911 Cabriolet, but I work from home so more often than not it sits covered in the garage.

What did you get on your SAT’s?  Didn’t take the SATs in the midwest.  Took the ACTs after partying at Alpine Valley for a long weekend with the Grateful Dead.  I think I ended up with a 29 composite which was pretty good considering the situation but probably not enough to get a job at Google.  Oh well.

Favorite non*work*related and non*family related activity: I guess I’m pretty boring, really.  I spend most of my non-work time (and some of my work time) with my kids.  They’re two and five and I am really pretty into being a dad.  My little guy is learning to ride a scooter and play the drums (he’s two!) and my daughter is into bugs and biology (I have a background in science) so I do my best to walk away from the computer, turn off the iPhone, and be as good a dad as I’m able.

Tags: eric peterson web analytics demystified web analytics i
Posted in: Eric Peterson, Online Analytics by Corry Prohens
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Your analytics tool is not only installed and working—it’s optimized and delivering data the way you expected. All the reports are in place and you trust the numbers. One of your key report recipients even told you the interface was easy to understand. Yet you still feel like something’s not quite right. Sound familiar?

You’re not alone.

Here’s what often happens once analytics is “up and running”: First, everyone is excited that it’s working at all (those implementation experts we hired really helped out!). Then, folks are happy that their campaigns are running somewhere close to expectations; and that as new sites are added, the tags are in place and key data isn’t lost. Then another month rolls by and the reports are pretty much the same. Sounds good, right? Everybody goes about their business. And then in the third month—same thing. By the fourth month, people start losing interest. And by the sixth month, only the dedicated analysts are looking at the data.

In fact, by the sixth month, the dedicated analyst may be looking for something interesting to talk about. It may take them a long time to find it. And when they do find something interesting, its most likely going to be something that changed.

Here’s what’s wrong: repetitive data is boring. It’s boring because it isn’t useful.

What’s useful is news. News is about what changed. When something changes, it means something better is happening than before, or something worse is happening than before. And in either case, there’s usually something you should do about it. And isn’t that the whole point of analytics? To find news you can use?

How can you find that stuff quickly? Often it may be buried. Think about report number 87, day 16, line 21. That’s where the news is hidden that in Korea (let’s say), a local news program featured your product and there was a major spike in traffic to that product’s page. Did it make top 20? No. And therefore, you might never know about it.

Along comes a product called Dynamic Alert. It’s made by my company, Technology Leaders. Dynamic Alert is pretty simple. It watches all of your existing analytics reports—every data point for every day—and “alerts” you via email when any of those data points have exceeded its historical norm. Then you can look at a chart of the data point in Alert’s own interface, or go right to the analytics tool and look at the report itself.

Alert is not a “thresholding” tool. We’ve seen those: you decide which reports you want to be told about, and how high or how low they can go before you care. Thresholding tools are okay if you have the time to set them for each and every report you really care about (and as long as its only a few). But Alert specializes in digging deep all by itself and mining nuggets out of the data and showing them to you. And you pretty much don’t have to do anything to make that happen.

Okay, that was a sales pitch. But the industry really needs a way to cut through the information avalanche and give users a way to focus on what’s important—what’s actionable. What changed.

If a product like Dynamic Alert can help out, that’s a good thing. And if you end up using a great alerting tool, you may find yourself well ahead of your competitors who are still trying to find report number 87. 
—

Andrew Edwards is a founder and former boardmember of the Web Analytics Association. He is a founder and a Managing Partner at Technology Leaders, a New York City-based web analytics consulting company.

Posted in: Online Analytics by Andrew Edwards
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Hiring managers are the gatekeepers to the job you want.  They may write the job description, review your resume, pick the people who interview you, determine who to call back, and make the final yes or no decision.  The attributes hiring managers look for in a candidate are as diverse as the personalities of hiring managers themselves.  However, I think there are several common characteristics that a candidate can demonstrate to show a hiring manager that they are the right person to employ, such as:

• Desire to do the job.  A hiring manager wants to know that you desire to take on the challenge of the opportunity.  After all, while web analytics is an excellent field, it can be difficult, challenging work.  Building a data-driven culture is hard.  Tool configuration can be complex.  Tell them “I want to do this job.” Mean it, and be prepared to answer why…

• Passion for web analytics.  How do you denote passion about web analytics?  It comes out in how you express your aspirations for an analytics-focused career path, the zeal you convey in answers to interview questions, and even your extracurricular industry activities (do you belong to the Web Analytics Association?  Have you gone to a Web Analytics Wednesday?  What blogs do you read?).  Be passionate within context, not gushing.  Hiring managers I know like passion. 

• Relevant Experience.  Obviously, the track record you have building, implementing, participating in, and/or owning an analytics function will appeal to a hiring manager.  But if you don’t have any, and want an entry-level position, there’s no excuse for not getting some when free tools exist.  Deploy Google Analytics or Microsoft Ad Center Analytics on a site you build or a friend’s site (doing so shows passion and gives you experience).

• Subject matter expertise.  What’s the difference between a visitor and a visit?  What’s the relationship of entry pages to visits?  Are conversions measured on visits or visitors?  What’s the difference between the marketing concepts of frequency and recency, and what analytics measures could be used to denote them?  These are straightforward analytics questions that I’ve watched people applying for web analytics jobs not be able to answer correctly.

• Readiness to take ownership.  Demonstrate from past experience at other jobs that you know how to take ownership and drive forward a job function.

• Accountability.  Show to the hiring manager that “you do what you say” and have a history of getting the job done.  What projects have you stepped up to the plate on and delivered?   What organizational obstacles or technical impediments have you surmounted?  

• Ability to think critically.  Google, I hear, asks some wild questions in the interview process.  The famous “how many golf balls fit on a school bus?”  Is the answer relevant to the job?  No.  Rather it is a test of how many parameters and concepts you can apply to work towards and justify your answer as a proxy for your critical thinking ability.  Be prepared!

Of course, it goes without saying that all analytics jobs require some degree of specific talents and necessary experience unique to the opportunity, which isn’t as general as I’ve presented above.  They will vary by job, company, and hiring manager.  But if you can denote you are a candidate with all of the above attributes, you stand a leg up against the competition.  Good luck in your job search!

Posted in: Online Analytics by Judah Phillips
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