This is the second installment in Niel’s two-part account of his experience at the eMetrics Optmization Summit in San Jose, California. If you haven’t read the first part see previous post or click here.
Take action, even in the face of data discrepancies!
It is clear to me that there are two distinct tracks in web analytics.
Technology – this track is concerned with instrumentation, data integrity, data integration, BI warehouses, cubes, data model development, etc. The web analytics space is filled with technologists, people who migrated out of the back office into the limelight when their data warehouses seemed to contain valuable information.
Building a great CRM database or implementing Omniture, while very challenging, does not mean you can make valuable insights based on the data, insights that help drive a business. People in this category typically don’t understand marketing or business well enough to deliver the expected value hence most companies are disappointed in the contribution their web analysts make to their businesses (The Forrester Wave™).
Adding tags to a site and integrating data has very little meaning if there is no interpretation that follows, no improvement that results from the analysis and recommendations on how to make things better.
It strikes me that so many “web analysts” believe they are ninjas – well I say prove it. Pass the Web Analytics Association’s Certified Web Analyst certification and then you can call yourself a ninja. But beware, if you are a technologist and have not made a proper migration over to the marketing and insight track, you will fail!
Marketing – the second track is concerned with the delivery of insight based on data. Predominantly this focuses more on the marketing side. There is a serious shortage of web analysts in this track, but when you find someone who is skilled you’ll know you’ve struck gold.
Understanding the data, being able to interpret it, and more importantly being able to extract real value from it is what these people are good at.
Ultimately, it boils down to taking action, doing something to make an improvement. This does not mean change the tagging, it means affecting the conversion rate. It does not mean implementing a new SQL query to extract more data for an integration that will highlight more discrepancies, it means changing the words and therefore the emotions with which you portray your company in your Twitter feed, or better yet, keeping quiet if you don’t have anything of value to say!
It’s a third world out there
The majority of analytics practitioners in South Africa are very far off international standards. But then so are a lot of international analysts. There seems to be an elite few, Jim Sterne, Jim Novo and Avinash Kaushik for example, that are leagues above the rest. They continuously push the boundaries and keep raising the bar, while others – especially those who are internal to large organisations and face heaps of red tape – struggle to follow.
At eMetrics I had a number of conversations with lead web analysts at Dell, HP, Bayer, KornFerry, Boeing, EA Games etc., and they are all very much still struggling with the technical track, not to mention with getting governance and executive sponsorship problems resolved. Making a real difference to the organisation seems to be the Holy Grail at the moment.
I was also amazed at the superficial improvements and insights that are being pawned off as real, lasting business value.
Companies like Salesforce feel they are making good progress by providing valuable data to their internal teams. But, at their admission, it took some serious technical programming to get the data sources to talk to each other and they are still not any clearer on how to get the valuable web analytics data into their CRM system. It all seems a bit shallow to me!
Where does this leave you?
Before feeling too disparaged, take comfort in the following. You need to know which problems you are addressing for your company on the web, not just on your website.
Is it about A/B testing? Is it about how non-clients feel about your brand? Is it about the perception your words on Twitter create? Define the problem first, whatever it may be.
Once you understand the issues you are trying to address, research the tools that can best help you find actionable data about these problems.
Now take action, make a change, measure the change and repeat. Following these three steps will ensure you are on the right track.
Aside from thought-provoking reflections on the state of the web analytics industry, our COO also brought home a distinguished award from the Web Analytics Association. Details coming soon!
May 14th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Good thoughts, Niel. It seems like the ratio of marketing-savvy web analysts to tech-savvy web analysts is easily 1:10, or do you think it’s even higher? I’d like to see that ratio closer to 1:3 soon. I’d love to have a few tech-savvy analysts helping me out on big data sets–they could teach me more about tech, and I could teach them more about marketing/business/design. How long to I have to wait for the shift?