I got an email last night from Eric Enge who writes for Search Engine Watch. A conversation about web analytics that we had last month was recently posted. Eric asked me a variety of questions about Visual Sciences, making decisions based on data, uniquely identified users, content groups, some of the challenges associated with page tagging, and Avinash Kaushik’s 90/10 rule (which I disagree with due to the rule’s impracticality …)

If you have the time and inclination, give the interview a read, and thanks to Eric Enge for interviewing me.

Often times people congratulate me for being smart enough to have started Web Analytics Wednesday, an event that was recently referred to as “the world’s only global social networking event.” While I think it’s great that the idea has caught on, I cannot claim sole ownership of the idea. In fact, the idea was nothing more than a fantasy until one person I had never met put the wheels in motion in her own community and simply made it happen.

That person was June Dershewitz.

When I finally met June for the first time, she turned out to be much quieter than I expected. June had done something nobody really expected people to actually do, she had paid her own way to Emetrics in Santa Barbara, not an insignificant investment. Over coffee one morning she told me she looked at is as an investment in her future. Boy howdy was she right!

June is as close to a web analytics superstar as they come in my book. She has experience, she is eloquent, and she understands how all the pieces come together to paint the bigger picture. She is one of the few people I know available (occasionally) for contract work in San Francisco and I consider her very much to be part of the heart and soul of our web analytics community. (Shhhh, don’t tell her I said that, okay?)

Recently I launched a new premium job board on my site with the folks from Simply Hired (the Job*a*Matic) in part because of the number of inquiries I would get from companies looking to hire bright folks just like June. But it occurred to me, what better way to explain what someone like June is looking for than to ask her directly. Our conversation went as follows:

Eric T. Peterson: June, tell me a little bit about your experience to date doing web analytics?

June Dershewitz: I’ve got 8 years of experience in the field of web analytics. Back in 1999 I took a job as a web analyst for a startup. After that I took a more technical role in data warehousing (still web measurement data). Since 2004 I’ve held a series of contract assignments as a web analytics specialist.

Eric T. Peterson: What kind of contract work do you usually do? More technical stuff or more analysis or more reporting?

June Dershewitz: It depends on what the client needs. Sometimes I get to do system implementation work. On other occasions I focus more on analysis, scorecards, reporting.

Eric T. Peterson: A personal question: what do you really like to do in the web analytics field? Put another way, given all your talents, which excites you the most?

June Dershewitz: I like to help businesses make the best use of web measurement data. I enjoy making improvements to what gets collected and how it gets interpreted and used within the company.

Eric T. Peterson: Can you share, without naming the company, some of the successes you’ve been or been a part of?

June Dershewitz: At one company, I was able to build out their existing web analytics system into something that’s now a useful and trustworthy source of information for a large audience. I felt like it was a big achievement to spread the word and help people see the business value in web activity data.

Eric T. Peterson: Excellent! No simple feat to drive widespread adoption of web analytics through a company.

New line of questions: What do you look for most in a job posting on the Internet (other than contract work and your local geography)?

June Dershewitz: As I scan a list of job postings, I look first at the job title and the company name. Job title usually gives me some clues about responsibilities and compensation. The company (and its industry) interest me as an analyst because I enjoy the prospect of a new and challenging set of data.

If I get that far I’ll read the whole job description and try to get a better sense of what the day-to-day work would actually involve, what tools they’re using (or hope to use), and if my skills match with what they’re looking for.

Eric T. Peterson: When you apply for a job, roughly what percentage of the time are you invited in for an interview? Given eight years of experience I’m thinking “often” but what would you say?

June Dershewitz: These days I post my resume on a couple of job boards and let interested parties contact me; I get a fair number of responses this way. I also monitor job postings and I’ll submit an application if I feel that I’ve found an especially good match. I’ve actually found four gigs in a row through postings where I’ve taken the initiative to apply.

Eric T. Peterson: Would you say it’s a “sellers” market for web analytics talent today? Perhaps more so than past years?

June Dershewitz: Definitely! As a job-seeker, it’s great to see so many open positions out there.

Eric T. Peterson: When you’re in the interview process, what impresses you most about a company vis-a-vis web analytics?

I really appreciate enthusiasm for the subject matter. It really grabs my attention when the prospective employer says, “We’ve got bucket-loads of web data and we could be making such better use of it! We could really use someone with your skills to help us figure out what’s interesting and what’s important and what we should be using to drive business decisions.”

To me that means there’s a challenge to be had.

Eric T. Peterson: What, in your opinion, are the best things someone relatively new to the field can do to prepare for a career in web analytics?

June Dershewitz: If the analyst track is your objective, it’s important to convince your prospective employer that you’d make a great analyst. Also, I’d recommend that you keep up with current issues in the field, read books, read blogs, talk to other analysts.

Show that you’ve got the curiosity it takes to enjoy this line of work

Eric T. Peterson: Okay, last few questions: In major markets, what do you think experienced web analytics professionals are worth from a salary perspective? I know you do more contract work but I wanted to see if you could/would share ballpark numbers that you’re hearing from folks?

June Dershewitz: I sometimes reference recruiting agency job postings where they’ve got salaries listed.

Eric T. Peterson: Cool. So are you looking for contract work now? If so, how can my readers get in touch with you and what should they know in advance?

June Dershewitz: I’m booked solid through the end of April, but I may be up for new opportunities after that. I also welcome communication from other veteran web analysts who’ve chosen to take the contract route. Find me on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/jdersh), send me an email (june.dershewitz@gmail.com), or say hi at Emetrics in San Francisco.

Eric T. Peterson: June, you’re awesome! Thanks for spending some time with me today. I’d wish you luck out there but knowing you, you don’t need luck.

Thanks again!

June Dershewitz: And thank you, Eric! I appreciate that job board you’ve put together.

It’s great to know that someone with June’s skills is reading my job board. In fact, she bugged me to set up an RSS feed for job postings which I quickly put together, just for June. If you’re looking for great jobs in web analytics, you might be interested in the feed as well:

http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/job_feed.asp

Some interesting things I saw in the blogosphere the last few days:

• Robbin Steif interviewed me on behalf of the American Marketing Association for whom I’m doing a free webinar on web analytics in early March. Robbin always asks really good questions but sometimes my answers get lost in translation.
• Eric Enge has a really good interview with Jim Sterne. Jim is such a great leader of our industry and Eric Enge is really knocking ‘em down interviewing Brett Crosby, Dennis Mortenson (IndexTools), and Jim.
• Ian Thomas is busy telling us what Microsoft Gatineau will be without actually saying the words. Expect to see something outcome focused that is easy to use that provides people in a May/June timeline. Or, if you’re anxious to figure Gatineau out now, just grab the JavaScript code out of Ian’s blog and have a look-see.
• My very bright friend Ian Houston is starting a series breaking down the web analytics data model by focusing on the canonical data unit, the “event”. WARNING: Eat your Wheaties before you read Ian Houston. Ian makes perfectly logical statements like “refining the definition of Events to the concept of an Event Super Class where the sub-dimensions by type are not children of the Events dimensions but rather sub-classes of the Events class that inherit their properties and relations within the data model from the Super Class.”
• There are new jobs posted in my premium job board from PayPal, Stratigent, Cox Newspapers, Staples, and the World Wrestling Entertainment group.

Congrats to the Colts on yesterday’s Super Bowl win. I’m from outside of Chicago so my loyalties lie elsewhere but it’s nice to not see the freaking Patriots in the big game for a change.

I’ve never met Lee Sherman, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Global Solutions at AvenueA/Razorfish but I had a chance to chat with him recently about the AvenueA document “Actionable Analytics” that the company recently began distributing. Gary Angel’s eloquent rant on the “myth of actionability” aside, I found that I agreed with much of what Lee had to say in his document.

I say “much” but not all, especially not his comments about web analytics applications not being able to track advertising from end-to-end, nor his comments about web analytics applications not being good at tracking Rich Internet Applications. To his credit, Lee admitted that he had not had a very good look at Visual Site and Platform 4, but Seattle is only a short drive from Portland so hopefully I can fix that before long.

Some of the things that really interested me in the document were Lee’s discussion of RIAs. We talked about his assertion that “rich internet applications are the best vehicle to engage users online and build brand loyalty,” an assertion that was made in a PPT that AvenueA uses to support the document. I was really interested in this statement, especially the use of the word “best” since I’ve never seen data to confirm a broad statement like that, and also the use of the word “engage” since I’m really into figuring out how companies will measure engagement online.

Lee admitted that “best” was perhaps too assertive of a term but that anecdotally, in AvenueA tests, in almost every case the RIA version of a process outperforms the HTML version of the process. When I asked about the performance criteria, Lee said they were looking for differences in subsequent perception of brand, intent to purchase, and actual transactions. Clearly, Lee is from Avinash’s school of the trinity and believes in asking visitors directly to augment observed behavioral data.

We then talked about how RIA’s should be measured, a conversation I hoped to promote in the Web 2.0 Measurement Working Group. Lee said he felt that that are no standards for RIA measurement yet and that most companies he works with are more worried about what they can measure than what they should measure. He believes we’re more likely to see “custom” measures, perhaps supplemented by online surveys designed to gather attitudinal data after visitors interact with RIAs.

Not a bad idea, really, but I sure would feel better if we could just agree on a handful of easily understood measurements for success to apply to RIAs. Wouldn’t you?

Regarding Lee’s definition of “engagement”, he cited a few measurements that I haven’t really heard from anyone other than AvenueA: Page IQ and scrolling analysis. The former is basically the percentage of visitors interacting with a page at all (i.e., not closing the browser, not clicking the back button) and the latter is an assessment of visitor’s scrolling down a page. Both measures are clearly page-centric, not that that is bad, but neither seem to easily lend themselves to the concept of visitor engagement.

All-in-all the report is worth a read if you haven’t already seen it. You have to send Avenue A some personal information to get the download but hey, few good things in life are truly free. You can request the download here.

Thanks to Lee for taking the time to chat with me and to David Deal for setting up the call.

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Megan Burns at Forrester Research. Megan covers, among other things, web analytics. Despite her being with Forrester for just about a year now, she is one of the leading analysts thinking about how companies actually deploy and use web analytics technology.

Megan hit the ground running, filling some pretty big shoes, and has published nearly a half-dozen reports directly relevant to the web analytics market. I don’t normally interview people in my weblog but when Forrester analysts talk, people listen. The transcript of our conversation follows:

Eric T. Peterson: First question: You’ve been in the job at Forrester Research for just over a year now. What would you say the biggest thing you’ve learned about the web analytics industry is so far?

Megan Burns: There are probably two things that stand out. First, the fact that measuring a Web sites is tougher than many people think.

There’s so much data to chose from, and all of it’s imperfect. Plus there are multiple ways to solve most measurement problems. Deciding which approach to take isn’t always straightforward and for many people measurement is just one part of their job, so even though they’d like to dedicate time to thinking about the best way to leverage all the data they could be collecting, they have to make some tough priority calls.

But the second thing I’ve learned is that many people believe very passionately in the power of data, and they’re committed to figuring out the tough problems.

Eric T. Peterson: So on one side of the coin you have the complexity of measurement as a function of expertise, approach, and time, and on the other side of the coin a strong desire to make it work.

Megan Burns: Absolutely.

Eric T. Peterson: So the folks you talk to who are being successful with web analytics, is there something that sets them apart? Something quantifiable?

Megan Burns: I’m not sure if it’s quantifiable, but there’s an understanding that metrics are a means to an end not an end unto themselves. They constantly think about what they’re trying to do, and how data can act as a tool to help them do it.

Eric T. Peterson: In your experience, does success with analytics improve with company size or does it appear to be tied to motivation?

Megan Burns: I haven’t seen a correlation to company size, but I haven’t looked at that relationship specifically.

I don’t think company size is a factor, though. I think it has more to do with attitude and approach to the problem. Often it’s about teaching people in the company about data and what it can do for them so that they change the way they make decisions. Any time you’re dealing with people and change it takes a good dose of both patience and time.

Eric T. Peterson: You and I have talked in the past about the importance of “process” to web analytics. You commented once that “people think process is a four letter word” which made me laugh and wince at the same time.

First, can you describe your position on the need for process in web analytics? And second, do you have any advice to help companies get past their fear of the “P” word?

Megan Burns: Sure. I think process is important in any discipline as a way to help people make sure the right things get done by the right people at the right time. We’re all trying to do so much these days, it helps to have a process that reminds us what needs to get done. It also sets clear lines within the organization as to what each person or group is responsible for and who they are dependent on. Web analytics is no different.

People who design sites need to understand that others in the business have to be able to measure the impact and success of those sites. They need to factor measurement requirements in to the process. But they have many other people asking them to build in other requirements, so it helps to have a checklist to make sure you’ve thought about all the different types of requirements you need to capture before you build something. That checklist is part of the process.

But it’s important to remember that the “Web analytics process” is really a sub-process of the larger eBusiness process. That data is needed by certain people in the firm at certain points in their decision making cycle. If the two aren’t integrated properly, things break down. People don’t get the data they need when they need it.

Changing people’s perceptions of process can be tough, depending on their experience with it. But I think the most important thing to remember is that process != bureaucracy.

When the only thing people are trying to do is check off boxes on the process so they’re “in compliance”, you’ve totally missed the point. It needs to be detailed enough that it’s useful and insures key steps don’t get missed, but it shouldn’t impose unnecessary restrictions or red tape. That’s a very fine line — one that’s not easy to get right.

Eric T. Peterson: So tell me the truth and don’t hold back … in my presentation at Emetrics where I advised our community to go so far as to draw business process diagrams for how web analytics integrates into the bigger picture … good idea or a superfulous waste of time?

Megan Burns: Somewhere in between. I think people responsible for analytics should start by looking at the larger site design/interactive marketing process (which probably isn’t written down anywhere, by the way ) and see where and when the data needs arise. Then look at where they need to be involved (i.e. requirments, development) in order to get what they need to meet those requirements. To me, measurement is a section in the business and technical requirements documents that must always be filled out. Even if it just says “No Impact” or “No new requirements”. But at least that way you know someone thought about what new data might be needed, or what code might have to change to maintain existing measurement.

Metrics need to be considered in the project planning process, like any other feature of the site. How long will it take to define requirements for this? To implement and test them? The process is no different, but it’s not something customers use so often it gets missed.

Or skipped intentionally to save time. But then it takes twice as long to add in after the fact, so you didn’t really save any time.

Eric T. Peterson: Excellent points, all.

You have a background in software development process, don’t you?

Megan Burns: Yes, I do.

Eric T. Peterson: Okay, new direction here: You’ve written a ton on web analytics since joining Forrester Research. I especially enjoyed your work on the ROI of dedicated headcount for analysis. What was the overall response to that report?

Megan Burns: The response was extremely positive. So many people I talk to tell me that resources are their biggest obstacle to using and interpreting the Web analytics data they’re collecting. The report helped them explain to senior management what analysts do and how they add value to the organization.

In a quantitative way, that is.

Eric T. Peterson: When companies ask you where to find experienced web analytics talent, what kind of advice do you give?

Megan Burns: That’s a tough question, because experienced Web analytics talent is so hard to find these days. My advice is usually to engage professional services consultants from either their vendor or an independent consulting firm to act as mentors for existing staff.

If they really want to hire, I suggest networking, networking, networking.

This is such an active community with the Yahoo group, blogs, Web Analytics Wednesdays … there are plenty of ways to meet others who might be able to lead them to a qualified candidate.

Eric T. Peterson: We’re just about out of time and I want to thank you for being so generous in allowing me to interview you.

Megan Burns: Quite welcome. Glad we could finally arrange it.

Eric T. Peterson: Last few questions … what book or books are currently on your nightstand?

Megan Burns: There are so many books … Information Dashboard Design, by Stephen Few is one.

Eric T. Peterson: What music would we find on your iPod?

Megan Burns: My iPod’s full of all sorts of music. Everything from rock to oldies to show tunes.

Eric T. Peterson: Who are some of your favorite bloggers?

Megan Burns: I wish I had time to read as many blogs as I’d like to.

I try to keep up regularly with Charlene Li and the other Forrester blogs, you, Avinash, and Om Malik. A few others, too. It also depends on what I’m working on.

Eric T. Peterson: Megan thanks very much for taking the time to chat with me today. I hope to see you in San Francisco in May and look forward to your upcoming research on Rich Internet Applications.

Megan Burns: You’re quite welcome. Take care, and I’ll see you in CA (if not sooner).