While clearly next week will be incredibly hectic with Emetrics, vendor announcements, and what is shaping up to be the largest Web Analytics Wednesday ever held, I wanted to quickly drop a note thanking Corry Prohens and the team at IQ Workforce for sponsoring the Web Analytics Demystified job board.

Corry is a great guy working in a pretty tough market and all indicators are that he really understands the needs of companies looking for web analytics talent. Corry is publishing industry survey data, featuring some of our real rock stars, and sharing the industry buzz. More importantly, Corry and his team are talking to some really talented people who are thinking about switching jobs.

The big advantage that Corry’s sponsorship brings to Web Analytics Demystified is a greater number of high-quality jobs being posted. We’ve been seeing this in our traffic volumes but having more good jobs brings in more great job seekers which is bringing in more great jobs!

Corry will be at Emetrics next week and is coming to the Web Analytics Wednesday event at Fluid Nightclub. If you run into him, take the time to chat him up and hear his perspective on what is indeed a topsy-turvy job market. Otherwise, pop over to the IQ Workforce web site and have a look at what Corry and his team have to offer.

The nice folks at CafePress are looking for a Director of Analytics and Planning and I have to say this is one of the best sounding jobs I have heard about in quite some time (and I hear about jobs all the time since it seems like every company that “gets it” is out there looking for web analytics talent these days.)

If you’re not familiar with CafePress you should check out their site. The long-story-short is that they are an extremely high-volume site with a B2B, a B2C, and a B2B2C business model all rolled into one. Books, t-shirts, buttons, fun stuff, you name it and CafePress is making it easy for individuals and businesses to make products on demand and sell them easily through their own sites and the CafePress Marketplace.

For some time now the company has been looking for a Director-level person who can report to the CFO to build out the company’s BI/CI capabilities. Part of the reason the search seems to be taking awhile (in my opinion) is that they’re looking for a certified data analytics superstar. Some of the listed requirements include:

• 7 to 10 years of experience in environments of excellence where modeling and analysis are fundamental to the business
• 5+ years of hands-on predictive modeling experience
• Have strong analytical experience coupled with direct experience with CRM systems and relational databases
• Demonstrated ability to hire, mentor and grow a team of business intelligence professionals
• Intellectual horsepower to comprehend the complex and synthesize into the simple

When I challenged the company on these requirements the response was brilliant: CafePress needs an extremely heavy hitter because this is an incredibly key position for them. The company is very successful but clearly recognizes that their long-term success depends not on just picking the low-hanging fruit but of getting deep into the data looking for opportunities that are otherwise painfully un-obvious.

I definitely wanted to help CafePress find someone for this position because, well, I wouldn’t be doing what I do today if it weren’t for their business model. Web Analytics Demystified, my first book recommended by industry giants like Bryan Eisenberg, Jim Sterne, and Avinash Kaushik, was originally published on demand through CafePress. In fact, I am absolutely confident in saying that if it weren’t for CafePress and the ability to publish a book w/o a publisher and w/o a substantial up-front financial commitment, I would never had published “Demystified” and would certainly not be writing this post today.

If you are a certified BI/CI superstar and are interested in being someone senior at CafePress please either email me or apply directly to the address listed in the job posting. The salary is very competitive for the Bay Area and it sounds like relocation is an option for the right candidate.  And, if you do apply, please mention to Summer and Doris that you read about this position at Web Analytics Demystified!

Check out this great sounding job at CafePress and apply today!

When companies post jobs on the Web Analytics Demystified job board, and they reach out asking if I’ll blog the position, I always ask if they can tell me a story about how web analytics has positively impacted the organization. Sometimes the answers I get are pretty vague, but every once and awhile I get an answer that makes me go “yeah, that’s it!” This was the case when I talked to Richard Calentine at Scripps Network about an opening they have for a Director of Web Analytics in Knoxville, TN.

Scripps produces television and companion sites like HGTV.com, Foodnetwork.com, DIYnetwork.com, HGTVpro.com, among others. They’ve been using Omniture for several years and are on the cusp of rolling out new site technology that will further improve their reporting. Richard is a bright guy, well experienced in measurement, and the company is looking for someone to manage the entire web analytics group.

The company is doing some cutting edge stuff on the Internet and are very strong on tracking Flash, video, and other Web 2.0 technologies (they partnered with Omniture early on for ActionSource tracking and have published a case study on the subject listed on this page.) They’re working with my former co-worker Jodi McDermott at ClearSpring to put (and measure) widgets on the site and all in all it sounds like an excellent place to work.

But I wanted to tell you about how analytics has impacted Scripps. I asked Richard “what makes Scripps a great place to be a web analyst?” and he said, “Well, management is really pretty good about listening to employees.” He expanded on this by telling me that he did some analysis on the site for one of their popular TV shows. He was then asked to present the analysis to the president of HG Networks, who ended up taking the recommendations derived from the analysis of visitor behavior and making changes to the actual television program.

Richard says the opportunity for this kind of thing is increasing as the TV folks increasingly recognize the value of the Internet channel. Users telling companies about their likes and dislikes, voting with their click-stream, and the companies using that information to improve their whole business. Kinda brings a tear to my eye.

Knoxville is a great place, and Richard sounds exactly like the kind of person you want on your team as a Director in this position.

Check out the position at Scripps Network on the Web Analytics Demystified job site and apply today.

A number of folks from around the world wrote me after downloading our recent research on web analytics salaries in the U.S. asking if we had comparable numbers for Europe, Canada, and the rest of the world. I don’t have anything formal, but I was able to use a very cool product from Tableau Software to analyze the raw data and produce the following:

Keep in mind that the non-U.S. salaries were translated into U.S. dollars (USD) by the respondents so there may be some error introduced during that process. “Rest of World” includes Asia/Pacific, Mexico, Middle East/Africa, South/Central America and Caribbean. I had to group “Rest of World” to get an appropriate sample size (around 30 responses) so this group is not particularly useful but I wanted to include it.

A few things pop out at me from this data:

• Canadians are, by and large, underpaid compared to their U.S. counterparts, with 95% of respondents indicating they are earning under $100,000 USD annually (see figure below)
• European salaries appear to be more-or-less similar to those of their U.S. counterparts, but this is a function of how I have grouped salary bands together (see figure below)
• There is a pronounced difference in salary distribution here in the American West, with only 59% of respondents reporting salaries under $100,000 USD and 34% earning between $100,001 USD and $150,000 USD annually

Regarding Canada and Europe, here is an expansion of the salary distribution at the lower end of the salary scale:

Here you can see better how respondents in Canada and Europe are paid in the lowest salary band (under $100,000 USD annually)  Canadians, 95% of whom report making less than $100,000 USD have a much less skewed distribution than European respondents (48% of whom report earning less than $50,000 USD annually.)

Both my son and I are sick today so I’ll hold off providing any more analysis but what do you think?  If you live in Canada or Europe, does this make sense to you?  Have you been reading job postings from here in the U.S. and wondering about how salaries being offered differ from those where you live?  Is there something about business or culture that explains this data, or do you think it’s simply a function of the relative awareness of the need for dedicated web analytics resources?

A lot has been written recently on the hot job market for web analytics positions. Perhaps because there is such a profound gap between the number of open positions and the number of experienced practitioners looking for jobs, web analytics salaries run pretty high. We collected a bunch of data on salaries earlier this year and our report on the subject is available now.

Some of the key insights:

• The average U.S. web analytics practitioner, across all job types (end-users, vendors, consultants, agencies) is reported to be earning $86,883 annually in salary and bonus
• Those of us working for vendors are the best paid, with the average vendor practitioner earning $105,192 in salary and bonus
• Unless you’re working for a very large company (5000+ employees), the difference in average salary is negligable
• There appear to be three “tenure groups” for salary, which may be as much a function that people get raises by switching jobs as they do waiting patiently for a substantial salary increase
• As we’ve published previously, companies relying on defined business processes are paying far better than those relying on employees or those lacking any formal approach towards web analytics
• There may be hope on the horizon for those companies actively seeking experienced practitioners

Because I’m trying to write shorter reports, I’ve also created a companion web page that will allow readers to examine all of the salary data we used to produce this report, segmented over 30 different ways. Hopefully everyone will find this data interesting, regardless of whether you’re looking to hire or looking for a raise. The report and companion data are available here:

• Web Analytics Salaries 2007: Insights and Observations (PDF format)
• Web Analytics Salary Data

I welcome your feedback on this research — your reaction to the data as well as your opinion about the value of our publishing this research on an annual basis. I have to admit I rather enjoy being able to publish this research so hopefully everyone out there is finding it valuable.

UPDATE: I am lame for forgetting to thank June Dershewitz, James Gardner, and Dylan Lewis for spending the time to review this report prior to its publication.  Thanks June, James, and Dylan!