As I have been doing more and more lately to help folks find and fill web analytics positions it seems like more emails like the following come in:

“I have just been promoted into a Marketing position and one of my primary responsibilities is web analytics. I do not have any formal education or experience with web analytics and I am expected to educate myself by any means necessary. After doing some research online, the first thing that I did was order your book, Web Analytics Demystified. I also picked up a copy of Waiting for Your Cat to Bark by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg.What kind of advice would you offer to help me outline a practical education process? I know reading, as much as I can, will be expected and I have already begun the process. What about web marketing conferences? What about online courses like UBC Award of Achievement in Web Analytics? Would my company receive a greater ROI by having me take online classes or sending me to conferences? My gut tells me, to buy more books and take online classes, before I start worrying about going to conferences.”

The advice I would offer to anyone in this position is to do the following:

1. Read the rest of my books, especially Web Site Measurement Hacks and The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators. The former is an excellent overview covering the breadth of things that web analytics professionals are tasked with doing and the latter is a deep-dive into the use of KPIs to help drive awareness of web data throughout the organization.
2. Take the UBC Web Analytics Award of Achievement classes, offered via the Web Analytics Association. All of the feedback I hear from people who have taken the classes is excellent. The folks they have teaching the courses are world-class and the content that I’ve seen is both fresh and well-written.
3. Join the Web Analytics Forum at Yahoo! Groups. While the conversation has a tendency to drift away towards the banal at times, the group is still the single largest and most active web analytics conversation on the planet.
4. Read some of the web analytics weblogs to keep up on current happenings. I personally like mine (go figure), but I also highly recommend Avinash Kaushik and Gary Angel.
5. By all means, go to the Emetrics Summit. Jim Sterne’s event is the single best place to meet the brightest minds, hear the best presentations, and meet the nicest people in the entire industry. There are upcoming events in London (March), Germany (April) and San Francisco (May).
6. Ask your vendor what classes, documentation, presentations, etc. they have that might help you better learn how the technology is best used to create value. You’d be surprised at how much helpful information the vendors have when you ask.

If you think I’m forgetting anything I’d love to hear your comments.

As I’m finally starting to catch up on things around here I noticed that Jason had recently published a Clickz article titled Becoming an Experienced, Invaluable Web Analyst in which proposes a few strategies for folks who want to get into web analytics. One of the things he proposes is to get a job working in an analytics position at an interactive agency, something I had been thinking about while reading the first job posted on my new job board.

This posting, advertising for a VP/Associate Director of Digital Media Analytics and Technology, sounds like a dream job for any fairly senior consultant with a heavy background in web analytics. Some of the qualifications the interactive agency is looking for include:

• Familiarity of view-through conversion technology and cookie-based tracking, rich media vendors as well as ad serving platforms and paid search engine marketing data sources
• Deep functional expertise in database marketing, integrated channel marketing (including online based channels such as websites, banners, email and search), analytical tools, techniques, and other infrastructure requirements
• In-depth experience in website analysis and knowledge of infrastructure requirements to deliver measurement solutions
• Strong understanding of blue chip internet business models and online processes, terminology, concepts and strategies

Clearly this isn’t the entry level position that Burby is talking about … but this person is going to join a Strategy and Analysis team of 150 people and have a substantial impact on his or her customers online business. And this person is going to need entry-level folks, folks who don’t have the same experiences necessary to fill this position, but people who:

• Are technology-savvy, but business-minded;
• Are good at writing, but great at presenting;
• Are enthusiastic about data, but recognize that not everyone else is;
• Are patient, but unwavering in their desire to improve the current situation;
• Are willing to pay their dues, but unwilling to generate great analysis that is ignored;
• Recognize that reports are a necessary evil, but know the real value is in the analysis

(Oh, and it doesn’t hurt to have read one or all of my books!)

There are tons of people like this out there–trust me, I am in communication with folks like this all the time, it’s just a matter of companies understanding how to recognize them when they apply for open positions given that they don’t have “8+ years experience professional statistical analysis and modeling experience, e.g., advanced web analytics, advanced survey design and
analysis, econometrics, psychonometrics, data mining, or clinical trial analysis/biostatistics” plus a PhD (preferred) on their resume but be willing to report to the Director of Analytics.

Holy crap, huh? It’ll be easier to find a headless chicken who still walks than it will to fill that position!

If you’re interested in working in web analytics and wondering how to get started, I’d love to hear from you. And if you have tried to break into the field to no avail, I’d also love to hear from you. Between my new job board and dozens of friends companies who are constantly looking for the kind of people I describe above, I might just be able to give you a hand.

Clint, who unfairly criticizes himself for missing my reference to his work a few weeks back but responds with a cool tachometer visualization in Excel that you can download and use for your own key performance indicators. One of Clint’s readers wisely points out that the tachometer doesn’t provide any historical context when presenting a value but I would counter that as a component of a well-designed dashboard a tachometer can be the visual element that some people need to really grok the data.

And that’s all you’re really trying to accomplish, aren’t you? Getting “the man” to grok the data and understand that “something” needs greater attention.

I would caution user’s of Clint’s work to carefully select which metrics they choose to throw in their tachometer. I like Clint’s use of acquisition mode (he called it “acquisition index” but I think I defined it as “acquisition mode” in Web Analytics Demystified) but I’m not so sure about Visitor Growth percentage and Percent Returning Visitors.

Regardless, great work Clint!

While I was on vacation Avinash was prolific as usual. Earlier this week he proposed something he calls a “Site Abandonment Rate” which he defines as: