Once in a while you get a good analyst who makes the transition to good observer and pundit. Thank heavens for those people because they are the core of a profession.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

While it’s nice to be smart *and* experienced enough to do bits of all those roles, I find it terribly frustrating that practically anybody who considers themselves to be either smart *or* experienced THINKS THEY CAN BE A GOOD WEB ANALYST TOO. The amount of second guessing and back seat driving in this job is phenomenal. For almost all of the seventeen roles you list, I can name somebody in my past who thought that because their job IS that role, they can do the job of web analytics too.

Sometimes, they have pushed us aside and tried to do it … usually failing in a semi-spectacular and public way.

I think good web analysts take the second guessing and back seat driving as a challenge to do great, insightful, efficient work because they know they have to stay visibly better than the know-it-alls. Good analysts love being in a bridge role.

Bad analysts

One day it will be discussing database architecture, another how to pull that information out (via SQL or something else), and then when I get back to my desk I jump into Google or Omniture only to find that I have to pull the data in a unique segmented way and then manipulate it in Excel and do an outboard look-up to join up cost data. While that is running/calculating I am trouble shooting with a developer to figure out why things are not tagged only to find out that they are tagged but for a mysterious reason they are not flowing through to the reporting.

I think the best thing to do is keep WA in the marketing area and keep reminding people that WA is not an IT function but a blend of many different areas. And, for me the most important, is that we are BUSINESS and MARKETING analysts that can provide insights to drive the organization forward.

After 8 years doing this web analytrics thing full time, working with dozens of businesses, I now see myself more of an “online business improver” than a web analyst per se.

I happen to use data, because I find it pretty darn efficient.

I, for one, have found it way better to pull hard on the trunk than the tail…

I suppose that if somebody was into analytics enough to be reading blogs, and if they are smart enough to recognize and listen to good advice, then the resulting improved resume might be a sign of potential!