The Web Analytics Elephant
There is an Indian parable about some blind men all trying to describe an elephant. Each of them focused on one aspect of the elephant and never understood the entire elephant for what it really was.
This story reminds me of arguments about what web analytics is and the role of the web analyst.
There are many voices out there describing web analytics, and yet way too often what is being described is only one aspect of the overall art and science of winning in business by digital means.
There are some that say that web analytics is only an extension of Business Intelligence, and the future is all BI.
There are some that say that web analytics is all about marketing channel optimization with most emphasis on acquisition channels
There are some that say that web analytics is all about site experience and conversion optimization.
All of these are right to a certain extent.
Way back at the beginning of web analytics there wasn’t any consensus about what a web analyst is or does. It was just plucky intelligent people working hard to advance a nascent profession within the context of the organizations they worked in. Truthfully, there is very little consensus today. BUT here are some activities that you might find a web analytics professional engaged in:
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Marketing campaign management
Brand marketing
Marketing channel management
Marketing business intelligence
Web reporting
Web program management
Web project management
Web front-end and back-end programming and development
Data base administration
Data mining
Usability and user experience management
Social media
Public relations
Market and consumer research
Finance
Economics
Actuarial sciences
and on and on and on….
Here’s the thing. Most of these are stand alone professions on their own, we web analysts just ended up doing them in a web context for our organizations or clients because we understood one fundamental element critical to online success, web data.
I don’t know about you, but I have at many times in my web analytics career felt like a jack of all trades and master of none. What I have become by necessity is a multi-disciplinary marketer with a strong emphasis on using data for making decisions. I still call myself a web analyst and refer to my industry as web analytics but truth be told I am not those things. I just use web data and my understanding of the pertinent metrics to drive forward strategies in some of the above disciplines.
And so, we as an industry struggle with the definition of what we are and what we are going to become. It is delightful to see more and more professionals working on this problem, but sad too in that what most of them are missing is the most important; there is no elephant in the room.
A special thanks to Chris Grant for supplying some additional gray matter for this post.
Comments
Comment from TheCakeScraps
Time September 3, 2010 at 9:08 am
I think you make a few great points Michael. For me, the “jack of all trades and master of none” really resonated as I constantly find myself in any number of the job functions you mentioned.
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.
Comment from Chris Grant
Time September 7, 2010 at 6:57 pm
If there’s no elephant in the room after all, what are all those Indian guys doing standing around?
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
Comment from Chris Grant
Time September 7, 2010 at 7:06 pm
Bad analysts … don’t see or maybe just don’t like these challenges. They move on to become industry observers, critics, executives at analytics vendor companies …
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.
Comment from Evan LaPointe
Time December 17, 2010 at 4:59 pm
If BI is the future of web analytics, I’m going to go buy some rope, a shotgun, some duct tape to seal my garage door shut, and a pharmacy, just to be sure it works.
Comment from Jacques Warren
Time September 2, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Great post!
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…