Web Analytics as a Career Path

Web analytics as a career path is quite new and we find ourselves explaining the benefits of web analytics as a career path again and again while hiring people. So we thought it’s a good idea to write an article on just that.

Almost everyone agrees that a lot of ad spending is going to move online. People are purchasing a lot more things online. Companies almost always research online before finalizing a services vendor. And yes, the web is the first choice if you ever seek information. So organizations are going to pay a lot more attention to what’s happening online and they need smart people to give them direction.

You need people with different skills to build a successful online presence and it’s a person with web analytics skills who is best placed to lead a web team. It’s okay for the web team head not to have skills in areas like email marketing, search marketing, content writing, web design, etc. But it’s definitely not okay for an online manager not to have web analytics skills. He or she must absolutely know how to measure what’s happening on the website and take decisions based on these numbers.

What exactly is web analytics?

Web analytics is the service of analyzing traffic on a website with the intention of

• Understanding user behavior
• Evaluating if the website is meeting its objectives
• Figuring out the parameters that is influencing the user behavior
• Recommending changes to improve efficiency of the website

That’s some kind of a formal definition. Another way to understand web analytics is to look at the stages involved in a typical web analytics project.

• Understand the business objectives of the website
• Derive the metrics that would help measure if the website is meeting these objectives
• Configure the tool and build a framework to measure these metrics
• Measure, verify the numbers and establish the baseline
• Report the numbers along with analysis of those numbers
• Make recommendations based on numbers, as well as best practices and experience.

What are the skills required for a web analyst?

A web analyst should have an overall understanding of the web as well as the technology that is driving the web. Web analytics as a service is still evolving, and at this stage, it’s important for web analysts to understand the technology used. As the field evolves, we expect this dependency to come down.

Some of the specific skills that a web analyst should possess

1. Exposure or experience in various Internet marketing options like SEO, PPC, Email marketing, Banners, ebooks, etc.
2. Understanding of web technologies like HTML, Javascript, server-side scripting, web servers, log files, etc.
3. Advanced MS Excel skills (A lot of reporting still happens as Excel files)
4. High analytical skills to interpret data
5. Understanding of how web analytical tools interpret numbers
6. Experience in using web analytical tools like Site Catalyst, WebTrends, Nettracker, HitBox, ClickTracks, etc.
7. Exposure to website design, information architecture, page layout, etc.

What qualifications are required to become a web analyst?

Well, as long you have the right skill sets, it doesn’t matter what courses you have taken.

What is the career path?

Let us answer this in two parts – one by the nature of work and the other by type of organizations

Nature of work

There is a business side and a technical side to web analytics. The business part of web analytics would deal in stuff like:

1. Business objectives of the website
2. Interpreting the numbers
3. Coming up with suggestions for site optimization

The technical side of web analytics is all about things like:

1. The measurement technology – log files, page-tagging, etc.
2. Verifying the correctness of numbers
3. Choosing the right tool, configuring and automating them
4. Writing custom programs to achieve specific results

Type of organization

There are two potential roles a web analyst could take up:

1. Head the online marketing team of a company. It’s quite possible that the person who heads the online marketing team is not an expert at SEO or PPC or other such online marketing channels. But there is one skill that this person can’t do without – web analytics.
2. Head the web analytics team of a company like Nabler who would be helping the online marketing team of other companies.

What kind of remuneration can you expect?

The absolute figure would depend on the country you are in. With about 3-4 years experience, you can expect to get as much as a middle-level manager.

If web analytics services sound interesting to you please fill in our contact us form and we can get talking.