Analytical skills at the core of Web Analyst’s role
As a new discipline we are still in the process of defining what constitutes the skills set for web analytics practitioners (web analysts).
It’s a hot topic. An article on web analyst skills, written nearly three years ago, still ranks second most popular on our website. Our clients frequently request help from us in writing job descriptions for their web analysts.
Then we have the web analytics is hard argument on the other side. Yes the interpretation of the online data could be hard.
But is the real issue web analytics or lack of skills in web analytics.
Let’s face it. In most organisations, the person in charge of looking at web analytics data is not qualified enough. They are often members of the web team, but they lack formal training in data analytics.
What skills does a web analyst need? Primarily, analytical skills.
Honing these skills should be a top priority, so that we can collectively raise the bar of web analytics and achieve greater penetration and efficacy within business.
It’s why all of the recent recruits at Bienalto come from a traditional analytics background. Our new recruits quickly pick up the online measurement and analytics terminology. They learn the secondary web analyst skills, such as user experience design and online marketing, to diagnose user experience issues and assess the traffic quality. And they become effective very quickly.
Once you’ve got the skills set right, the next question is where to house them within the organisational structure? This is another frequent point of discussion with our clients.
Of course, there is no right answer to this question – it changes depending on the structure and function of the organisation. However, one principal stands still: your web analyst must be able to collaborate with offline analytics and business intelligence teams.
Why? We are moving more and more towards multi-channel environments, so web data will be analysed hand-in-hand with traditional analytics and business intelligence.
For the budding web analysts out there, if you crave for more training, consider building on your analytical skills first.
For the businesses out there looking to recruit for the position of a web analyst, go further afield and recruit from traditional data and analytics backgrounds. Design a ‘boot camp’ orientation program to get them trained in the online environment, and then sit back and watch them deliver results.
Hi
I cant agree more. I am master in science of business administration and management science and trained in mathematical analysis. I see many web educated people who don’t know how to analyze data and optimize from it, but teammembers with mathematical and analytic skills are the top proffesionals in relation to web analytic.
Regards,
Jacob
I find this interesting, because if I read this post I would think “yeah, obviously, being good at analyzing is a top priority if you want to be a web analyst”. However, it seems that lots of respected people in the field do not necessarily agree. I’m not sure who said this (I think Avinash?), but some people (who do know their stuff) seem to be of the opinion that being a marketer is more important than being good with numbers/good at analysis.
I think it’s probably hard to say and both those skills are simply very important, and you can’t do without either one…and as we can’t really measure such skills we take into account how rare they are. So is it really more important to be good at analyzing than it is to be good at marketing? I think one needs a combination of both skills, but perhaps people who have good analytical thinking ability might be more rare than those who are good at marketing?
umm now that Im reading this again I have to realize I wouldn’t really understand this myself, if I hadn’t typed it lol:
What I was trying to say is this:
Is having great analytical ability really more “important” than being great at marketing for this job? How would we measure “important”? When we’re thinking about which one is more important, we’re probably measuring it (in a subconscious way) by looking at how rare it is in people.
I’ve really been wondering about this, because I’ve been thinking that you have to be great at analyzing..seeing patterns/nuances…analyzing the numbers and coming up with insights, but Ive always thought that it comes down mostly to “analytical ability”, which most people don’t seem to have.
On the other hand a few very respected voices in this field have been talking about it as if it was a lot more about marketing than it is about analytics..which has confused me a bit