Another eMetrics (Toronto) has passed and I have to say this:Â Web Analysts and Marketers proved once again they are up to the task of continuously improving the Productivity of their efforts!
At the same time, (and as I expressed during the sessions on the analytical culture), I fear that many in the web analyst community are becoming very “inwardly focused”. They tend to talk more among themselves about the pennies they are making / saving while tripping over the dollars that are right there to be had if they reached out to other analytical disciplines in the company or measurement community.
Many among us knew this was a danger from our BI experiences. If all you ever do is talk to each other about new shiny objects, your contribution to the business effort can suffer. BI struggles every day with this weight, the challenge of being labeled “really smart but irrelevant”. I don’t think we want this to happen to WA.
So with this backdrop, some of the conversations I heard at eMetrics Toronto about certain measurement practices were disturbing. For example, it seems very few people are measuring their customer contact efforts properly, and in time this lack of analytical rigor is going to damage the WA effort for all practitioners.