Monthly Archives: May 2008

WAA Certified Web Analyst

The Education Committee of the Web Analytics Association is pleased to present the Knowledge Required for Certification document to the Web Analytics community for comment.  This document contains a detailed overview of what a candidate should know and be able to do to pass the Web Analytics Association Certification Test:

Knowledge Required for Certification Page

The document is available as a 37 page PDF or you can view it online as a series of web pages organized around core topics:

Site Optimization
Marketing Optimization
Analytical Business Culture

Feedback on this doc is welcomed on the WAA Blog post for the document; you do not have to be a WAA member to leave a comment.  An overview of the Certification Test project and projected timeline info are provided here.

We’re hoping to do a trial run of the Certification Test at the eMetrics Optimization Summit this fall in DC to uncover problems and issues, with actual testing to begin some time in 2009.

Many thanks to the more than 60 WAA member volunteers who worked on the various projects that have resulted in this document, including the development of the WAA / UBC Courses.  You don’t have to take the Courses to sit for the Certification Test, but all the Knowledge Required to pass the Certification Test is covered in the 4 WAA / UBC Courses.

Any comments or questions about the document itself (what is or is not included, for example) or the WAA Certification in general should be posted to the WAA blog rather than here.

Frankly, I’m relieved this document has finally been published!

Jacques Warren @ TDWI

Those of you interested in where web analytics is headed might check out the series of posts Jacques Warren in doing from TDWI (The Data Warehousing Institute) conference.  He’s in for a pound - an exhausting 6 days of high order brain-stuffing, much of it very technical in nature.

I believe most web analysts, if they didn’t come from DW / BI in the first place, would benefit tremendously from the kind of exposure Jacques is receiving at TDWI.  There is a larger scope sitting out there that WA fits into, and the DW / BI world has been around a lot longer.  Those folks have all the arrows in their backs already, and there is a lot to learn from them.

For example, the extent you believe what you see in web analytics reports actually happened, or whether you understand it is often an approximation of what happened, more like a model.  At least from a Marketing / Behavior standpoint.  A dose of reality like Jacques received can put this in perspective.

The very next question on the table is how do we get WA data into BI systems?  The answer, I believe, is Events.  There is really no point in stuffing page views and visits into a data warehouse; not enough value and won’t mean much to the broader Optimization picture. 

What the WA folks will have to do is decide what constitutes a significant Event (which could be a series of smaller actions) and then figure out how to mark that Event with a customer ID and get it into the warehouse. 

Some web analytics applications can already track Events (example), so that’s not the issue.  The question, as always, is what are you going to do with the Event?  Otherwise, it’s not worth tracking.  What’s needed is a Strategy for using high value Events first.

Otherwise, we’ll just end up with that many more junk reports.

At the same time, I think the more exciting prospect than what BI brings to WA is what web analysts can bring to BI, which continues to suffer from a focus on the technology instead of what they can do for the business.  While many WA folks understand the need to annotate and evangelize their work, many BI folks don’t see “being proactive” as part of their role.

I have to tell you, if you think WA and Optimizing web sites is exciting, wait until you get your hands on the entire business and start optimizing it.  Your first A/B test with a call center script, for example.  Fulfillment testing.  Packaging.  The list is endless.

That experience, my friends, is pure adrenaline.

I know some of you out there are already wearing both the WA and BI hats.  Got any killer Business Optimization stories (that you can tell?)

*** Not ON-line, IN-Line

IN-line Marketing, that is.

Sitting here at the junction of Technology and Marketing as I do is frankly a weird place to be.  I often feel it’s a lonely place because it seems like neither side really understands what is at the center, how the Corpus Callosum works, if you know what I mean.  

And how to optimize this junction.

I have been writing about these topics in discussion groups since 1999 and on my web site since 2000, based on the (admittedly rare) experience of Optimizing an Interactive Television Network over a 10 year span.  Here’s what we learned, in a nutshell: Interactive means Behavior; without Behavior, there is no Interaction, by definition.

So it follows that the single most important thing you can do as a Marketer is understand Behavior – or often more importantly, the lack of Behavior.  Not demographics, not impressions, not any of the traditional Marketing stuff. 

Behavior.  It’s the key to everything Interactive.

Web analytics folks for the most part get this idea now, in terms of the straight-up applications of it: It’s about Reducing Friction.  How Usability affects the success of Interactive Marketing, for example.  Optimizing Landing pages,  Etc.  The importance of Customer Experience in reducing downstream Friction, which magnifies the natural “Pull” of Interactive.

The challenge has been the Marketing side has stuck to many of the offline “Push” traditions, which don’t take into account the two-way nature of an Interactive Relationship.  The idea that people who are Interacting are trying to get something done.  The whole “Lean Forward versus Lean Back” argument, as we first talked about it back in the “old days”.

Relevance, which is forecast by Behavior.

Could it be the times are ‘a changing?  Could it be that the Marketers are coming around to the idea that the most important concept in Interactive Marketing is an “IN-line Experience” – an experience that facilitates or helps the visitor Accomplish Goals?  Like Search Marketing does, for example?

Check out these recent articles -  in an Advertising trade pub – to hear Marketers say this in their own words:

Form + Function (AdWeek)

Application Economics (AdWeek)

Want more?  Some related material:

What’s Next in Marketing + Advertising (slide show, a fast read)

The Great Leap Forward (blog)

Value Is the New Currency (ClickZ)

What do you think? 

Are we finally ready to move forward from the offline Push Marketing model into specialized approaches for Interactive?