Jason Burby has recently written about whether web analysts are accountable for the results that they publish.
Now in terms of accountabilities how would that be measured against any personal development program.
- results should be published on time and to a high degree of accuracy
- results should be actionable and provide sufficient insight for the marketing managers to assess their campaigns and learn from mistakes
How is this quantifiable (and may I say that these are my initial thoughts and do not reflect JB’s opinions or anything in this article). I have worries about objectives this open. If management were to fall out with the web analysts then there is too much room for maneuver which will negatively affect their end of year rating (and therefore their bonus).
If web analysts are going to be answering serious questions then they need to be given the sufficient “clot” (English slang term for power) to carry things forward. The problems I perceive with web analytics is
- it is little understood by management
- management tend to like accurate figures and not estimations
- difficult for management to quantify the initial outlay of a web analytics tool (especially in financial services)
- questions are raised to targeting and the methodology. Can a team be targeted on how many page views?
Would an incentive scheme work for the analysts? If so then could questions be raised of how their service impacts the sale of products and services and would this piss off the marketing managers?
I would reward them appropriately whether in salary or in training (as there are always new tools that may/may not add value – some usability tools only cost a few hundred pounds). This would give the Web Analysts a purpose of been as nobody want to be the production line on a report run…..
Jason lists the following as criteria in the performance development plan of a web analyst:
- Success metrics are defined for every Web initiative.
- All success metrics are monetized to understand the impact on the business.
- Impact of all initiatives are forecast upfront.
- Initiatives are prioritized based on the greatest forecasted impact to the business.
- All initiatives are measured post-launch to determine impact.
- Upon initiative launch, an ongoing testing plan to optimize new content is prepared and in place.
- All team members are reviewed and bonuses are based on individual performance metrics tied to specific site performance measurements.
Now these seem perfectly reasonable objectives for a web analyst. However, it all comes down to the companies (recruitment and employers) still not knowing what a web analyst role actually is. I’ve held numerous conversations with recruitment firms and companies saying that their requirements for a web analyst should not include C#, web designing experience etc.
I had the specification for one role which listed the following as requirements:
Customer Experience
Web Analyst
Project Manager
OLAP Developer
C# Developer
VBA Experience
Excel
Now I won’t quote the salary but, it certainly wasn’t enough – mainly because there are not enough hours in the day to do all that work!!!
Then you end up with the need for web analysts but, no idea of what they are supposed to do….. a good thing? Perhaps yes and perhaps no…. means we’re writing our own job description and under pressure to deliver the unknown.
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The good thing is that this is a sign that management (even c-level) are starting to pay attention to the web metrics and are asking more and more questions – e.g. why are people dropping out in the application process? Why is the contact us page getting more visits (could we minimize this if we improve the site design?).
This “recognition” from c-level is thanks to the hard work of those ecommerce managers and web analyst who are saying “pay attention to us, we can deliver results cheaper than other channels”.