Many companies have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in web analytics tools and talent, and still find themselves frustrated by a lack of demonstrable value — a lack of real, calculable return on that investment.

It’s not a good situation to be in.  It’s bad personally for the managers and executives who have overseen the investment.  It’s bad for the vendors who take the blame for providing no value.  And it’s bad for the business which, unless corrective action is taken, will continue to throw good money after bad.

What to Do?

Typically, the response to this situation is to blame the vendor and put out an RFP.  It’s a natural response.  But is it the right response?  Most of the time, it isn’t.  The problems preventing you from getting value with your current vendor likely stem from unclear roles and responsibilities in the organization, a lack of defined and well-understood processes, and out-of-date or missing business rules for data collection and reporting.

These problems will still exist if you simply go to RFP, and will cause you not to get value from a new vendor.  Even if one of your problems is a poor implementation or a poor fit of vendor to business requirements, invariably issues of process, roles and responsibilities, and business rules (governance, essentially) lie at the heart of how you get to the point where your implementation fails to suit your need.

What, then, is the right response?  When a business is underperforming, do the owners demand that you rip out your accounting technology and replace it?  No.  They usually initiate a turnaround process — a process that involves bringing in experts to assess the current situation and develop a plan to get the operation back on track and providing value to the owners.

Turn it Around

That’s also the appropriate response to an underperforming web analytics investment — a web analytics turnaround.  And that’s why Greater Returns is now offering Web Analytics Turnaround as a service offering.  It makes much more sense to evaluate your overall strengths and weaknesses with web analytics before deciding on a course of action.  Are your problems with process?  People? The technology?  If your problems are the technology, is it a shortcoming of the technology or a shortcoming of your process for governing management of that technology?

Once you understand where your true problems with web analytics lie it becomes easy to develop a prioritized plan for turning around your web analytics operation.  You may well decide that you need to rip out your vendor and start over — but you should never take that course of action based merely on an assumption.  You’ll likely find yourself in the same place 12 months from now.

Check out the Web Analytics Turnaround offering here.

I wonder if he’s been reading my blog?

Work Experience

So, what have these people been doing if they’re not already web analysts? As noted previously, any job that requires crating a simple, digestible story from disparate, complex sources of information or data is good preparation for a web analyst career. I have found that individuals with experience in crafting or analyzing online user experiences bring powerful insight to the role. At the end of the day, the core function of the web analyst is to synthesize reams of complex data into succinct ideas and clearly actionable guidance to the business. Analysts with a background in usercenteredd design or usability bring a keen understanding of the user experience issues that underlie the data, and as such are rich sources of insight into how the issues uncovered in the data can be fixed.

The good analysts I have come across have work experience in the following roles:

• Marketing Analyst
• Database Marketing
• Direct Response Marketing
• User Experience Designer / Architect
• Information Architect
• Usability Specialist
• Web Producer

Lastly, look for people who you think would also be good marketeers. Not marketers, but marketeers — candidates who truly empathize with the people in the market, and are interested in how to win their loyalty.

Education

In my experience, it’s not so much important what the education of the analyst is, but rather that they are educated. I’m a firm believer that a baccalaureate is required for an analyst, or almost any professional careePossessionsion of a degree illustrates a level of commitment and discipline that is required for success in any career. More than that, though, I’ve never come across a good writer without a bachelor’s degree. College, it turns out, is good at developing core skills even when you end up working in areas seemingly unrelated to your studies. Of course, there are lots of baccalaureates who can’t write, so don’t equate the degree with writing skill.

That said, I have had particularly good experiences with analysts who have degrees in psychology or sociology. People who have studied people tend to have empathy for them, and as such make good web analysts. Other educational backgrounds I’ve come across in successful analysts include:

• Business
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Liberal Arts
• Math / Statistics

Series Conclusion

You’ll note a conspicuous absence of statistics as a skill set in what I’ve presented here. I personally believe that statistics is not required prior to becoming a web analyst. What is required is an ability to manipulate numbers and data to uncover the story and communicate it. But I believe it is more important that the analyst have an intuitive understanding of the people behind the data, because a single data set can tell many stories, not all of them valid. Uncovering the right story means having empathy, which allows you to fill in what the data can’t tell you — why people are behaving as they are. If you hire for the right mindset, any missing technical skills — basic statistics, Excel, data mining, web analytics tools — can be trained.

Of course it helps if the person doing the hiring is a skilled analyst who can mentor the up-and-comers. If the person doing the hiring is not a skilled analyst, consider sending the up-and-comers through the University of British Columbia’s certificate program.

I hope this series has helped you think a little bit differently about how to hire a web analyst. If you’ve been looking for analysts, you know that they’re hard to find. In the case of web analytics, it’s a luxury when you can hire someone who has the experience you’re looking for. In times like these, when the demand is high, and the supply short, you have to be willing to look at ways to groom smart people into the role.

If you’ve faced this challenge, let me know how you approached it, and what the outcomes have been. I’m eager to hear from you.

Today’s topic is personality. I’ve observed three personalities in the quality analysts I’ve known:

1. The Critic
2. The Explorer
3. The Expert

In reality, pieces of each personality are in everyone I’ve ever hired or recommended for hire as an analyst, and each is a critical component of a successful individual. I’ve found that, in a given individual, one personality tends to dominate.

The Critic

The Critic personality is someone who is generally driven to question what is presented as “truth”, “fact”, or “good”. They find reward in uncovering “things that aren’t right”, creating an understanding of what they’ve uncovered, and receiving recognition that they’ve uncovered something valuable. Of course, there is a pitfall to this personality. As with all strengths, this personality taken too far can become a weakness. You don’t really want your analysts to go to your marketers and tell them point-blank that their work is awful. Your management challenge with this personality will be to teach them to soften the message to the business; to teach them that it’s just as important to show people what’s working as it s to show them what isn’t working.

The good news is that I’ve found that this personality is generally well educated, well spoken, and able to distill complex ideas into simple truths, as that is the nature of the Critic. They also tend to be good writers and communicators.

The Explorer

The Explorer personality is curious and driven to understand, but doesn’t have the potentially negative “critical” outlook of the Critic personality. They find reward simply from the process of exploring the depths of possibility in the data, and also from “driving good results” for the business. This personality will tend get frustrated if the business doesn’t know how to put him or her to good use, but is an extremely valuable contributor when they are used appropriately. As with all personalities, there is a pitfall. The urge to explore has to be put aside at some point in order to finish the analysis, create the story, and drive the actions necessary to create positive impact on the business. Your management challenge with this personality will be to let them explore to the extent required for the business, and to help them develop the discipline required to have an end in sight and work toward that end.

This personality doesn’t have the strong correlation to the simplifying mind set that I’ve found in the Critic. You’ll need to watch for that.

The Expert

The Expert personality seeks to be seen as an expert in all that they chose to take on. They receive reward from recognition of their expertise in any number of subjects. This personality makes an excellent consultant, and you’ll often find them in a consulting role. This is a confident personality, able to gain trust from their audience even when they don’t have all the answers. It’s a good personality to have around. Don’t confuse this personality with the confident huckster. You still need to watch for the core mind sets (analytical, simplifying) and the core skills of communicating and writing succinctly. You’re looking for someone who truly is and seeks to be expert in what they do, not just confident.

I’ve seen this personality in a wide range of education levels and with varying degrees of communication skill. Look for someone with excellent person to person communication ability, with reasonable writing ability. You may need to coach on the softer business skills such as protocol.

Backgrounds

In the next and final post in this series, How to Hire a Web Analyst, I’ll look at some of the work experiences and educational backgrounds that I’ve seen in top notch analysts. Here’s a teaser for you… Statistics isn’t on my list.

What’s the right way to solve this puzzle? Over the next week or so, starting with this post, I’ll be posting a series on this very topic – how to build out the analytics function without hiring only highly experienced web analysts.

Recognizing a Good Web Analyst

Who will make a good web analyst is more a question of mindset and personality than it is of rote skills or past experience. Of course, hard skills and past experience make a difference, but you’ll quickly find that experienced web analysts are in high demand, and are demanding increasingly higher salaries. As a result, the most efficient way to build your organization is to hire one solid analyst, if you can find one, then focus on building a team of people who, based on mindset, personality, and key non-analyst skills, can be quickly groomed to be solid web analysts. To do this, you have to look at candidates not for “what they’ve accomplished” but for “what they’re capable of.”

Mindset and Key Skills

A good analyst has an analytical, problem-solving mindset. They constantly seek to understand why things are the way they are, how seemingly unrelated things are connected, and to be able to explain that all to others. They think systemically, meaning that they have a fundamental belief that all things are connected (i.e. “if I push here, something will fall out over there”). A good analyst also has a simplifying mindset. They look for ways to distill complex ideas into simple, fundamental concepts that are understandable by everyone. This latter ability is crucial – in order to drive action from data, the data has to be turned into a story that is consumable by marketers and business people, and from which actions or “next steps” can be derived. The last thing you want is an analyst that simply overloads your marketers and managers with data.

The only hard skill I’ve been able to identify that has a connection to the mindset described above is writing. An individual who can clearly explain complex ideas in writing is demonstrating the ability to analyze and simplify. An individual who cannot write succinctly cannot be a good analyst. (They may actually understand what’s happing in the data, but if they can’t communicate it, what good does that do you?)

Personalities

In my next post, I’ll cover the three main personalities I’ve observed that make quality web analysts: The Critic, The Explorer, and The Expert.

I’m not sure what the best title for us is, and I’m not sure we know enough about what we do and where we’re going to have the right title just yet. I suspect there may be some specialization in the field required before the titles start to settle in. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on how the field will specialize (or is specializing already).

Whatever you call us or what we do, it appears that, according to Jason Burby, we have very satisfying jobs. I would have to concur.