Context is Critical: Creating a Culture of Web Analytics

Continuing my series on Creating a Culture of Analytics I would like to touch on a very critical aspect of creating a culture of Web Analytics and that is Context.

What is Context

According to Princeton.edu context is

• Discourse that surrounds a language unit and helps to determine its interpretation
• the set of facts or circumstances that surround a situation or event

Context takes the ambiguity out of the equation. As an Analyst it is very important that you provide full context when reporting your web analytics data. Context gets everybody on the same page. Do not leave anything for interpretation by the end users of your reports, give them the insights in a simple and easy to understand format.

Let’s look at an example to understand critical context is.

60 Degrees

If I say it is going to be 60 degrees tomorrow. What will be you reaction?
If you are in Minnesota – You will yell “Summer”
If you are in Seattle, you will think – ““Spring”
If you are in Florida, you will say “ Damn… Cold”
If you are in India, you will say “WTF….” (Indians measures temperature in Celsius and 60 degrees Celsius is 140 F)

Some other question that might pop in people’s mind are:

• What is the temperature today?
• Is it normal to have 60 degrees this time of the year

Without context 60 degrees does not mean much. Right.
Similarly when you report your numbers and tell report on visits, page views, time on site etc. it does not mean much unless you provide the full context.

Web Analytics & Context

Just saying that Visits are down by 10% from last week is not enough. You have to put that 10% decline in full context. Tell your end users what happened and why they should or should not worry.

So add something like : Visits are down 10% from last week and also 10% lower compared to the same time last year. Prior to this week we saw a 10% year over year growth but last week was abnormally down. Isn’t that betting better now?

You should go even further: Last year we got some free advertising from local newspaper sites that drove 20% additional traffic same time last year. Since we did not have the advertising deal this year, it impacted our visits this year. We noted the potential impact of newspaper site advertising in our last year’s annual recap (here is the link to last year report – people forget so remind them). If we take out the impact of spike from newspaper sites then we have a consistent pattern of 10% year over year increase. As noted in last few reports, that increase is due to our social media efforts this year. Now the picture is much clearer. Of course you should look into the full impact e.g. conversion, bounces, sales etc. (Note: How you present this story will depend on what format you chose to present your report)

Now everybody is on the same page and knows exactly what those numbers mean. Without that context, everybody would have had their own interpretations of the data. Misinterpretations lead to wrong action and/or mistrust in the data and the analytics team.

Final Words

Do not provide any reports without providing full context. Keep in mind that most of the canned and automatic reports do more harm than good because they do not provide context.

Other posts in the series

• The Curse of Knowledge: Creating a Culture of Web Analytics
• Creating a Culture of Web Analytics

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Follow me on twitter @anilbatra

Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anil-Batra-Page/130050670343547

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Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?  Post your open jobs on Web Analytics Job Board.

Current Open Positions

• Web Analytics Senior Implementation Consultants (Contractor)  at Acceleration Emarketing (New York, NY)
• Web Analytics Analyst at Designory. (formerly Agency.com) (Chicago, IL)
• Web Games Analyst at Arkadium (New York, NY)
• Online Performance Data Analyst at Announce Media (St Louis, MO)
• Web Data Analyst at Genworth Financial (Richmond, VA)
• Web Games Analyst at Arkadium (New York, NY)
• Web Metrics Analyst at Omnitec Solutions (Alexandria, VA)

Creating a Culture of Web Analytics

All those who have worked at companies which never used or do not use web analytics to make decisions about site changes, know how difficult it is to create a culture of web analytics. It is very hard. Building a culture of web analytics is a grueling uphill task.
After working with various client I have found that reasons for not using web analytics vary from company to company, some of the common ones are:

• Gut feel has always worked or at least it seems like it has worked
• It is an additional step in the process
• New skills are required to use web analytics. They feel they don’t have the required skills for using web analytics
• Fear of accountability i.e. now I will be measured and I don’t like that
• The reports that they got in past were pretty useless
• They didn’t believe in web analytics data because they have no clue on how the data was collected
• They don’t understand how web analytics can help them
• They don’t understand what web analytics is

The first reaction of many newly hired analyst/analytics manager is to start talking about KPIs, reports, what web analytics can do etc. But before you start digging into the data and analysis and start to talk about KPIs, dashboards etc. you need to understand the root cause of why analytics has not been used in the past. Understanding and tacking those issues will give you a better platform to build the culture of analytics on.

Here are few things you need to do before jumping into KPIs

• Identify various stakeholders, who could benefit from web analytics, in the company. You don’t have to have a comprehensive list of every person but some that you think could immediately benefit and you can immediately help is also a good list to start with
• Get a meeting with them, individually or grouped together in groups based on their roles/departments etc.
• Agenda of the first meeting should be to understand why they have not used web analytics in the past and what they would like to see from web analytics group. Don’t talk about KPIs yet. This meeting is about hearing them, if they talk about goals, metrics etc. then fine but don’t jump to discussing KPIs
• Make sure they understand that there will be a follow-up and you are there to help them not to use numbers to find faults. You need collaboration. Don’t let other people’s opinion about HiPPOs put you in an offensive or defensive position
• Schedule a follow-up meeting to go over you analysis of the past meeting, address any concerns/issues that are preventing them to use analytics

The goal of this exercise is to make people feel confident that you can truly help them make data driven decisions without jeopardizing their job. You understand their concerns and are willing to address them.

During this process you will also find out who all (groups/individual) are more willing than others to help you build your case and will provide you small wins that you can use to garner more support. If you have an executive support e.g. your bosses boss then leverage that to help you.

At the end,remember, every company is different. The culture is different, challenges are different, political structure is different so it is critical you understand all those elements. It is not going to happen overnight so be prepared for a long rocky journey.

Comments/Questions?

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Follow me on twitter @anilbatra

Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anil-Batra-Page/130050670343547

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Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?  Post your open jobs on Web Analytics Job Board.

Current Open Positions

Web Games Analyst at Arkadium (New York, NY)

Online Performance Data Analyst at Announce Media (St Louis, MO)

Web Data Analyst at Genworth Financial (Richmond, VA)

Web Games Analyst at Arkadium (New York, NY)

Web Metrics Analyst at Omnitec Solutions (Alexandria, VA)

Web Data Analyst at Alzheimer's Association (Chicago, IL)

Web Analytics Manager at Tig Global (Chevy Chase, MD)

Web Analytics, Search Marketing and Social Media Analytics Jobs

I have few open positions in Web Analytics, Search Marketing (Organic and Paid) and Social Media Analytics.

Job Requirements
One of the following

• Web Analytics Tools Implementation: Omniture, WebTrends, Coremetrics, Google Analytics, Yahoo! Web Analytics etc.? Any one tool experience is good.
• Analysis: Do you have experience making sense of the data collected by the web analytics tool? It does not matter which tool.
• Optimization – Do you have experience with A/B , Muti-variate testing or targeting? Experience with Google Website Optimizer, Test&Target, Widemile, Optimost etc?
• Search Engine Optimization – Do you have experience doing search engine optimization? Are you passionate about it? Show me some examples? Show me your process.
• Paid Search – Have you run campaigns on Google Adwords? Bing or Yahoo? What has been the outcome?
• Social Media Analytics – Do you have experiencing analyzing and making recommendations based on social media conversation? Do you have experience using tools like Radian6, SM2, and Visible Technologies etc.? Do you have passion for social media?

If you answer is YES to one or more of the above bullet items then send me your resume. Even if you are not actively looking for a job this won’t hurt.

Job Responsibilities:

Our ultimate goal is to help customer get the biggest bang for their buck.
Work in a fast paced environment and do some cool stuff.
Send me your resume and we will take it from there.

Full Time or Contract?


Either will work. If the fit is there we can make either happen.

Why isn’t there more information?

Well because I don’t want you box yourself based on what I want and provide you a laundry list of experiences. I want you to tell me what you are looking for and see if there is an immediate match, if not then there will be more opportunities. I also know some other organizations that are looking for people maybe I can hook you up with them.

How to contact me?
Twitter: @anilbatra
Email: batraonline at gmail(dot) com

3 Roles in Web Analytics

Despite slow economy many companies are hiring web analysts. A quick search on Simplyhired.com, a site that powers the Web Analytics job board on my blog, shows that there are currently 2,007 open positions and indeed.com, another job sites shows over 4800 open positions. That is a huge number.

However, many job seekers I have talked to feel frustrated because most of the jobs have a laundry list of requirements and they don’t feel that they are a right fit for most of these open positions. A lot of “Web Analytics” job openings ask for many of the following:

• Experience in online marketing


• Experience in Web Analytics


• Experience in – Google analytics, Omniture, Webtrends, Coremetrics etc.


• Experience in implementing Omniture, Google Analytics, WebTrends etc.


• Experience in A/B and Multivariate testing


• Experience in Search engine optimization


• Experience in search engine marketing


• Experience with SQL


• Experience in email marketing


• Experience in Social media

The mismatch in what a company really needs and what they are asking in the job requirements is a cause of frustration on both ends. The issue really stems from lack of understanding of what web analytics is and what role a web analyst need to play in the organization.

Most of the companies looking for a “web analysts” are in one of the following three stages of web analytics staffing

1. They don’t have any tool but they realize the need and are looking for someone who can help them with “web analytics”.


2. They just installed Google Analytics or were sold one of the other paid tool but are not getting much value from their web analytics tool. They need an analyst to help them do “web analytics”.


3. They already have a web analytics tool installed and have a web analytics team. Since the company is now using web analytics to made business decision they need to hire one or more analysts to support the growing demand.

Companies falling in the third stage know what they are doing and usually narrow down the requirements. They are usually clear on what kind of person they are looking for.

Companies who fall in stage 1 and 2 above are the ones who are usually not clear on the role of a “web analyst” and hence create this laundry list of skills. Hiring manger looks at few job openings posted by other to get an idea of what a “web analyst’ should do. She then includes all the buzzwords and sends the requirements to HR or the recruiting company. HR screens the resume and if the keywords shown above do not appear on the resume the resume is rejected. As a result, companies loose several good candidates while candidates loose many good job opportunities.

3 Roles in Web Analytics

If you are a hiring manager, you need to understand and thoroughly evaluate your need before opening the job req. This will help you remove the noise from requirements and find the best candidate for the job. To make your job easier I have categories web analytics work into 3 job roles.

1. Implementation Specialist/Engineer – If you are looking to implement a web analytics tool then you will need an Implementation Engineer. Implementation Engineer is usually the one who manages implementation of the web analytics tool and/or maintains ongoing implementation changes. This is a technical role. For this role you will need a person who has experience in implementation of the web analytics tool of you choice (Note: Tool Selection is a complex process and you should hire a 3rd party consulting company to help you with it if you have not already selected the tool). An implementation engineer generally takes the business requirements and converts them into technical requirements for the web development team to implement the code on the pages. Implementation Engineer works closely with “Web Analyst” (described below) web development and QA to ensure that correct data is collected. The right candidate for this role understands how internet technologies work. She needs to have a good grasp of JavaScript (most of the web analytics implementations require JavaScript tagging). She might also need to understand how to integrate various data sources together. For many companies, once the tool is implemented there might not be a daily need to make changes to the tool so it might make more sense to outsource this function to a web analytics vendor, agency building/maintaining your site or a web analytics consulting company instead of hiring a fulltime person.


2. Reporting Analyst – If you are looking for someone to pull the data from your web analytics tools or other reporting application then you need to hire a reporting analysts. A lot of the companies confuse “web reporting” with “web analytics”(See my blog post titled Are you doing web reporting or web analytics). Reporting analysts usually understands the interface of the various tools and can pull the data that is required by other stakeholder. A reporting analyst might need to have SQL skills to pull the data from databases. Some organizations might need a person who can make pretty scorecard and charts. For this role, it is good to have a person who has experience with the tools of your choice but don’t make it a deal breaker. If the candidate has worked on any of the web analytics tools then she can usually get trained in other web analytics tools. Determine what other tools do you have and what skills might be required to pull the data from all these tools, that you might need for you reporting and then write the job requirements.


3. Web Analyst – This is more of a business role and truly a web analyst’s role. This is a person who can make sense of the web data and drive insights to impact the bottom line. She will provide business requirements to the Implementation Engineer to work on and will use reporting analyst to get the data for analysis. Web analysts are inquisitive and analytical, they question the data to come up with the story that the data is telling. Web Analyst has the ability to understand and analyze various data pieces such as competitive, qualitative, web analytics, social media, financial etc and drive business changes. Web Analyst should also be able to run A/B and Multivariate tests to improve website performance. Depending on the size of your organization and A Web Analysts will not be afraid to stand in front of executives to explain and defend their findings. If you are looking to get actionable recommendation and drive business changes based on web analytics data then you need a Web Analyst.

Hope this will help you in properly wording your job requirements and avoid the frustration of not filling the position.

Comments? Questions?

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