Inside the Web Analyst Mind

We love our web analysts, and just like the glimpse we gave into the PPC and SEO mind, we wanted to give everyone a glimpse into how web analysts view their surroundings.

Colleagues

Designers – People who “feel” what the customer experience is on a website.

PPC Specialists – Generally good people as long as they don’t ever mention their click through rate or average position in a report.

SEO Specialists – This group can be hit or miss, proceed with caution. If the majority of their words are ‘rankings’ or ‘link juice’, run away. Probably the original inventors of MLM schemes.

Developers – Really awesome group of people that make data collection possible. You’re in a safe haven with them as long as they’re not a ‘designer’, as well.

UX specialists – The ones who see customer experience in terms of boxes and stick figures.

Media buyers – Why are they still around?

Account planners – Everyone's best friends.

Your boss – The one you blame for the daily data pukes.

Your boss’s boss – The one that actually has the power to do something but never looks at your data pukes.

 

Tools of the trade

Google Analytics – The most amazing tool ever invented, and it’s free.

Adobe SiteCatalyst – Good tool if it were cheaper, easier to implement, easier to report through, and actually came with the all of the add-ons.

Excel –The second greatest tool ever, by half a point.

PowerPoint – Great place to tell a story.

Reports – The big opportunity for insights that leads to informed actions and an optimized website! Sadly, it sometimes digresses into data pukes on standardized reports and metrics no one should care about.

 

Websites

Website – The battleground where the war on conversion is fought and won with every visitor.

Landing page – Great place to hold some test battles to bring to the bigger war.

Call to action – What I wish would happen.

Site architecture – The spawn of designers and UX specialists.

Contact form – Biggest chance for impact.

Confirmation page – The Holy Grail.

 

Reporting

Conversion rate - How I tell people if their campaigns worked or not.

Multi-channel attribution – What I use to help PPC and SEO validate their efforts when their conversion rates tank.

Impressions – Worst reporting metric ever, ever.

Pageviews – One other bottom of the barrel metric that gets touted far too often.