Great post, truer words were never spoken. To second Stephane’s point and maybe take it a little further, the challenges with being a web analyst right now are being felt in every department because business process has a lot of work to do in catching up to the technology.

I compare doing web analysis to working in a start up rather than an established company. At a start up, everyone has to work harder and handle more diverse tasks than at a larger company, where the pressure is lower and the job descriptions more defined.

Most good analysts I know would rather wear twenty hats (and a helmet and cup), as long as they have the liberty to focus on creating great insights – not custom reports for management.

Keep up the great blogging, and the second you have your next ‘Indiana Jones’ moment all the hard slogging will be worthwhile.

Cheers,

Jim

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Your post makes me feel better. Yes, really, it does. No, I am not making fun of you, your troubles and frustration. No, you have all my compassion & sympathy. Why? Because you perfectly described how I feel so many times.

“Nowhere in the job description does it say that the client sometimes just won’t listen – no matter how many times I explain something to them” – Actually, it is like that in so many places. And even if they listen to you and agree with you, it doesn’t mean that they will take action. Oh, even more frustrating!!!

Keep faith. Web Analytics takes a lot of perseverance and patience. And this isn’t either mentioned in the job description I am afraid.

But I guess that fame, rewards and recognition awaiting us ahead – well, I hope so…

Michael

On the agency side, I’ve definitely struggled to convince and articulate data/insights to Hippos and clients who aren’t savvy with web. On the client side, because everything is all integrated to enterprise reporting suite (BI), managing to set up that report/metrics is definitely challenging.

For me, universal challenge as a web analyst is always been how to convince the key stakeholders to act. I think the majority of Avinash’s postings point to that challenges and he does a great job at it.

I feel you man. Thanks for sharing this topic!

First, the ugly side: drop “web analytics” – it’s like this in about any business: the IT challenges, the slow response, the misunderstanding of clients, etc.

Secondly, insight & inappropriate tools: in this day & age of social media, market noise and cool factor, it’s much more interesting for a vendor to offer Twitter measure, Facebook connection and nice looking word clouds than it is to expose themselves by revealing their statistical methodologies or provide basic quantitative analysis models that would expose themselves.

Thirdly, the market data shows it: Google is dominating and continue to gain shares rapidly while other players pace is slowing. The air between Google and Omniture is getting thinner and thinner. At the same time, I keep earing marketing people say they will redefine the future of business optimizations… I have little news for them: business analysis and business intelligence (the discipline, not the technology) has been there long before marketing found out about web analytics… for those who think web analytics is hard, wait until you seriously enter the real BI/BA world!

Sure, no problem. I had flipped through some CAPM prep books, including the CAPM quicklet, the Rita prep book and a Head Start book for the PMP. I ended up going with the following:

1) Skimming through the PMBOK
2) Reading the Rita prep book and doing the sample problems over and over again
3) Used the Rita prep software. I probably did about 5 sample exams
4) Figured out what I did wrong and re-read, in great detail, parts of the PMBOK and Rita prep book.
5) Used the software to focus on specific knowledge areas.

My prep lasted for about a month and a half, an hour or 2 a night.

This worked for me – but I learn through repetition. So what will work for you may differ.

If you have any other questions let me know. Good luck!

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Regards
Nicolai Andler