digiforce

One of the major benefits of digital marketing is the amount of data that is available to target, design, and analyze campaigns. The web analyst is the person with the skills to make this happen. It’s a demanding position requiring an ability to see both the forest and the trees and determine what campaign plantings or prunings may be necessary.

The analyst’s first job is to decide what needs to be measured to achieve business goals. The process will vary widely depending on the type of business involved. A company selling consumer goods online will have many more things to track and analyze than a firm offering professional services. A services business with long or vague sales processes will present its own challenges in deciding what factors will best measure web marketing effectiveness.

The first tool a web analyst must be able to use is one or more of the web analytics packages such as Omniture, Google Analytics, and Web Trends. They may also have to have advanced database and spreadsheet abilities including supporting technologies such as SQL, JavaScript, and visual basic.

Web analytics is more than passive measuring. An analyst should be able to devise and conduct tests on sites, pages, campaigns, ads, or most any other part of the digital process. To do so requires knowledge of the business and how the elements of digital marketing contribute to it.

In short, a web analyst must have the ability to master large sets of data using sophisticated tools, turn that data into information, and be able to convey that information along with recommendations to non-specialists.