Finally, the process is over. We gave offer letters to 3 brave souls who managed to persevere and finish our tests. One of the critical attributes we were looking at was perseverance.

Finally, the process is over. We gave offer letters to 3 brave souls who managed to persevere and finish our tests. One of the critical attributes we were looking at was perseverance. We wanted people who didn’t give up. All three joins us in May 2008 and we will know how effective this test was.

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Hiring Junior Web Analyst – part III

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Think about it.

Think about it. What’s common in the name of all web analytics tools? Well, at least most of it. They all are single words formed by joining two words. Check this list

• WebTrends
• ClickTracks
• SiteCatalyst
• IndexTools
• HitBox
• VisitorVille
• WebsideStory
• CoreMetrics
• StatCounter

Notable exceptions are Visual Sciences and Google Analytics. While both of them are formed by two words, they are indeed shown as separate words.  

Interestingly enough, when we chose a name for our tool, we also ended up following this trend. Our tool is called NablerStats.

We are currently working on version 3 and it’s getting better. We hope to make the features public in a few months and start offering it as a solution to customers. 

Can you think of more names that follows this trend? Let me know. It would be interesting to compile the full list.

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What’s common in the name of web analytics tools

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Last weekend we were at a college and ran our new test with 135 students. It included a standard quantitative test as well as something new that we had created

Last weekend we were at a college and ran our new test with 135 students. It included a standard quantitative test as well as something new that we had created. We have all the students a graph that contained 3 parameters – visits, page views and orders. The graph was for the full month of December and we asked students to come up with their conclusions. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of observations, considering none of them had heard about web analytics before we met with them.

What was even more interesting is how “the wisdom of crowd” proved true. I have been reading that book for the past few days and didn’t fully agree with the author on all points. But the results of this test was so correct. James Surowiecki would have been happy to see the results. No one student had come up with the best answer. But if I took a combination of all the answers, it would beat the answers of our best analysts.

The short listed students are going to take the test I had mentioned in my previous post. Will keep the results posted here. Meanwhile, if you have ideas / comments regarding this topic, please comment. Would appreciate your thoughts.

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Hiring junior web analyst – part II

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The interest in web analytics has been building up and it’s not surprising that one of hot topics on blogs and forums is on “How to hire a junior web analyst”. We’ve also gone through the same questions – how best do we hire a web analyst. When we are looking for an experienced web analyst, the things to look for are much more obvious – do they understand the web, how good are they with defining metrics, can they interpret and present data, etc.

The interest in web analytics has been building up and it’s not surprising that one of hot topics on blogs and forums is on “How to hire a junior web analyst”.

We’ve also gone through the same questions – how best do we hire a web analyst. When we are looking for an experienced web analyst, the things to look for are much more obvious – do they understand the web, how good are they with defining metrics, can they interpret and present data, etc. But how do we go about hiring someone who could possibly be a good web analyst one day.

Here is an interesting idea that we came up with.

Ask the candidate to create a blog, sign up for a free web analytics tool as well as Google Analytics. Then insert the Javascript code in the blog and get to see the numbers. If a candidate who has absolutely no experience is able to reach this stage, it’s a good sign. If a person can’t do at least this much is perhaps not going to make a good fit.

Once the candidate is able to get the code working, the test gets more interesting. We ask them to upload couple of pdf documents, movies, music files, etc on their newly created blog. Then they have to read Google analytics help and try to figure out how to tag these things.

We have just started using this technique. Will post our experience with the test.

Clue for those of you who are interested in joining us – we are certainly going to run you past this test. So be sure that you can do this

P.S. Just in case any one is wondering why there is no web analytics – session 4. We have dropped the idea for now and I’ve take the responsibility of keeping the blog going.

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How to hire a junior web analyst

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Engagement Metrics There is certain degree of arbitrariness in what qualifies as a ‘High Engagement Visit’.

Engagement Metrics

There is certain degree of arbitrariness in what qualifies as a ‘High Engagement Visit’. Usually a ball park figure of ‘greater than 8 pages’ should work fine for qualifying a visit as a ‘High Engagement Visit’ and one that engages the visitor to a greater degree.

However, deciding on a ‘Low Engagement Level’ visit should be fairly straightforward. A ‘Low Engagement Visit’ should be any visit of a SINGLE page view only. It is advisable not to fix a range, say ‘less than 3 pages’ etc. to qualify a visit as a low engagement one.

These are times of falling attention spans and low engagement visits should necessarily focus only on visitors who stay for just 1 page.

Six Broad Categories for KPI Identification

A client brief on web analytics was that we work with fewer metrics and a predetermined minimum list of KPIs. All reporting to all service heads had to go under these broad KPIs. The broad categories for KPI identification were fixed as:

1. Branding

2. Traffic

3. Thought leadership

4. Interaction

5. Campaigns

6. Database

This ensured that all reporting clearly went under any of the above categories, made for more focused analytics and well-defined reporting.

AD Hoc Reporting

Ad Hoc reporting is becoming increasingly common as a web analytics tool to gauge effect on traffic caused by changes in design or content to the site. It is also used to analyze unexplained rise in traffic to a particular service section or to track other changes to the website.

Ad hoc reporting could be made more effective by:

• State the Objective - Putting Down the stated objective of the Report right at the top

• Summarize - Summarizing Solutions/Broad Trends

A brief text summary at the end of the report which outlines the findings and the broad trend of the analysis greatly enhances decision making. A definite value-add.

An Excel Tip

To enter the same text or formula in a range of cells

To instantly enter the same text or formula into a range of cells:

1. Select the range of cells that you want to fill.

2. Type the text or formula in a single cell and press CTRL+ENTER (instead of just the ENTER key).

3. The data appears in the entire range selected

Web Analytics Resources

Read the article by Sandeep Mittal of Cartesian Consulting on ‘Marketing Analytics: The Big Thrill’. It talks of the growing breed of marketers who are bringing more precision to marketing analytics using data and analytics tools in clever ways.

Also check out Shinystat an Analytics Tool that is available in the Free, Professional and Business Versions.

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Web Analytics - Session 2

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