Alexander Kononov

Alexander Kononov | 2009-07-07

Web analytics is a fundamental, cornerstone part of web marketing.

Accordingly, any qualified web marketer is a web analyst by definition, i.e. possesses web analytics skills and knowledge.

At the same time, web analyst job means specific specialization of web marketing, special type of web marketer, along with other specializations, like SEO, SEM, online (PPC, search, contextual) ads campaign management, blog marketing, social and viral online marketing, etc.

The main task of web analyst is collecting and analyzing performance data of various online marketing campaigns, analyzing interaction of visitors with those online campaigns as well as entire web site (seen as online marketing instrument), with an aim of providing relevant and reliable information for other members of online marketing team.

Accordingly, web analyst is a web marketer, who specializes in web analytics and interacts with other marketers in online marketing team. In other words, web analyst's specialization does separate into standalone job only in the team of marketers , where each web marketer specializes in his/her own area of online marketing expertise. But still, each web marketer is at the same time web analyst by necessity, even though his/her job title sounds differently.

Web analytics combines knowledge of internet technology with knowledge of marketing communications. (What a beautiful combination!) Thus, web analyst (as well as any other web marketer) should understand both web technologies and marketing in general.

Qualified web marketers in general, and web analysts in particular, are relatively in a short supply on the job market, since despite there are many marketers around, only small fraction of them has substantial knowledge of internet technologies, and vice versa. This is because Internet is relatively new technology that grows exponentially and explosively just for last decade or so. Educational programs and job market simply did not have enough time to react and adapt. In most cases good web analysts and good web marketers are self-educated people - real work experience is the best education. Often they themselves are site founders and owners, web entrepreneurs.

It is important to understand, that people who do not meet above double criteria (technology and marketing expertise) cannot be viewed as web analysts.

In particular, merely using web analytics tools do not automatically make such user a web analyst (same as reading Wall Street Journal doesn't make that reader an investment analyst). Neither web technology expert nor offline marketer can be viewed as web analysts, even if they use web analytics software and services. This is because web analytics involve not only obtaining relevant and reliable web site statistics information, but also ability to interpret it in the context of online marketing decisions, plus motivation and authority to use that analytics to make business decisions and pursue marketing goals.

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Alexander Kononov, web analytics expert/consultant

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