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Posts Tagged ‘web analyst’

Here I am San Jose!

03 May

Finally on my way to San Jose.

By no means, this is going to be a very special trip. Not only I am going to attend the first WAA Board of Directors meeting followed by eMetrics Summit from Tuesday to Thursday, but also because everything else going on, specifically the whole swine flu thing.

In my backpack, I’ve got my iPod loaded with songs, podcasts and sermons I like, Nikon Coolpix, to take pictures and videos whenever I want, Logtitech Webcam, to talk to my wife and kids with ooVoo, and of course, my Dell laptop, to work at night when all the eMetrics craziness is gone.

But this time, I’ve got something else. My dear wife, fearing of the pandemic spreading of swine flu, bought me two 3M N95 masks, and a gelFast personal hand hygiene unit. Imaging on my belt, there is hand sanitizer on the left, and Nikon Coopix and my Blackberry Pearl Flip on the right. No matter what, I’ve got myself prepared.

I definitely don’t think I am a risk averse type of person. If I was, I wouldn’t choose to risk my life and climb big mountains with a bunch of amateur student mountaineers from college. Quite contrarily, I think I am a type of person enjoy risk taking. But to risk my own life is one thing, to put my family at risk is another. Bible says, “A wise man is cautious…” (Proverb 14:16) Why a wise man needs to be cautious? Because he needs to take care of his family!

I booked my travel and registered eMetrics summit two weeks ago but only made up my mind until Friday when I told my wife, “Honey, I think I will go, but with extra caution”. She gracefully agreed. What complicated the situation was she suddenly got a fever on Friday night and had 101 temperatures. We were about to attend spring outing with the church group on Saturday morning and a house party with my wife’s colleagues in the evening. We canceled both. Although we know the chance is slim, we didn’t want to take it, and we didn’t want others feel uncomfortable either. I almost gave up. No matter how much I love this “web analytics” thing, I can’t leave my wife behind especially when she is sick.

But thank God. My wife feels much better today and she encourages me to go, at least for the Board of Director meeting because she understands that’s very important to me.

Maybe you are laughing at me…maybe you think we are over concerned. The reason I am telling you all these is that I want to say “thank you”, as the newly elected Director of the Board of WAA. I understand how difficult for you to come out and make time for this three days summit. It is challenging to get companies to pay for the registration fee, travel and lodging these days, as each one of them is cutting back on OPEX. It is uneasy to leave families, friends and communities behind. The three days’ summit is not like a vacation, but a brain washing, quite painful if you are not used to it. And when you are back, your managers expect you to deliver immediate 1000% ROI…do the math and calculate how much conversion rate you need improve.

I understand all these, but I am confident as you are and believe that these three days will be different. You and I will learn everything as we can. We will immerse ourselves in the ever-changing technologies, thought provoking presentations and workshops, not mentioning life changing networkings and meetups…

So that’s my little story of eMetrics. How about you? Do you have your story too? Tell us how you overcame challenges and finally made your way to San Jose!

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Posted in Post in English, This Week in Web Analytics, Web Analytics in Action, eMetrics Summit, web analytics association

 

Attention: My Fellow Web Analysts

22 Apr

I’ve been very swamped lately at work and haven’t got chance to write anything about the election of Board of Directors of Web Analytics Association. But this is official; I am elected to the board and will serve my two year’s term from May.

Needless to say, I am very grateful and still couldn’t really believe this is all true. I started the campaign with fairly low expectation as I understand how competitive the election is. But history is made. By You, my fellow web analysts.

I want to thank a lot of folks who stand behind me for this election. The first person is Bryan Eisenberg. He is the one asked me to consider running for the Board of Directors and gave me his full support. Joel Wright, my buddy and colleague at Dell, introduced me to web analytics and told me that I’ll win even before the election is closed (good prophecy, Joel!). Gautam Madiman, my manager at Dell, for encouraging me and endorsing me. Anil Batra from Zerodash1, Jonghee from Victoria Secret…and many others I don’t even know their names. Last but not least, for my wife, willing to share more family loads to support my duty as a Director.

So what’s the next? What I am going to do for the web analytics community as a Board of Director in the next two years? These are questions wondering in my mind. I am fully aware that as the only Director on the Board without a CXO title (sah!), I am bringing some unique perspectives to the Board. But to better serve you, I need your help.

May 3-4, I will be in San Jose, attending the Board of Director meeting. I will also be in the eMetrics Summit for the next three days. I encourage you to get in touch me if you are there. Let’s chat about work, life and the community while we are in the WAA Community Meeting and Speed Networking, or WAA Reception, or Birds of a Feather Lunch, or eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit Reception, or Web Analytics Wednesday. Talk to me about your ideas, passions or frustrations. If you are not there, feel free to drop me a note via ed at superwebanalyst dot net or follow me on Twitter @ed_wu.

Look forward to seeing you and hearing from you. Remember, we are super web analysts. No tool (no matter how good they are) can do us any good, until we are using it in the right way, with much passion and intelligence. And to do it right, you’re going to need help and guidance from WAA. Hope you have a great week.

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Posted in Post in English, Web Analytics in Action

 

Ten Reasons to Vote for Ed

27 Mar

The voting period for the WAA 2009 Board of Directors election is now open. If you are a WAA memeber, you should have received the voting instruction along with user name and password. I highly encourage you to take this great opportunity to vote for the people you trust most. 

Of course, I will be more than happy if you vote for me in the practitioner sector. In addition to my written answers and interviews to the four questions the election committee asked, here are the list of top 10 reasons why you should vote for me.

Some of the following claims might not be 100% accurate. I’ll take the blame if they are not, as long as you enjoy reading and have fun.

Ready? Here we go:

Ed is the only one on the ballot

…who doesn’t have a title of Director, VP or CEO etc. (read as “Ed is like the current stock market which has great potential to grow”)

…who is originally from China (read as “Ed likes Chinese food”)

…who has ever climbed a mountain as high as 24,000 feet (read as “Ed is more risk averse now”)

…whose car got hit two days ago by a severe hail storm (read as “Ed lives in a city which motto is to ‘keep it wierd” )

…who can’t pronounce “Analytics” right, no matter how hard he tried (read as “Ed has some sense of humor”)

…who has the least experience with Facebook. To be exact, one day plus two hours at 1:30pm CST as I am writing this post. (read as “Ed is becoming Facebook addict just like you)

…who also has the least experience in the web analytics field comparing with those web analytics “Gods” and “Goddess” (read as “Ed has a fresh perspective and open mind”)

…who is a Super Web Analyst (read as “Ed is a marketing guy”)

…who is endorsed by Bryan Eisenbergon Linkedin (read as “Did Ed bribe Bryan for this?”)

The last but not the least. Ed is a lucky man who has a great wife and two adorable kids, Gloria and Joshua.

Only this time, I wish I am not the only one on the ballot. After all, at the end of day, it’s what our family matters most to us.

I wish you have a great weekend.

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Posted in Post in English, This Week in Web Analytics

 

Web Analytics is Personal

04 Feb

We all are professionals so we tend to be very professional in what we do. However today I learned that web analytics can be personal.

Well, to be more accurate, I learned that long time ago when I watched how Avinash Kaushik, Jim Sterne, Eric Peterson or Bryan Eisenberg presenting in eMetrics Summit or anywhere they go. They are passionate, energetic, and they are personal.

Today I experienced that too.

Today we hit a really great milestone in web analytics within Dell. Several months after implementing SiteCatalyst globally, we presented a global executive dashboard which enables our executives to get a weekly snapshot of the site performance across our global regions.  It gives them a great benchmark, drive standardization of the site, promote best pracitice sharing. More importantly, it drives them to prioritize their web analysts’ time to work on big opportunities, instead of tons of ad hoc requests or routine reporting.

When a senior manager told me, “Oh my this is a thing of beauty! Tear in eye….” and when my director said, “we need turn web analytics from a tool to THE weapon”, I know that we are on something here. Tomorrow is going to be a little different. We might start to see a transformation and a new culture might emerge.

So that’s my thought of today. Web analytics can be personal, can be exciting, can be something you really love. It doesn’t have to be dull at all. Let’s get out of our cubes, start to be like a champion or evangelist within our organization.

It’s your time to shine now, seriously.

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Posted in Post in English, Quote of the Day, Web Analytics in Action

 

Who Am I?

15 Jan

This sounds an interesting question, isn’t it?

Having been worked in analytics related jobs for almost five years now, I often find myself in a little awkward situation. Out of Michigan, I wanted to become a brand manager, eventually a marketing executive, just like the rest of Wolverines did. However I quickly discovered that’s not how people are thinking of me.

There are times my colleagues calling me as “Dr. Wu”. Last time I met with a colleague never met before and he said, “oh, I know you, you are THE NUMBER GUY…” He went on saying that he want to learn from me how he can use web analytics data for his work.

Dr. Wu? Well, I wasn’t a Phd at all.

THE NUMBER GUY? I never think myself that way.

The cruel reality is, the way I think myself is different than the way others think of me.

For a long time I was uneasy with that. I wanted to change people’s perception. My manager wanted me to go out of my “comfort zone”, to become more “outspoken”, or to be more “visible” in front of the senior executives. On my yearly performance plan, there is always something like “improving my organization agility or strategy agility”–if you actually understand what it means exactly.

… …

Until the day when I became a web analyst.

Because web analytics is one of the very few marketing domains requires super, super high level of skills and experience to understand the data, interpret the data and be able to provide actionable recommendations based on data and analysis.

Unlike a brand manager position, this doesn’t require you of making up something out of nothing. (no offense to my fellow brand managers. ) I have a friend who is very good at that and he called that as BS. (ET, that’s you if you ever read this post. :)

This world has plenty of people who can do the BS part. Most of them are scared of data. They can create a whole marketing campaign from the white board but when you tell them standard deviation, their face will look blank or they may vomit. Granted I have seen extremely polished people who can do both quantitative and qualitative jobs well.

On the other hand, this world doesn’t have enough people who really enjoy working with data. And there are even fewer people who have a great instinct about data. I meant instinct. You look at a spreadsheet or a dashboard full of data with one eye covered and you get the picture how the business performs. You can almost smell the data and know where is the problem. That’s a God-Given-Gift. (I’m going to name it GGG and trademark it :) )

So don’t give it up if you have “GGG” in your gene and trying to be somebody else. Let people call you Dr. , the number guy, or even the nerd or whatever they want to call you.

Play strength, not weakness.

That’s where I am at when I think of myself.  A data driven marketer who have a great instinct about data. An analyst who can help other marketers to understand their business and identify problems and opportunities.

So question for you:

Where are you at? How do you think of your role as a web analyst in your organization? Are you happy about it or upset about it?

Please share at least one tip to become a happy web analyst!

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Interesting Thoughts on Web Analyst

23 Sep

Just want to share some good thoughts on the topic of web analyst:

Akin Arikan wrote a pretty nice article to ask why in earth that  “A Good Web Analyst Is Hard To Find” His answer is

Namely, at most organizations web analysts are faced with marketers / business colleagues who ask nothing more of them than endless amounts of reports on “How many visitors did we have to this page or that page or this link or that link …”

Yet, good web analytics is not about analytics. It is about taking action on analytics. But, no action was ever taken on mundane reports such as the above that just count eye balls.

I think he is right about good web analyst is the one who can take actions on analytics not the one who only knows how to build certain reports. However I think it is unfair to just blame our fellow marketing / business people to ask nothing more than endless amounts of reports. The real problem is often we are content with these reports and don’t go above and beyond to provide really actionable insights and recommendations. If you have actionable insights, who is going to ask for useless reports? So next time when you have a performance review with your boss, instead of blaming your marketing / business colleague, do a little bit reflection on how you can change yourself. It’s always my belief that it’s hard to change other people, but it is easier to change myself.

Jason Burby on the other hand, provided more advices on Becoming an Experienced, Invaluable Web Analyst He said you need hands-on experience to become an experienced web analyst (what a advice!). This is almost like I am telling you, you need a million dollars to become a millionaire! All kidding aside, he actually gave three pieces of advices which are practical:

First, you can start at a small company which doesn’t do much with web analytics and make a portion of your role with the company. Or working in an analytics position in an interactive agency with a strong Web analytics team (read as ZaaZ is hiring! :) ) Finally go to find somebody who are experienced that can mentor you.

I wholeheartedly agree with Jason on the mentoring piece and I am looking for one (If you want to become my mentor, let me know :) ) I also think to work in an agency might be a good starting point. Make sure you check out ZaaZ’s job information. However I am not sure his first advice. If you are currently working in a big company, the best way for you to switch to web analytics (assuming you are not a sales person and have some sorts of analytics experience in marketing) is probably to find your way through internal transition instead of joining a small company.

My problem with small company is they either don’t know the value of web analytics or their expectation is way too high. In both cases, they are not likely to hire an inexperienced web analyst. Of course, unless your uncle owns the small company. On the other hand, big companies understand the key to the success of web analytics is not the tool, but the people. Therefore they are willing to hire people who are not tool specialist, but business type of person understanding the business and identify the best opportunities for improvement through analysis. Myself is a good testimony to this. Before my current role, I have zero experience in the web analytics world, not even in the broad online marketing. What my boss ended up hiring me because he feels is better off to hire me and let me learn the tools, than to hire somebody who knows the tool well, but has to learn the business and the Dell way :)

That’s all I am thinking today. Now it’s your turn. What interesting thoughts you have on being a super web analyst? Where did you start? What are you working on?

Until next time…

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Posted in Post in English

 
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