I am a Strategy Consultant/Business Analyst new in the web analytics role. A client of ours has asked us to help them with tagging, establishing KPIs and Dashboards. Can you please tell me what are the key deliverables in my role with a brief summary for each deliverable?

Thanks a lot.
Anant

Unbelievable! What an insightful post, it has taken me years to understand what is happening, and yet I have never managed to write it down so clearly. Thank you also for the reference to Logan Tod & Co.

I think there is only one issue that you miss here – the difficulty in actually getting an organisation to change based upon the data.

Frequently we come across the situation where we can show a client a Performance Gap (the cost of poor website design / function) that runs to several million dollars. That it turns out is the easy part!

Where consultants really earn their keep is helping clients to take Action. Initially it can be a fight just to get relevant content on a page rather than the company’s latest irrelevant offers. The battle to change intensifies when you start to look at how marketing $ are allocated, and the results they claim. Then comes reorganisation based upon business objectives rather than vertical silos; so affiliate marketing and search marketing get combined into a single “new customer acquisition” team for example.

So not only should consultants provide you with Insight, they must help you take Action. After all Action is what actually delivers better business results, not Insight.

Many thanks for sharing your insight.
Matthew

Outstanding consultants are role models for the organization.

As Matt pointed out, they embody the knowledge of the tool and have marketing tendencies, but they also create communication bridges from engineering to Hippos.

The consultant helps the organization get smarter about itself, its tools, and the customers while helping you get smarter.

I used to run an IT consulting firm called Fort Point Partners. We had a fabulous track record for delivery, yet regardless of the outcome, each client just wanted us gone at the end - They call it “fee fatigue” but I think choicer words were probably uttered under our client’s breath.

When you are in such a terrible mismatch between available talent and demand, there is really not much you control, but Avinash offers a nice way of looking at the process. So even if the time scale may be longer, it is still a worthy objective.

There are two factors I would focus on if you get a consultant:

1. Do they know the actual tool (basically, why reinvent the wheel if someone else can help you with tagging and custom reports)

2. Are they marketers (or at least marketer-aware!). Too many analysts are so data oriented that they overcomplicate. The really good ones (I would add Josh and Bill at Stratigent and Robbin at LunaMetrics) truly strive to simplify.

June: Actually both the start and end are not perfect, neither is zero (start for client and end for company). While I say that in the write-up late in the night I could not find the right shapes in powerpoint to create the perfect visual I wanted. So it was this ok-but-not-great version that got in.

I like that half-pregnant metaphor!!

I really appreciate the feedback, thank you.

-Avinash.

Excellent question from Ravi P and a very useful and usable response from you (as usual!). I agree with Jacques and others…you should write a book - compile your frameworks into “Recipes for Successful Web Analytics”.

I hope that Ravi takes away that (1) the accountability and direction of Web analytics has to remain in-house, and (2) as Jim Sterne said at Emetrics “It’s messy”…there isn’t a universal right answer because it depends on the situation.

However, clients should not despair. Although there isn’t always a universal “right” answer, there is always a “best fit” to the situation. Their consultant should be willing to explore this optimization with them.

May I suggest a change to the excellent visual showing the 4 stages maturity and work/effort? At the beginning of Stage 1, the client does have to spend effort, so the line shouldn’t start at 0/0. Defining business goals, providing context for the consultant, bringing technology folks on board, prioritizing quick wins and setting expectations can be remarkably heavy lifting and critical to future growth.

…Sort of like getting ready to give birth. Being half-pregnant doesn’t really work, does it? :)

~June

I am, really, impressed. GREAT post! You have summarized it beautifully. I have been repeating bits of it to clients for some time, but please allow me to translate it into the languages I know, so that they will finally believe me!

I have been reading your blog for some time, and surely I am not the first one to tell you, but you sure have enough material now to write a great book about WA!