A SIMPLE GUIDE TO BUILDING A CAREER IN WEB ANALYTICS IN INDIA

A career in web analytics is the hottest thing today in the field of digital marketing. With digital marketing being highly data-driven, it becomes necessary to understand how your website visitors interact with your site.

Web analytics is the process of collecting data which describes the interaction of your website visitors with your brand and analysing it for optimizing your digital marketing strategy.

This is where you study things like what are the most popular pages of your website, on an average how much time does a visitor spend on each page of your website, whether your content is engaging enough or not and then provide solutions to improve upon areas that need to be optimized.

This data-driven approach minimizes wastage of resources and improves the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy. Because when you know what the consumer wants, you can enhance their experience with your brand, by providing them with the kind of experience they actually desire.

So, web analysts are and will always be in demand. Here are some insights on what skills you require, the job profiles and descriptions of web analysts, how you can acquire these skills if you aspire to build a career in web analytics.

1) SKILLS REQUIRED TO BUILD A CAREER IN WEB ANALYTICS:

Academically, a graduate /post graduate degree in Marketing Statistics Economics is a bonus but you can still become a web analyst if you don’t have such a degree.

To be an outstanding web analyst, you must be able to combine your business/ marketing/sales skills with your analytical skills. To be able to analyse data from a business point of view will help you add more meaning to your data and come up with highly effective solutions to enhance digital marketing strategies.

• Problem-solving skills:

You will be required to answer a lot of business- related questions and to come up with appropriate solutions for the same. You should be able to derive insights from data and be able to present it in a way that answers the questions you get asked.

• Presenting Data in a format that easily understood by your audience.

You should have the ability to take complex data and compiling it in a simple preferably visual format so it is clearly understood by the people who need to see it.

• Basic Skills of Digital Marketing.

In particular, you should have a sound understanding of how various traffic- driving channels work. This includes SEO skills, Affiliate Marketing, Social Media, Search Engine Advertising and advertising on social media platforms.

• Knowledge & some experience in using Web analytics tools

There are many data analytics tools available today but the most popular tools are Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics.

Most web analyst jobs that you will apply for will require that you have some experience, preferably a year’s experience in using these web analytics tools. So, some hands-on practice or work experience with these tools is very much required.

• A sound knowledge of Excel is required as most of an analyst’s work is done on Microsoft Excel.
• It is important to understand at least the basic concepts of Javascript coding as it plays an important role in the implementation of web analytics. This also makes your job much easier. The analytics tags that are used on web pages are written in Javascript. This basic coding knowledge makes it convenient for you to understand the technical side of web analytics.
• Knowledge of basic database queries– A basic SQL, MySQL, relational database management systems will prove to be beneficial to you.

2) WEB ANALYST JOB DESCRIPTION:

You will find a lot of confusing job descriptions for web analysts when you actually apply for a job in web analytics. When you apply for an analyst’s job you will find the job descriptions for an analyst are a mixture of the below-mentioned profiles.

Just to clear the confusion,

An Implementation Engineer or Specialist is the one who sets up or installs the correct data collection software or tools by working closely with the web analyst. So he/ she will understand what data parameters a business requires for monitoring purposes and do the entire technical set up for collecting the right kind of data. This person is required to have sound knowledge of Javascript as most of the tags are in Javascript and also understand how to integrate different data sources together.

A Reporting Analyst collects data from different tools that have been set up for implementing web analytics and creates reports in excel or any other program that is being used; to provide reports that can be easily comprehended by the audience of the report. A basic knowledge of SQL is required for this role to derive data from analytical tools.

A web analyst’s role and job description are more business oriented. A web analyst provides proper analysis & insights on the data that is collected so that these insights can be used to optimize and implement digital marketing strategies that are much more effective and drive higher growth rates.

3) HOW TO APPLY FOR A JOB IN WEB ANALYTICS IN INDIA & WEB ANALYST SALARY

There are many jobs available on job sites online. Some of the most popular job sites being indeed.co.in, naukri.com, monsterindia.com, timesjobs.com to name the major sites.

There are also vacancies that you can apply for on linked in. Linked-in is also a great platform where you can engage with professionals from the industry to build your network.

If you have no experience, you can also join a company or an agency as a web analyst intern and learn the basic of web analytics and how to use tools like google analytics.

The basic salary for a web analyst is as below

It is important to note that your salary will depend on the city you apply for a job in, and your skill set.

4) ONLINE LEARNING RESOURCES FOR BUILDING A CAREER IN WEB ANALYTICS:

• You can get a free certification in Google Analytics by studying the course material and appearing for the online exam.

Click here  to know more about the Google Analytics certification.

• Adobe Analytics is highly popular too. Adobe offers various certificate courses which you can do as a lot of organisations also ask for experience with Adobe Analytics. These are paid certifications. Their courses can be accessed here.
• There are some very good books you can read to get a deeper understanding of web analytics.

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day: Avinash Kaushik

Web Analytics 2.0: Avinash Kaushik (a follow-on with a more advanced and in-depth study of web analytics techniques)

Avinash Kaushik is one of the greatest gurus of web analytics. His blogs are also a great resource for anyone who is aspiring to become a web analyst.

Web Analytics Action Hero: Using Analysis to Gain Insight and Optimize Your Business: Brent Dykes

Web Analytics: Kick Start Guide by Brent Dykes

Brent Dykes has been into enterprise web analytics for over 7 years and actively blogs for Adobe on web analytics. 

                Some useful blogs:

                Below mentioned are a few good blogs on web analytics which are a good learning resource.

• Blog by Luna metrics
• Anil Batra is a highly experienced web analytics consultant and has a great blog with articles written in a very easy to understand language.
• This is a great blog post from Cardinalpath.com on getting started in your web analytics career as it gives you links to various learning resources that are available online.

Things in the digital marketing world are always changing so it is also important that you become part of an online web analytics community or forum so that your knowledge is at par with the latest trends in web analytics.

5) THE FUTURE SCOPE OF A CAREER IN WEB ANALYTICS:

In the future, the tools being used for data analysis will get more sophisticated.

At the same time, there will be more competition online as more and more brands continue to create and build their online presence. Hence, there will be more dependency on web analysts for finding solutions to beat the competition.

If you have a passion for analysis and are curious enough to explore data to find the right solutions, a career in web analytics is bound to be rewarding; both on a personal as well as a professional level as web analysts are one of the highest paid professionals in the field of digital marketing. And no matter how sophisticated analytics tools get, there will still be a requirement for a web analyst who is able to provide the right insights.