One of the things I've fallen into with the freelance Analytics Work I've been doing is the prevalence, more and more, of Google Analytics as the solution most smaller companies are going with.
While Google Analytics is very powerful and fairly easy to set up on a basic level, getting advanced reporting is way more involved, often requiring a Channel Partner or, at least, some advanced training. One area where it's often hard to get right is the AdWords Connection to Google Analytics when you have several sites and your running a couple AdWords Accounts.
Anyway, I watched the entire Video: What You Need to Know About the New Google Analytics on Marketing Pilgrim today and I've met Timothy Seward of ROI Revolution at Emetrics Summit in Washington DC last year.
If there's one thing I'd do now - is sign-up for ROI Revolutions Google Analytics training. For many of my clients who have more "exotic" setups with their shopping carts on different domains than their main site - or with URLS for different steps of the checkout process that don't show up on the browser - additional metrics ennoblement needs to be done that's more or less, out of reach of the standard user of Google Analytics.
In other words, the Google Analytics package has the power to track Flash and Ajax, pass parameters from URLs that are otherwise difficult to track, pull in commerce data from the shopping cart once the transaction is done, create custom segments that require embedding additional code on certain pages or on certain ads that are run outside of your website, and a lot more than that.
Anyone that has dealt with clients and business knows that every client, while alike in several ways - it also different. Every website, while alike in many ways, has some differences based on the business for which it was created. Every Business, has key differences, unique things that make them what they are.
As an analyst, you need to understand how to translate the power of a platform, like Google Analytics ..or ANY ANALYTICS, to the issue at hand, and what customer whats to know.
And while people are gun ho on Google Analytics - because it's free and powerful - they're often leaving out all the process work that Eric T. Peterson writes a lot about in Web Analytics Demystified (and has created a whole company around now). Many people think they can do all the Google Analytics stuff themselves and it turns out .. they can't.
Enter ROI Revolution. If I was going to spend time on something this summer, besides everything I do, I'd take his course - because Google Analytics is becoming the Analytics Solution for the rest of us - when we doing stuff and not using Omniture, Coremetrics or WebSideStory.
I recommend the course and if I have a chance, sometime, I'll take it myself - god knows, I have enough clients that end up needing advanced setups that are turning out to be no so easy to do. And honestly, with one client I have now, just really understanding what the customer wants and then translating the Analytics so it does that for them, often takes a bit of work.
That's why I recommend taking the the Google Analytics course. There are also other providers of Google Analytics training - but there are only a few - maybe 10 or 15 companies out there that are channel partners and are qualified to give basic and advanced training.
So that's my personal recommendation - what I would do and probably already should have done. It's amazing how complex any clients setup ends up being …and if they're mostly going to use Google Analytics - it makes sense to be the master of that.
Also, let's not forget that John Marshall left Clicktracks recently - and with Google's new interface and enhancements, it's likely that ClickTracks is being further undercut as a entry to mid level analytics solution.
In all likelihood, 70% of the places you go to outside of large corporations are going to end up on Google Analytics and probably 50% already are running Google Analytics now.
And getting back to one of my points - each business, each client has differences, unique needs, something your going to need to do for them that's different than what you do for everyone else - and that's the thing they remember - not the stuff everyone else does …but what you do - how you bring some unique insight, out of the analytics, that makes their business function better.
As I'm finding - it's one thing to be a well known Web Analyst, and another, to take a platform like Google Analytics - and adapt it the varying needs of each business, that's why I'd sign-up for ROI Revolutions Google Analytics training myself, if I had the time.
