Week 5 - Web Analytics Reading

We are discussing the data involved with Web 2.0 and its effectiveness in Marketing this week, and we finally have a winner for nerdiest material. This reading was very boring and not too enlightening. This was a 12 page pdf document (23 pages of a book) that only talked about three things: make sure you are asking the right questions, hire really good web people, and centralize your decentralized web analytic group.

The first topic was fairly relevant and something that we (MBA students) should need to know about really analyzing your web data. I think it was mentioned in other articles, but we need to remember it is not just about page hits. I always like to be reminded to think from the customer's prospective and tailor what you are doing to them. I like to add to that statement that you need to really understand who your customer is (internal, external, end user, etc.).

The majority of the article summed up that a company needs to put the money in the people and not just into the tools ... novel concept. Oh, and by the way, just hire the following candidate: . This section was not helpful for most readers, unless they didn't have a good job description posting for a Web Analyst.

The last topic wasn't very eye-opening either. There is the centralized model and the decentralized model. Both have their pros and cons, so just take all the pros from each model and make a hybrid model out of that. It sounds great, but I am sure there are issues with this model too. I saw conflict with the description of the reporting of the Business Unit Web Analysts. The business unit "owns" them, but they work and report through the Web Team. It sounds good in practice, but I think there still will be conflicts on interest. All in all, it still does sound like the best option of the three.

I want to point out that this was the hardest reading I have done so far in this class. The material was too long for the content; the material was dry; and it was physically hard to read due to the poor quality scanning.