One of my other hats is that of QA, so I feel obligated to point out that your link to Eric Peterson is broken due to extra characters at the end. Did Eric pay you to do that? *smile*

So I guess the key thing here is to prove your importance BEFORE you get laid off

And honestly if a company is downsizing by the hundreds or even thousands, I don’t think being capable Web Analyst is necessarily enough.

Here’s to hoping the panic on the stock market will subside soon!

I am a Web Analyst through 2 years in one of the largest financial institutions in Scandinavia. And we use Omniture’s SiteCatalyst.

I personally find a lot of problems with Omniture. I have 20+ bug reports with them that are never fixed. I get the run around for months - some since the spring - without any bug fixes to more than a select few bugs.
I spend way too much time chasing up these problems.

I am starting to look more and more into what Google Analytics are using.

One thing I will disagree with you about Paul is that the Excel Client is super useful. I make a lot of detailed campaign reports in Excel and I can update them by the click of a button (when it works hehe). So mostly this is very useful for me as I can describe visitor flow and sign ups in complex patterns through for example a flash and just click one button for an update. And I make many such updates over time.

I am new to GA but looking into it lately I find that there seem to be a lack of custom variables. This is a big concern as I have designed a lot of custom variables and capture a lot of custom stuff in Omniture.

But if Omniture is not improving their customer service (which today for me is almost non existant) - I could potentially be a Google Analytics user 1-3 years from now. I am even working on double tracking in GA beginning next spring - to get historic data in case we do such a transition later on.

Some of the bugs I have found in Omniture lately includes: Paid vs. Natural search not working for months. ClickMap is not working for me in Firefox and had no luck in IE on Vista either. Which means my organisation can’t use it. Also I find the dashboards (which are the bread and butter of the reports I distribute) to be faulty in many smaller ways: metrics not written clearly - percentages in columns not making sense to the user, the text elements to dashboards are not working at all through many months (which means no explanation of metrics or anything as I can’t add text to the report), metrics not aligned in the total column etc.
Other bugs include: next page reports not showing the focus page and email distribution is limited to 255 characters, so some people on the list are cut off - try explain that to an organisation.

I could go on for hours.

One more point: I lack integration of the Omniture tools. For example I don’t have access in Excel to advanced tools like DataWarehouse or Discover. I would much rather have one tool with more integration.

So while I do feel Omniture is still the leader and the company that can do all the stuff I need right now - I am certainly keeping my eye out for a future replacement..

I point this out because I really understand the frustration many practitioners in the field are faced with. For me I couldn’t wait around for the company to ether get interested in the analytics or the ax to fall. I’m too excited by what I do wither away.

That’s a really great list and I hope if there are others in my position who are now reading it they take to heart your suggestions. I would put a strong emphasis on the tip about networking. Keep your LinkedIn up to date, seek out recommendations, connect with every person you have ever met in business and let them know you are interested in new opportunities.

Sorry about the space I took up but this one hit home.

Changing the culture from reactive to proactive won’t happen over night. Many times the company has to die to learn the value of analytics. Do the best you can with them but looking around and doing work on the side are both good options as discussed in the article.

Great post. I especially like this: “Make money for your organization or at least save them money in an amount greater than your salary. Make sure the decision makers in your organization know how much money you are making them.”

I guess the one thing I wonder about, and this is probably because I hear from a lot of folks who aren’t getting the management support they’d like, is what do you do if the existing chain-of-command simply doesn’t support the analyst “making money?”

Does that make sense? This is the age old complaint about “we provide insights that go nowhere …”

Thoughts?

Again, great follow-up to the conversation at my blog.