Arthur Freydin’s Blog

Online marketing, gadgets, business, and thoughts.

So a crazy thing happened to me the other day. I had invited my buddy Gary Caponegro to come in and do a demo for Omniture SiteCatalyst (a web analytics platform). I had 4 people attend: a marketing writer, 2 web designers, and a front-end developer. I thought that it would be great for them to hear someone else speak about web analytics other than me. Keep in mind that all 4 people know very little about online marketing and even less about web analytics.

I have used SiteCatalyst before so the presentation wasn’t as beneficial for me as I hoped as it would be for them. As I sat there during the presentation, I started gazing around the room at their expressions. Each and every one of them were intently paying attention at the slides and demo. This is a group of individuals that are highly skilled at their craft and are sitting in a presentation that barely has any content specifically geared towards them or their daily tasks.

Or so I thought. It suddenly dawned on me that web analytics (regardless of which product you use) are in fact as beneficial to them as it is to me as an analyst! In fact, web analytics plays a huge role in their daily activities; it validates their efforts! Web analytics measures every single piece of creative, every block of copy, and every line of code that they create. They had no idea that their work can be tracked with that infinite amount of detail and accountability.

I later met with the attendees and asked them what they thought about the presentation. The response was unanimous: they loved it and thought that it was very beneficial. The marketing writer in particular actually thanked me for dragging her away from her pile of work. She was truly interested in what Gary was presenting. Her words sparked the motivation for this post.

Web analysts love to tout their analytics tools and how they are able to track every cent of their online marketing budget. For this reason, the adoption of these tools typically occurs within the online marketing department while the rest of the web design/development departments stay out of the way and just take the lead from the analysts. It’s time to clue them in; it’s time to make them feel like their daily tasks are no longer just part of the grind; every change they make affects the bottom line.