We held our first formal internal Intro to Web Analytics/Omniture SiteCatalyst training session today, and while I did a poor job of time planning (we only got through about 1/2 the planned 90 min presentation in a full 2 hours) the conversation and interest in continuing to push analytics to the center of our work was great.

There were 15-17 people in for most of the session, including everyone from members of the sales team to account managers to the search team to strategists to new-to-Omniture analysts to a person from our finance dept. (We've grown a lot lately, and I've not posted enough about that - will catch up there soon.)

Preparing for this was interesting, in that it caused me to try and define the role and potential for the kind of web analytics and analysis we strive to provide our clients in a way that only some blank PowerPoint slides and a deadline can.

At the core I think web analytics should assist in four areas - optimizing marketing resources, satisfying visitors, improving the site, and increasing revenues. Many of those are inter-related but each drives a hierarchy of questions which the analytics can help answer.

We talked a bit about having the right expectations with web analytics in relation to a project, how it was a long road from tagging to reporting to analysis to insights and finally to actions. And beyond preparing for that time-frame, how to think about web analytics software as a tool that enables a larger process where questions result in answers which beget more questions and only after a whole bunch of those cycles can you start to form opinions and then get to the work of starting to figure out what to do about it. Then of course worrying about how to convey the ideas and share with others (particularly time-pressed managers) all that data in a useful context to someone who didn't go through that process.

This is only a bit of what was touched on, and all that was before we even got into SiteCatalyst! You can see why we ran over time! But I thought it was important to set the tone before we looked at the software that this isn't a 'quick answer lookup system'. It's easy to get that impression but I think it leads to either disappointment or massive underutilization.

We did finally get a bit into SiteCatalyst, touring the core aspects of the interface and trying to establish the pattern by which it is used, at least in relation to generating basic reports. To summarize and help newbies consider all of their options I came up with this list:

1. Develop the question
2. Find right report
3. Set correct time-frame
4. Display relevant metrics
5. Configure The Graph
6. Sort appropriately
7. Sub-relate (optional)
8. Compare or Trend
9. Wish for more data/relations
10. Print
11. Email
12. Bookmark
13. Schedule
14. Set Alerts
15. Add to Dashboard
16. Share

What did I miss on this list? Comments appreciated.

Tomorrow we finish what we didn't today, getting through lots of sample screens and reports covering all the program basics. Next week we'll take a quick tour of the many advanced features.

Want a free seat at the class? Come work with us!