Web Analytics Education Opportunities

Web Analytics adoption is gaining momentum but there is a lack of skilled web analysts, according to a report by Aberdeen Group
“Web analytics usage has reached mainstream status with 82% adoption among companies surveyed recently by Aberdeen. However, a vast range of maturity exists regarding analytics process, data analysis and corporate understanding of web metrics. A fundamental impediment precluding many companies from building a successful analytics program is a lack of skilled employees required to manage, distribute and analyze web analytics.”

This is exactly what I predicted earlier this year in my “Predictions for 2007”, I wrote:
"There will be a lot more jobs in this [web analytics] field in 2007. A great year for those who are planning to enter this field or looking to move into better jobs in this field. Most marketing jobs will have web analytics as a requirement. Currently there are 1024 open job on Indeed.com but I expect this number to rise as there will lot more openings than qualified candidates."

Since then I have been covering about Web Analytics Job market and, as I predicted, the open web analytics positions are up from those listed on January 1st. On July 1st, “Web Analytics” jobs listed on indeed.com were up 54.79% from Jan 1st numbers (All the past articles on Web Analytics Job market are filed under Web Analytics Jobs on this blog). I expect to see even higher number of open positions in coming months.

So how do companies and aspiring web analysts educate themselves if they want to learn about Web Analytics? This question is answered by the two part reports titled “Web Analytics University” (Part 1 and Part II) by Aberdeen Group. In this report they have reviewed all the educational opportunities currently available.

According to these reports, there are four educational avenues currently available

• Vendor Sponsored Programs
• Analytics Consultants, Blogs and Guru Sessions
• Community Forums & Industry Associations
• Academic Programs

I was flattered to see my blog listed in “A sampling of prophetic blogs and bloggers”. The blogs listed in this list are

Lies, Damned Lies… (Ian Thomas)
Occam’s Razor (Avinash Kaushik)
WebAnalytics.be Blog (Aurelie Pols)
Web Analysis, Behavioral Targeting and Advertising (Anil Batra)
VisualRevenue - Web Analytics & Affiliate Marketing blog (Dennis R. Mortensen)
Web Analytics Demystified Weblogs (Eric T. Peterson & Judah Phillips)
Web Metrics Guru (Marshall Sponder).

Master of Science in Analytics

Now you can get a graduate Degree in Analytics, according to this report,
“A new program launching this month by North Carolina State University’s Institute for Advanced Analytics will offer a Master of Science in Analytics (MSA) degree. Program director Dr. Michael Rappa believes that the best education he can provide is a foundation of analytics that will span online and offline channels and enable graduates to contribute to building the business processes that make up a foundation for an analytics culture within
an organization.”
“Although the program prerequisites include general subjects such as calculus and statistics, Rappa found that nearly 60% of prospective students already had advanced degrees, including 1/3 that were already MBAs. Out of the hundred applicants that bid for the inaugural class, 25 were enrolled, which is astronomical for the first year of a new degree program according to Rappa. What’s even more astounding is that major corporations are already seeking to hire the entire graduating class, even before admitting the first student!”.

This is pretty cool, I was not even aware of this program.

Great reports!!! I highly recommend these reports to all those who want to learn about web analytics.

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