Whenever we take on a new employee, an internal battle of epic proportions ensues within me. This battle does not feature Custer, Germans or Russell Crowe, but instead two pre-school concepts. Do I give a new employee the skill to connect the dots in order to see the whole picture or just have them color by number?
In the second scenario the newbie doesn't need to know what the picture is of to be productive, but you can also expect their learning process to be significantly slower. So when you take on a new employee what training technique or mix of techniques should you undertake? The easy answer seems to be to connect the dots before setting them free, but that is easier said than done.
Calling the process of teaching a newcomer to web analytics all the pieces necessary to do a good analysis is time consuming would be a massive understatement. And, I'll go out on a limb here, your probably already busy with your own web analytics responsibility. I will not claim to have perfected a seamless training plan, but in my experience I have found that starting with a simple, quick connecting the dots exercise can have great benefits. This exercise is best suited for a computer with a multiple monitor setup (the more the better), but its worth doing even if that is not available.
Start by pulling up instances of the source code of a tagged web page, the web page itself (possibly with a data overlay if your analytics tool has one), the online interface of your web analytics tool and the Excel reporting tool (if your tool has one). For bonus points you can also pull up an instance of the site with a packet sniffer tool overlay, like Page Engage or Charles.
To begin go to the site window and physically do something on the site. Start simple with a something like a link click or search. Then work backwards to the source code and painstakingly slowly point out what in the source code is pushing out the web analytics data. Especially if your trainee is completely new to web analytics, don't expect much to about source coding to stick. Even if only 5% of the words you say regarding source coding actually resonate, it is still worth both of your time to lay the foundation.
Next leap forward to your web analytics tool and show exactly where the data you just generated is located. Presumably you have already introduced the interface of the web analytics tool to your trainee, but if not this is a good point to walk them through the basics of navigation. When showing him/her where the metric you generated is located go slow, step by step through the interface hierarchy. Don't just click through to the metric, but explain why the metric is hidden behind each layer of the hierarchy. You'll probably sound silly to yourself and possibly your trainee as you go layer by layer, but this should not only make the metrics location stick but should allow the trainee to reason through the location of future metrics.
Finish off by building an Excel data block that pulls the metric that you initially generated with your on site action. Obviously if this is your trainees first exposure to the Excel integration tool that should be an introduction to how to build data blocks as it is how to get the specific metric. Focus on explaining the difference and similarities of navigation to the metric in the context of the web interface. After going through this process with one metric, step up the difficulty ever so slightly do all the same steps again with a prop/evar/event/custom metric or something along those lines. As you go through the process make special notes about the significance of the prop/evar/custom metric and why the metric you're using was tagged that way. Metric three should be something like a campaign or product purchase. I like to conclude the lesson by letting the trainee go through the steps on his/her own. Like fiber, appropriately timed self guided learning has strong digestive powers. Sure this exercise does nothing teach a newbie the basics of doing an analysis or building a meaningful report, but even da Vinci leaned how to connect the dots before painting the Mona Lisa or something like that.
Comments