Gathering Business Requirements for a Google Analytics Project. A quick Template.

Every business has unique objectives and data needs. Because of that, a good Web Analytics project should always start with an audit aimed at understanding and gathering these unique business requirements.

Infact, it´s only by capturing the objectives of the website/online business that we will be able to create and implement an effective measurement plan and eventualy take action on data. Using Avinash Kaushik words:

There is one difference between winners and losers when it comes to web analytcs. Winners, well before they think data or tool, have a well structured Digital Marketing & Measurement Model. Losers don´t.

In this post I suggest a simple and quick template that will help you capturing business and technical requirements for a web analytics project. And so being able, later, to develop an implementation plan.  I am in particular thinking about digital analysts/agencies who offer Google Analytics consulting services to their clients.

Free Analytics Education? My Personal Development Plan for 2014

It seems that 2014 will be a great year for analytics professionals. It's not me saying that, but several authoritative sources in the world business. To mention a few of them:

• according to research company Gartner, over the next two years, by 2015, there will be 4.4 million big data jobs available; and just a third of them will be successfully filled.
• data scientist is gonna be the sexiest job of the century, according to Harvard Business Review. Earlier in 2009,  H. Varian (chief economist @Google) said pretty much the same during an interview talking about statisticians.  
• Forbes states that 2014 is gonna be the year of Digital Marketing Analytics and companies need to get prepared for that (if they want to win more shares of the market).
• while many other sources emphasize the importance of relevant education to fill the talent gap in analytics.

For us, digital analysts, I guess this is all great news. But the other EVEN NICER NEWS - and that's the topic of this post - is that lot of this analytics education is freely available through the internet. Ever heard about MOOCs? I have taken a couple of those courses, and beside the zero cost required to enroll, the QUALITY was the thing impressed me the most. A couple of my previous posts actually came from some fantastic assignments I was given as part of the courses.

Going back to 2014, I'd like to suggest 3 courses starting right this month. I have enrolled to all of them, they look very promising and hopefully will be able to complete them all.

1) Google Analytics Platform Principles
2) Making Sense of Data
3) Doing Journalism with Data