For quite a while now I've been of the opinion that many "Web Analytics" focused analysts are well...too focused on web analytics. Looking at web analytics alone without the greater context of the marketing environment is not only myopic and shortsighted, but it can be very dangerous. Don't get me wrong....web analytics play an integral role in measuring the impact of marketing, however utilizing ad-server data on its own as well as SEM data on its own and all of the other traffic drivers are equally important. Too often it appears that web analysts are so focused on using their web analytics tool that they omit other useful and often better tools for specific tactics.

The other major flaw (in my opinion) is the search for a holy KPI. It seems that people spend days or weeks just trying to define the one killer KPI that they miss out on the big picture. I was reading a post on the benry blog where they were searching for the killer KPI that would measure engagement or "content effectiveness" as they put it, and they ended up up with a formula of "bounce rate / time on page." At first glance it sounds interesting, but they go on to prove the uselessness of this additional metric. They lay out the four combinations of high and low for each component and explain the scenarios and allude to what actions would evolve from the results. However, they land on a net effect of where bounce rate is high you have a problem, therefore why use a mashup KPI? Now I don't disagree with the search for better KPIs, but it seems that the search for the holy grail metric can cloud the analysts' judgment into missing the fact that they had the metric they needed in the first place.