Web Analytics, What a Surprise!

May 27th, 2008

Web Analytics, What a Surprise!
By Jenna Hitchcock
OSU MKTG 754 Student
Guest Blog Post

My computer nerd selfI have always thought of myself as being somewhat of a computer nerd. As my family and friends can attest, I spend the majority of my free time online, whether I am on surfing Facebook, chatting on AIM, stalking the stars on movie websites, or just checking my email.  My job is also related to computers.  In short, I spend a lot of time on computers and I love it!

When I saw that there was an electronic marketing course offered at OSU and that there was still space in the course, I was, needless to say, quite excited. I had it in my mind that we would be learning how to put together an online marketing campaign, like advertisements and banners. I figured that the class would be a fun mixture of creativity and art and computers. What I never saw coming was that the course would be a mixture of analysis (not art) and computers.Surprise! Web Analytics!

When we first received the syllabus via email, I briefly scanned it and observed the reading list. Web analytics? Organic and paid searches? What?!  I was as surprised as Lucille Ball pictured to the right. Alright, maybe not that surprised, but I was quite nervous to take a course on a subject I had never even heard of before.

The first few weeks of the class were, well, interesting. I had a hard time learning the lingo and grasping on to concepts that I had not expected to learn. Also, the course is totally taught in a way that I have not experienced at OSU, very hands on, figure-it-out-on-your-own type of course. I was surprised how this course just threw us out in the water and told us to swim back to shore.  Luckily we were provided with floaties.

I suppose what surprised me most about this course was how useful and effective web analytics really is.  I had never thought about how a company’s position on Google could totally alter how many people visited their page and thus their profit.  Maybe even more surprising was when I realized how much I had actually grown to like Google Analytics, who would have thought KAIs and KPIs would become my friend?  Search engine marketing and this course has definitely opened my eyes to the possibilities of improving one’s company via the internet.  �

Posted in Ohio State University Fisher College of Business, Web Analytics.

 

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