Web analytics hat for all sizes!

"I believe that Web Analytics is complex, but it is also very sexy and hugely rewarding"
Avinash Kaushik author of Web Analytics An Hour a Day.

If you are nervous about making the jump or simply putting it off out of 'I don't really need it', here is your antidote:

1. Do I belong to www.?

Do yourself a favor - buy a drink and sit down to think really hard about your relationship with this seductive world at your finger tips. Be it starting your day with facebook, getting the news feed via an rss, looking up your favorite rockstar/sportstar/.. to satisfy this urgent hunger for information, booking a movie show for an evening date or posting your blog!
In my case (and I bet for many others) www. is used for all the above in addition to understanding your competition, customers, organisation's future marketing strategy and blah blah...
The 'privacy option' between you and the web in my opinion has almost vanished. These 3 little w's have an amazing ability to capture not only your mood, personal details,preferences, networks but also your customer behaviour (in both B2B and B2C envtt.) and overall market behaviour.

2. OK, I get it - but what is in it for me?

Simply put, if you are not 'tuned in' someone else is, and whoever it is, is making big bucks out of it!!
Including but not restricted to any marketing professional, strategist, entrepreneur, web enthusiast (you name any industry) are spoilt for choice with unlimited information that they can access, to do their job well.
I believe for any analyst the tough part of information is, the 'Information' itself.
To quote a live case, I have spent more than 6 years churning information to come up with meaningful results to positively impact my company's business.
In those days the common slang used was 'Marketing Analyst'(Wow! Am I getting old or what!), but today the market has shifted to the web (if not, they soon will have to, in full or in part) and hence all the action - customer attention, retention, coaxing, interacting is all here and it's the 'Web Analyst' (or someone wearing a hat of a Web Analyst, to understand a piece of the pie) who's job has just got tougher!
I call it interesting..

3. Making sense out of no-sense:

Just so you know...Web Analytics is actually much less complicated as it is generally made out to be.
Infact, in this crazy world of information there is crazy amount of order ...like in a statistical distribution..just need to get your measures right to understand it.
A good starting point could be this post by one of my favorites:
Web Analytics Demystified by Avinash Kaushik.
Also recommended:
Conversion University by Google.
Treat it more like a primer, I would pick up each topic in much detail in my following posts(Google Analytics, Adwords, SEO, SEM).

4. Stay put..how of it?

This part, I think can transform the amount of love that you have for the subject and to keep your soul hungry. It is so easy to get lost in this sea of information and loose focus and I get this a lot for me - 'Oh so what was it that I wanted out of this webinar/training/blog and million other sources)
I personally like to subscribe to selective information.
Blogs such as SearchEngineLand, Search Engine Roundtable, and SEOmoz provide current perspectives and tips, and news Web sites including DMNews.com, ClickZ.com, and WebProNews.com provide breaking news and commentary on search-engine marketing.

Depending on the informational needs of the business/analysis one can dig deeper in any given context. The important thing is to find your niche and start acknowledging your analytical instincts!