The Research Committee of the DAA commissioned a study which was completed in March 2008 and addressed three questions:

• What is the task profile of the different roles/jobs within the Web Analytics Community and what is the compensation structure for each job?
• To what degree are differences in compensation due to location, industry, company size, company analytics maturity, analytics role, and individual experience?
• How much job-hopping occurs within the web analytics community and what are the drivers of that mobility?

Although we might all use similar web analytics tool sets, it isn't clear that we are all doing the same things. As part of this study, we identified typical roles within our profession, each with its own unique assortment of tasks. For each of these roles we developed salary ranges. This task-based role definition is one of the unique deliverables of this study and facilitates more meaningful compensation comparisons.

The survey was open to all members of the web analytics community globally. A third-party research firm, The Dihedral Group, LLC, conducted the survey and provided the analysis. From over 500 responses, we were learned the following:

• There is a lot of variation in the types of jobs requiring web analytics expertise. Trying to cluster jobs just based on the various tasks performed was not effective.
• Factors such as company type, size, location, years of experience, employment status have strong influences on what we do. A model based on all the factors in the survey responses revealed 4 clusters of web analytics community members.
• The median 2007 total compensation was $88,500 for all respondents spending at least 25% of their time working on web analytics.

The report is divided into 3 parts:

• Study Overview [ 6.9M PDF]
• Web Analytic Profiles [ 628K PDF]
• Web Analytics Compensation Study [ 7.2M PDF]

A separate report on mobility of web analysts has also been published as part of this project.

Interested in Participating on the Research Committee?

Contact Christopher Berry and Amanda Watlington, Research Committee Co-Chairs to participate.