Posted by Andrew Edwards on June 20th, 2011 at 11:47 am

Yes, I am a founder of the WAA. I formed it with Jim Sterne and Bryan Eisenberg in the far distant past--before Google Analytics! Before Facebook! Before Twitter! Back then it was the former CMO of WebTrends and WebSideStory, Rand Schulman, who got the three of us together and fomented the idea we found an organization solely devoted to the success of web analytics as a discipline. I have not been directly involved with the WAA in several years so please be assured there is no agenda behind my plugging membership.

That is, except for the five reasons listed below.

1. There is no comparable organization for the web analytics professional.

Can you say "only game in town"? If so, then you will understand why it's critical to put yourself in a position to enjoy the benefits of membership. It is the premiere organization in the field. It is now several years old and has, I believe, at least a couple of thousand members. Can you walk into an interview regarding a web analytics position and gain credibility by wearing a WAA pin (hopefully because you are a member not a pretender)? Or demonstrating your involvement in the organization? I think that is a "yes". Really, there is no other group devoted to your success as a web analytics pro, and how many more reasons do you need [except the following 4]?

2. Education and Certification.

For several years the WAA has offered courses through the University of British Columbia and UCIrvine in California. Would it be a great idea to get certified for educational achievements in Web Analytics? Would it be helpful to receive a Web Intelligence Certificate? If you're not a member and are looking to make a move into this unusual, burgeoning industry, I would think either of these options might be of tremendous help. Plus, there are no small number member-only webinars, base-camps and other knowledge-enhancing events, all available to the member, that round out the skill-set of the web analytics professional.

3. Networking with the Right Crowd.

It's one thing to get to an event devoted to web analytics only (much like Jim Sterne's own E-Metrics confabs), which are rare enough. It's another to meet people in your own community who share your concerns, can enhance your knowledge of latest trends, share with them plenty of useful scuttlebutt, and trade business cards as colleagues in the fight for analytics truth. You will be amazed at how similar many of the stories are, especially the simmering frustration of having to work with so-called "practitioners" and "agencies" that say they do web analytics but really don't or can't. No doubt attendance at each one of these events (for instance Web Analytics Wednesdays--these days loosely affiliated with the WAA--held in places as diverse as Philadelphia and Estonia) will send you back with a nugget of information or a contact that will be most helpful.

4. Best Practices.

Web Analytics should not be a tossed salad of random reports, incorrect tagging exercises, tool-switches, inaccurate minutiae, vendor blather, tomato, scallion and lack of follow-through. While this space is too small to get into what Web Analytics Best Practices looks like, be assured that the WAA "gets" that WA is a process that roughly corresponds (in laypersons' terms) to: knowing what your business needs to know about web activity; making sure experts are involved in getting the tools to work; communicating the success/failure of whatever is being measured; changing the content that didn't work no matter where it came from or who might yell about changing it; and repeating the measurements again to confirm success. The folks you'll encounter in the WAA may have their own take on which flavor of best practices they prefer, but they won't tell you to just drop a tag in the header and take a nap.

5. Community Resources.

On the WAA web site there are links to valuable research papers, blogs, books, white papers and even a Career Center. Another sidebar links to WAA symposiums, webinar calendars and more. The more you are immersed in critical WA resource data, the more likely you will grow your own organic sense of how to build a web analytics practice inside your company--or you may make a decision to move to a company that embraces web analytics more thoroughly than the one you're currently at. Deep involvement in the most up-to-date information, plus peer-knowledge-sharing, plus education, plus hanging out at cocktail hour with industry heavies, all adds up to the type of three-dimensional experience that builds a professional not just in web analytics but any field.

Finally, the entire WA effort is about making digital marketing a better and more accountable success story. Would you like to be on the side of the people who know how it's supposed to work--and can execute? Or would you prefer to watch your less-well-informed colleagues or managers run the analytics express off the rails and into the ravine? How many times have you wondered what would happen if the world really woke up to using web analytics the way it ought to be used--as a holistic system for improvement--rather than just a "checkmark" on a list of rote tasks?

If you would like to be on the side of good web analytics, go ahead and join. Often enough your employer may even pay for it (just a suggestion!). And even if you have to pony up yourself, it makes perfect good sense to do so, since then your membership travels with you wherever you end up.

When you do join, tell them I said hi!