Web Analytics Salary Guide
Our clients and candidates frequently ask for reliable salary guidelines for web analytics professionals. We have always directed people to the Web Analytics Association's survey and research conducted by Web Analytics Demystified. Even though we disagree with a lot of what both say, both are very credible sources and they were the only games in town.Over the Labor Day weekend I dipped into our Salesforce database and came up with our own Web Analytics Salary Guide. I realize that we are opening ourselves up to the type of criticism and scorn that these two previous attempts have received, but we have the data and everyone keeps asking for it… so I thought we would just put it out there and see what happens.A few notes before we hand over the numbers:Definition of a Web Analyst: Candidates that have X years of experience utilizing enterprise web analytics tools. Candidates in the guide cross over technical (implementation-focused), reporting/dashboarding and analysis.Web Analysts may have other skills and experience, but we are using only their number of years of web analytics experience. Obviously candidates that have years of complementary skills and experience brought the average up in most cases… while candidates that have just web analytics experience brought the average down.Salaries: These are base salaries and do not reflect bonuses or other forms of compensation & benefits.Methodology for determining salaries: We charted the current salaries of a minimum of 10 candidates at each experience level (years & titles) in each market and calculated the average.In a few cases we did not have enough data (did not have at least 10 candidates' salary info for each experience level). In these cases we did cost of living adjustments from cities where we did have all of the data. We used the average cost of living differential from three different calculators.Salaries were rounded to the nearest $1,000.Markets: We tried to keep the info confined to the specific city (not the outlying areas) as much as possible. Approximately 80% of the candidate data that we accumulated was from the proper city with some of the outlying professionals creeping in about 20% of the time.Important: These are just averages. These are averages for professionals with a broad range of experience. The only thing that we looked at was their title and their number of years of web analytics experience. There are MANY factors that would make any one of these numbers too high or too low for a given position. Many of the candidates used in this research have years of experience in addition to their web analytics experience. This clearly impacted their salary levels and each employer will value this experience differently.The professionals used in this guide are all full time web analytics professionals except for the VP's. There are simply not enough VP-level web analytics professionals in the marketplace. The professionals used at the VP-level have all held web analytics positions and work in some VP-level analytics role currently. Many work in departments such as: BI, customer analytics, marketing analytics, advanced analytics, etc. All have responsibility and oversight that INCLUDES web analytics currently.Titles that include the words "Senior, Executive, Global, Associate" were lumped together. In other words, Senior Directors, Executive Directors and Associate Directors were all treated as Directors.
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How to use this information:Don't:
- Charge into your boss's office and say, "Look at this - I am underpaid by X$." There are many factors that go into determining the salary levels for positions. The additional (non web analytics) skills and experience, the vertical / industry, the amount of revenue derived through the web channel, the size of the team, the location (cost of living), the bonus and benefit structures, history of salaries in the department, etc. etc. etc.
- Use this to set the salary for your web analytics positions. For all the same reasons listed above. This can certainly be used as a general guide and you can move upward or downward based on the specific criteria for the role.
Do:Chat about this with your friends and colleagues, compare notes and give us your feedback. We would like to fine tune this and make the information more useful in the future, so feedback will be most appreciated.
