Hi,
I am a recent grad. in Economics but I have shifted my interest to online marketing and e-commerce lately. So I built a couple of ecommerce and blog websites and found the statistics side of it is very intriguing. I’m now working for my site full time but would love to learn more about it, and maybe to find real employment in the field.
I googled some programs related to web analytics/intelligence. and found this one Web Analytics Courses and Training 100% Online - UBC Award of Achievement in Web Analytics.
My question is with this degree what I can do afterwards and what career path will it lead me to? And if this skill set is in demand right now?
Could anyone throw me some thoughts or ideas or review this program for a no-IT like me?
I really don’t think that degree will get you anywhere. Of course, you might get lucky and get hired by Amazon or Ebay (which I doubt). So in my opinion, this skill is NOT in demand and I’d expect getting a job that requires this skill will be incredible difficult.
It sounds to me like you are considering a career change and you’re looking for ways to better target your skills and experience at online marketing/commerce. The economics degree, in my view, is a pretty good foundation for such a career and getting that certificate/award would at least give you a reasonable credential towards your chosen career path. Combined with your experience running your own sites, I think it could work well.
There are lot of ways to target your resume/skills/experience, but the great thing about the certificate route is that it’s easy, not particularly expensive, and lends some credibility since it’s from a ‘real’ institution.
Web analytics/metrics is booming like crazy right now, although really that’s just a function of the increasing amount of ‘data’ from things like social networking and more sophisticated and well funded marketing expertise right now. I’m currently consulting to a startup and they just hired someone who’s sole job is to come up with interesting and useful marketing metrics from the data that is harvested from their new product.
So, I think it’s worth considering although you might want to get more clarity on exactly where you hope your career will go over the near term.
Thank you very much for your prompt reply. It surely helps me ascertain myself of the choice I made. Although it sounds to me like I am still a bit up in the air and not sure where to go yet after this. I just let my heart decide what I want to learn and hopefully it will lead me somewhere in the end. This I will have to figure it out once I’m done with the course.
