Let’s face it – classroom-based training is not the end-all be-all of corporate learning.  While I do believe that classrooms have their place in corporate training environments (especially when we’re learning the fundamentals of some new idea, skill, or technology), they are limited in their usefulness.  As adults, we’ve learned how to educate ourselves, and we do so on the fly, as needed for our work and our lives.

Classroom-based training, then, is only ever part of the solution.  We need refreshers, since we can’t remember everything we learned in the class.  We need additional information that the class did not provide.  And we need what is known in the industry as “just-in-time” training (which I really think is just-in-time education) that explains what we need to know when we need to know it.

At WebTrends, we provide a good amount of just-in-time education for our customers.  I’ve found, though, that many of the participants in my classes don’t know where to find it, so I thought I’d summarize what I think are some of our best offerings here.  And for those of you who are not WebTrends customers, I provide links to some excellent resources for you at the end of this post.

Learn as you Go Education for WebTrends Customers

As WebTrends customer you have access to the Customer Center.  The Customer Center provides online access to all our documentation, white papers, and web-based training modules.

I find that this information splits fairly neatly into two categories:  Technical know-how (that is, all the how-to stuff), and Optimization know-how (that is, all the what-should-we-do-and-why stuff).  Let me point you in the direction of some of my favorites in each category as well as some crossover documents. You will need to be logged in to WebTrends in order to access these files.

Technical Know-How Faves

1. All the Resources! – Honestly, the documentation you’ll find under Product Documentation is very useful and handily organized.  Obviously, the Administration User’s Guide (which can be downloaded as one great document or as separate chapters) is where any tech user wants to start, but there are a number of other good how-to documents there.  We have implementation guides for software and On Demand, an entire piece on SmartReports, and lots of other documents.  It’s worth getting familiar with what’s out there.
2. Complimentary Web-based Training – Quite a bit of our complimentary online training deals with how-to issues.  “Deploying the Tag,” for example, is  very helpful for those of you who are responsible for getting SDC set up on your web site.  There are also short flash videos about using various parameters correctly:  content group, campaign, scenario analysis, etc.  “Tracking Flash” is one that’s becoming more popular, and I expect many tech types will be checking it out in the near future.

Optimization Know-How Faves

1. WebTrends Guide to Web Analytics – This is by far the best starter how-to document we have for business users of WebTrends Analytics.  Available under Product Documentation, this guide provides information on how WebTrends Analytics works and how to use WebTrends to collect and analyze the data you need.  You can download the complete document from the Complete Document Library as well.
2. WebTrends Analytics Reports Users Guide – This document is the how-to guide that teaches business users to navigate the user interface, modify reports on the fly, and export reports.  It’s a great basic-level introduction to the Analytics tool.  You’ll find it in Product Documentation as well.
3. SmartView User’s Guide – If you’re not using SmartView or don’t know what it is, take the time to download this document.  It’s not long, and it’ll give you all the information you need to start using our site overlay reporting tool – something I honestly think no web analyst should be without!  Go to Product Documentation to find the document.
4. Complimentary Web-based Training – Under Training in the Customer Center, you’ll find a slew of complimentary web-based short educational offerings.  I recommend the first six under Setting Up WebTrends for Success for the business user of analytics who is not familiar with WebTrends and/or web analytics in general.  In all, watching these six flash items will take about half an hour and will give you a good overview of the web analytics world and WebTrends’ place in it.

Crossover Know-How Faves

1. WebTrends User Groups – If you have a support contract, you have access to our User Forums.  Take advantage of the expertise out there; ask a question and get a number of expert answers!  Looking through the past posts can also give you some good ideas about what you might want to track using WebTrends and how to set it up.
2. Tracking Conversion and Abandonment through Scenario Analysis – This document is, as of this writing, the most popular of our White Papers and Guides for good reason.  It explains our scenario analysis reports (which are complex but very useful!), walks you through reading one, and then explains how to set up the report on the administrator’s side.
3. How Do I Measure Campaign Success? – And this one is the second most popular of our White Papers and Guides, also for good reason.  It’s also a combination of “how do I do this” and “what’s the best way to do it,” so it’s useful for the business and tech users.

If you’re not a WebTrends customer, there are some good resources available on the web.  Most of the best materials I find are on blogs, like Occam’s Razor and Web Analytics Demystified.  Both have good search functions and tags and are worth reviewing, as are more than a dozen others out there.  I usually start with these two, though, since they do a good job of putting really technical information into layperson’s terms.  And if you’re interested in a WebTrends-specific blog, check out WebTrends Outsider, a blog put together by people using WebTrends Analytics.  It’s a great resource for seeing what other people are doing with the tool and why.

I hope these resources help you get some just-in-time education, and I’d love to hear about any other resources you use on a regular basis.

Tags: education, resources, tips, webtrends training

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Best Practices, Customer Experience, Inside Webtrends, Marketing Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.