Those of you planning to take the Omniture Certified Professional: SiteCatalyst exam may have become frustrated by the lack of information online regarding what to expect from the test.  Adobe/Omniture recommends attending a two day SiteCatalyst User Training course at Omniture University as part of your exam preparation.  For those of you unable to attend the course, here’s everything you need to know in order to pass – from a guy who failed on his first attempt (76.4%).

First, a few the relevant links to the information provided on Omniture’s Site regarding the Omniture Certified Professional (OCP) program as a whole, and the SiteCatalyst (SC) exam in particular:

Omniture Certified Professional: SiteCatalyst overview

Omniture Certified Professional: SiteCatalyst Exam Guide

The basics (straight from Omniture):

The ACP: SiteCatalyst exam consists of 70 multiple choice questions, equally weighted. The exam content is based on SiteCatalyst v14.6. The exam time allowance is 3 hours. You will receive an immediate score on the test, informing you whether or not you passed. A minimum score of 80% is required to pass the exam.

You can retake this exam 2 times.  Each exam attempt will incur a separate fee.  You may register a 2nd time 14 day(s) after you complete your first test event.  If you complete on your 2nd test event you can register a 3rd time after 14 day(s).

A couple of relevant items from the Omniture FAQ:

Q. Do I need to attend the courses?

A. Course attendance is strongly encouraged.  Each certification exam is based on content covered in detail during the applicable training course (as described on the Web site), therefore, choosing not to attend the course prior to taking the exam could adversely affect your chances of passing.

Q. How long do the certifications last?

A. Certification lasts 12 months or until the next major release of the product or process upon which the certification is based. Omniture University will notify current certification holders of their need to re-certify and how that process is to be achieved.

Omniture’s Exam Preparation Checklist:

• I have attended the SiteCatalyst User Training course at Omniture University.
• I have read about and studied the topics listed in this study guide in the documentation and SiteCatalyst Knowledgebase.
• I have practiced using SiteCatalyst and feel confident that I know the “ins and outs” of the product.
• I have watched the suggested training videos.

The cost to take the test is $299.  Cost of the two day SiteCatalyst User Training course is $1,800.  The course is currently offered in New York NY, Orem UT, McLean VA, and San Francisco CA (as well as the UK the Brazil).  Worth noting - my test actually consisted of only 68 questions (not 70).  For two reasons, I recommend you not wait until the last minute to review the knowledgebase, white papers, and training videos.  First, because procrastination is bad.  Second, because I received “page not available” errors for all help topics, PDF links, and training videos on the site the night before my exam.

Exam setup

I’m not sure whether these rules are defined by Omniture, your local testing facility, or a combination of the two.  I took the test at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.  My experience was as follows:

Before taking the test, I was required to provide:

• My driver’s license
• 1 additional form of ID (a credit card was acceptable)
• The test taker authorization code from my Adobe Certified Professional Test Confirmation email

Prior to entering the testing room, I was given:

• 2 pencils
• 3 sheets of blank paper (which had to be handed in at the end of the test)
• 3 page document listing the default SiteCatalyst Report Navigation Menu (which had to be handed in at the end of the test)

The following items were not permitted in the testing room:

• Watches
• Any food or drink
• Briefcases or bags
• Jackets

Cell phones were permitted as long as they were turned off (not to worry; there were no questions on the test regarding Android or iPhone SiteCatalyst Apps!)

The format of the test itself

The exam is computer based.  Before taking the test you will be warned not to attempt to access the internet, and not to click the submit button until you have answered all questions (don’t worry; you still have to confirm after clicking submit).  You will be presented with one question at a time, for which there will be 5 possible answers (A, B, C, D, and E).  Above the questions is a timer that continually counts down your three hour time allotment.  Note: three hours is quite a bit of time for a test containing 70 multiple choice questions - time should not be a factor.  You will have the option to skip questions, go back, and check a box indicating you would like to review the question at a later time.

At any time, you can click a button to “review all”, which will bring you to a screen indicating the number of questions you have answered, the number you have not yet answered, and provide a numeric list of questions with your associated answer letter(s).  Questions you have marked for later review will be identified with an asterisk.

Many of the questions will require you to select more than one response.  In those cases, you will be informed how many responses you are to select (e.g., choose two of the following).  In other words, I did not encounter any questions requiring me to select all that apply.  I also did not encounter any questions that included responses such as “All of the above”, “None of the above”, “A and B”, etc.

The types of questions to expect

The test focuses mainly on your ability to set up and distribute reporting.  I was disappointed to see very few questions focusing on data interpretation and answering business questions.  You should make sure you memorize the data and default setup for all reports – in real life you’d simply update them to include the data you want, but not knowing the defaults can cause you to miss questions on the exam.  Based on the topics I encountered during the test, you should be prepared to answer questions covering the following areas:

• Several questions will contain screen shots from SiteCatalyst and will require you to answer business questions based on the data, or to identify the results of taking certain actions (e.g., clicking on the magnifying glass next to a country name in the Visitor Profile > GeoSegmentation > Countries report).  These questions comprised a smaller portion of the test than I expected – approximately 10 questions in my case.
• It’s worth knowing whether you can update the colors of the lines on a trended graph
• Where page elements are in relation to each other.  If asked where a user would select a report suite, I would answer “in the dropdown at the top left of the page” – the test answer was that it was below the SiteCatalyst logo
• Who can update the currency in your reports (and where this is accomplished)
• How “Internet Average” is calculated (as it pertains to web browser usage)
• Functioning of calendar events, and whether they can all be disabled
• Use and uploading of targets
• Distribution of alerts, as well as when and why they are triggered
• Distribution of reports (how your current calendar selection affects the date range that will be used for reports, whether the time you select is when the report will be sent or when processing to create the report will begin)
• The difference between “Copy Me” and “On Report”
• Everything there is to know about calculated metrics – how to create them, where they will be visible, who will be able to view them, whether they become the default metric for the report in which they were created, etc.
• How to upload revenue goals
• Whether the options (Excel, CSV, PDF, etc.)  for “download report” are the same as those for “email report”
• Use of Data Extract
• Use of Direct Access (I encountered several of these), including what type of information can be accessed via this feature
• Everything about dashboards – creation (how many reportlets can be added, types of reportlets, adding KPI gauges, whether reportlets can have different date ranges, the easiest way to update date ranges on a dashboard ,whether a dashboard can have reportlets from multiple report suites), sharing, and automated delivery
• Use of and access to bookmarks
• Questions regarding the meaning of “single action”
• How visits are calculated, and what causes a visit to end (the default period of inactivity that causes a visit to end, whether closing the browser ends the visit, whether leaving the site and returning within a specified time period results in a new visit, etc.)
• How SC determines GeoSegmentation
• How SC determines unique visitors and the differences between various types of unique visitors (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, etc.)
• How the use of a conversion metric (rather than the default “instances”) affects the data shown in the Referring Domains and Original Referring Domains reports
• Use of the Fallout report
• Use of the Pathfinder report
• Exit links and pages (and their affect on visits)
• Which report shows the most detail regarding any specific page on your site
• Use of the Pages Not Found report
• How sorting by a new metric will affect the graph of a trended report
• Whether you can use the calendar to create custom unique visitor timeframes
• Use of “Compare Dates” in the calendar
• Use of the in-report search bar vs. the SC header search bar
• Use of Campaigns
• What report to look at if you want to GeoSegment and include both states (U.S.) and provinces (Canada)
• Why you would use the Key Visitors report
• Features available in ClickMap (whether it only works on html sites, whether it can trend differences as a page changes over time, whether information other than clicks can be displayed, etc.)
• SC changes that can be made by the end user vs. your admin vs. your Omniture rep/Client Care
• Ability to interpret data from the conversion funnel
• Use of publishing lists
• How correlations work and the effect of correlating multiple reports

Types of questions I did not encounter:

My test did not contain questions regarding any of the following:

• SAINT, VISTA rules, ASI slots, etc. 
• Direct questions regarding the differences between eVars, s.props, and events 
• Discover, Data Warehouse, Test & Target, etc. (this is the SiteCatalyst exam, after all) 
• Mobile or Video reports 
• Marketing Channels reports 
• Network Acceleration Timeouts 

Well, that’s everything.  At this point, you should have a much better idea of what to expect from (and therefore how to prepare for) the OCP: SiteCatalyst exam.

Good luck!

David George

Senior Analytics Account Manager

MaassMedia, LLC

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