Some of the best things in life online—Twitter, YouTube, podcasts, whitepapers, ebooks, Pandora on the Blackberry, CoolIris—are free. Does a digital marketer need anything more? Not really, but in our experience digital marketers are just so darn lovable that loved ones do tend to want to shower them with gifts over the holidays.

Is someone demanding to know “what you want” this year? To spare you the effort, we’ve prepared the following list of 10 suitable gifts. All you have to do is distribute it—and maybe add on or refine in the Comments (above).

The CEO’s administrative assistant just called. The CEO wants to see you in an hour to answer some questions about your company's Web analytics.

(Just go with me on this. You can be certain that the CEO of Zappos or Apple or eTrade is intimately familiar with their business’ Web analytics. Inevitably, CEOs of asset management companies are going to take an interest, too. After all, especially over the last 12 months, there's been other fish to fry.)

You accept the “invitation” and gather up last month’s reports. But, someone other than you—in other words, someone other than who’s responsible for Web analytics—has prepped the CEO and she (please, go with me on this) fires off the following questions:

1. Which sites send the most traffic to us? Which firms? What’s been the trend lately?
2. What are the top keyword phrases people use when they come to us through search engines?
3. Are we getting much Bing traffic…what about from Twitter?
4. How are our new videos doing; are people hanging in there until the end?
5. Which of the outbound marketing tactics we use send us the “best” traffic? Substantiate your answer, with volume and conversion data.
6. We’re thinking about introducing a product that provides exposure to XXX, do users of our on-site search ever look for XXX?
7. Which customer segments are the heaviest users of the site?
8. What's our most viral content?
9. What’s our busiest time of the year? Day of the week? Time of day? What kind of a day was yesterday for us? How are we doing today?
10. What's the benefit when our investment strategists appear on CNBC? More email newsletter sign-ups? RSS feed subscriptions?

Later today, I will be one around a large dinner table, taking my turn at saying why I’m thankful. I’ll leave my personal blessings to my extended family and loved ones, but this year more than ever I feel drawn to publicly enumerate a few items that I’m thankful for professionally.

At the highest level, I’m thankful that my “occupation” is to be occupied with something I can’t get enough of. I more than like my job—I  the Internet. Working in financial services first appealed to me intellectually years ago. Rock The Boat Marketing is a self-styled crusade to help investment managers see that there’s so much more to be done online.

What I practice, what I advocate, what I believe is influenced by a motley collection—let’s call it a cornucopia—of companies, Web sites, bloggers, podcasters and other innovators I’ve serendipitously came across online. (While I still engage with companies and people in the physical world, I really need to verify them on the Web before I can muster up any enthusiasm. Really, am I alone in this? I don’t think so.)

Today, I’m stopping to give thanks for these five:

“Why do we need analytics? We already know that the Web site is bad!”

That’s a question we’ve heard a few times in response to a recommendation that Google Analytics be added pronto to a Web site due for a redesign. A design of any Web site—no matter how dated or clunky—is going to be disruptive to your loyal visitors. Here’s what reknowned content guru Gerry McGovern wrote last year about redesigns:

A website redesign approach is usually embraced by organizations who are reacting to the fact that their websites have fallen into disrepair...[A website redesign] approach is papering over the cracks. The cracks are a lack of resources to professionally manage the website on a day-to-day basis. The cracks are a lack of genuine customer focus, and a lack of continuous testing and evolution.

But if you’re committed to a redesign and don’t yet have analytics in place, adding analytics is a step toward focusing on the customer. No doubt the goal of the redesign is to deliver a more valuable experience for your site visitor. What’s valued now? What do you know to be of value on your site but isn’t being found? These are two of countless questions that analytics can answer as a basis for organizing the information on the new, improved site.

While in search for something else the other day, I came across Data Driven Design: Using Web Analytics to Improve Information Architectures, a 10-page document written by Andrea Wiggins, a Ph.D. student. Wiggins presents the scholarly argument for why we need analytics when approaching a redesign.