webtrends
Page views are dead
Page views are dead
Web analytics should begin with a plan. Unfortunately, most don’t. And the plan should start by answering the most basic of questions; why do we have a web site?
All web sites can be categorized as having one of two objectives; either to make money or to save money. Sites which make money are not only those in which shopping carts are presented. Rather, any site involved in the promotion of products or services have as their underlying purpose to increase brand awareness and encourage purchases on or offline.
Sites which attempt to make money include:
- lead generation
- brand awareness
- eCommerce
- Social networking
- Entertainment
Conversely, sites which attempt to save money are those which encourage self-service. It decreases corporate costs if web visitors can successfully download a document, register for assistance or fill in an online form rather than contacting a toll-free number and asking for the same to be done or mailed out.
Sites which attempt to save money include:
- >Customer education
- Self-service
- Customer service
- Informational
- Intranet
Understanding the objective of your site allows you to construct and establish key performance indicators (KPI) you need to track. Studying raw web analytics reports is meaningless.
Measures, which illustrate visitor behaviour and traffic volumes, are not indicators of web site success. Reports showing page views, most popular pages and visitor traffic do not indicate whether a site is performing well or not. No organization, with the possible exception of media firms, should fundamentally care if page views and visitor numbers increase. To extract real meaning from increases in raw numbers like page views or visitors it must be put into some context. That’s where KPIs come in.
Advantages of SmartSource Data Collector
Advantages of SmartSource Data Collector
More and more organizations are implementing an alternative technique to collect web site traffic information rather than relying on web server log files. This technique is called client-side data collection, or data tagging for short. Webtrends’ implementation is referred to the SDC (SmartSource Data Collector). Data tagging solves many problems associated with web server log file analysis.
Implementing data tagging requires some development work to ensure that data tags are inserted and maintained on web pages.
With data tagging, web traffic data is more accurate because traffic normally hidden by cache or proxy servers is tracked. IT administration is eased because data collection is centralized in one location versus site data being dispersed among several log files from multiple web servers that may also be geographically dispersed. And web data can be collected from specialized applications, such as application servers and browser applications (e.g. Macromedia Flash).
In short the SDC has the following advantages:
- Generates logs that are optimized for Webtrends that are as much as 90% smaller than traditional access logs.
- Produces a single centralized SmartSource file rather than separate log files for each web server. This essentially eliminates the administrative headaches associated with gathering logs from multiple, geographically dispersed web servers. The SmartSource file can even contain hits from multiple domains (the domain name can also be passed as a query parameter), allowing visitor behavior to be analyzed across an organization’s sites or even partner sites provided they permit your tags to be included on their pages.
- Provides information that is difficult or impossible to obtain with log files. For example, data tags linked to your SDC can be included in your banner ads placed on other sites. SmartSource tags can also be inserted into Flash applications, permitting a hit to be entered into the SmartSource file for each event fired in the program. This means visitor activity within Flash applications can be analyzed just like visitor interactions with HTML-based pages.
- Web traffic data is more accurate because traffic normally hidden by cache or proxy servers is tracked. In many cases, web server log files do not accurately represent the actual interactions visitors have with a web site. Proxy servers are one of several examples of how analysis results can be distorted by web server log file data collection. Proxy servers deflect page views from web servers by caching the most frequently requested pages. Local caches have a similar effect, handling browser requests through locally cached pages rather than making repeated requests to the web server. In doing so, these page views are not recorded in the web server log files.
- Creates a cookie for more accurate reporting. Cookies ensure visitors are tracked as they navigate and return (if using a persistent cookie) to your site. This enables the most sophisticated features of Webtrends such as Scenario Analysis, SmartView, Path Analysis, and Custom Reporting.
- Acts as a filter: you only tag the pages you need reporting on.
- Bots and Spiders don’t need to be filtered out and / or scrubbed from the logs resulting in more accurate reporting and requiring less CPU processing power.
- Enhancing reporting capabilities through META-tagging (i.e. tracking revenue, correlating Paid Searched Terms with conversions, …)
- Reporting on specific events within a page through the use of the dcsMultiTrack JavaScript function:
- Tracking PDF downloads
- Tracking dynamic / Web 2.0 events on pages (i.e. DHTML or any browser-supported event)
- Tracking events within Flash movies
Client-side data collection is quickly growing in popularity as the superior approach to collecting web visitor behavior information. It provides greater reporting accuracy and lower administrative overhead. Organizations should carefully analyze the costs and benefits of data tagging versus web server log file analysis, and determine which method will best meet your insight needs.
Unilytics at eMetrics in San Jose – new blog #emetrics
Unilytics at eMetrics in San Jose – new blog #emetrics
Unilytics is an offcial eMetrics sponsor
As we plan to exhibit at eMetrics in San Jose, May 5 6 and 7, I felt it was great time to introduce you to our new blog! Yes, there are lots of them out there already and we are not early to write one, but we plan to offer relevancy about our industry and company. And there’s much to talk about.
Unilytics has been in the web analytics business since 2001 and we have seen enormous change. Perhaps the biggest difference is what firms are beginning to do with analytics. And how it’s being incorporated into other corporate data silos.
It’s often not enough to understand what visitors to your web site are doing, but how else are they interacting with your company? Via customer support, in-store purchases and yes, also blogging. And they are all intricately intertwined. As your web self-service portal improves a relative drop in call center requests should be observed. An old boss of mine used to say “in technology, if you stand still for six months, you’re dead“. For the upcoming eMetrics show, we have completely changed our booth to reflect our new message, which is that incorporating other systems and their data into what web analytics provides is the key. That means tying together CRM, email marketing, call-center data and how coupons printed from the web are redeemed in stores so you get the full picture of what your customers are doing and what they need.
Unilytics is an official WebTrends partner
We are of course a huge proponent of WebTrends and are pleased to see their renewed focus on making it easier to get access to the underlying data used to create all reports. This is going to create fantastic opportunities for clients as they become better aware of all aspects and needs of their web visitors.
Peder Enhorning, President Unilytics Corporation.