Measuring Success

I first wrote about web analytics accuracy in 2007 while working at Google. At that time numerous clients (big spending Google advertisers my team helped) were contacting their Adwords account managers asking why Google Analytics numbers did not match their AdWords click-through reports, or for that matter, match the other web measurement tools they were using.

Tools and helper applications I have come across as a practitioner come in two flavours: those that help you with your administration of Google Analytics – install, setup and configuration, and those that help you use or interpret reports – visualisation aides, third-party integration, segmentation help, and so forth. Often these two scenarios overlap, and marketers frequently find themselves using the same toolset as webmasters and web developers. This post is a compendium of useful tools I have used for GA administration. Regardless of your job role, all the tools listed here are straightforward to use. [ This page is an edited version of Appendix B, taken from the second edition of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics. The new book is due March 2010 ] Tools to Audit Your GATC Deployment The key to being able to improve your website is having good, solid, accurate data that you can rely [...]

Privacy on the web has always been a contentious issue, as the vast majority of users wish to remain anonymous while browsing. However, little attention has been given to the privacy of mobile phone users. Hence I was interested to read the article on mobile apps from Sarah Perez: www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dear_iphone_users_your_apps_are_spying_on_you.php Compared to computer use, mobile phones have a greater potential to infringe on your privacy for the following reasons: Mobiles are registered to a unique user (legally this is very difficult to avoid) Mobiles are rarely shared (though this is more common in Asia) No such thing as “Internet cafe for mobiles”, user almost always use their own phone Mobiles broadcast their position by triangulating with transmitters typically with an accuracy of 500m radius (though with GPS enabled phones this can be much more precise). Putting the web analytics privacy debate into perspective Since Google, Microsoft and Yahoo entered the [...]

Leaving aside the issue of privacy, is it valid to track visitors as individuals? From a marketer’s perspective, tracking individuals sounds great in theory – you understand your customers better right? But if you receive 10,000 visitors per day and have weekly marketing performance meetings, that equals 70,000 data points to discuss? Best practice is to consider longer time frames in order to mitigate against calendar anomalies i.e. weekends v weekdays, holidays, the weather, force majeure etc… So for one month that could be 280,000 data points.

This post comes in four parts:
1. Summary – there is no accuracy debate!
2. Introduction – why most of the web is junk and what role web analytics plays
3. On-site versus Off-site web analytics tools and how they work
4. Discrepancies – what’s accurate and how can accuracy be improved

This is a multi-page post
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