SES San Jose - Analyzing the Web Site Analytics Players

August 23rd, 2007

Analyzing the Web Site Analytics Players - Now Called "Issues in Analytics" - SES San Jose 2007 - Day Four
by Laura Thieme

John Marshall, CTO of Market Motive - newly founded by Avinash Kaushik, John Marshall and Michael Stebbins, whom all were with ClickTracks.

This was a new session that I genuinely enjoyed.  It was sparsely attended, but that is not unusual for Thursday morning sessions as many have departed from SES by that time.  I was anxious to see what John and Avinash had to say.

John Marshall talked about some assumptions we make with analytics if we are running PPC ads, and are using a modern web analytics tool as opposed to using freeware such as Analog or AW stats.  ROI breakage, cookies and cookie deletion were not covered in this session.  John covered everything that can happen with just one click and how it can can look so different on the analytics software tool, versus the data in a CPC/PPC ad console.  We click an ad for example, "fresh fruit", in Google Sponsored Links.  Google counts the click, then the server responds back to the browser and redirects to destination URL of the site.  It’s a 301 redirect.  There are numerous errors that could occur in the interpretation.  Already you might have a 1% error because the browser could drop the redirect. 

Mobile browsers often don’t send the referrer at all, and it’s the browser’s responsibility to do this.  The browser needs to do a DNS lookup and now the browser has to pull this data.  DNS entry would not be in the cache.  The end destination depends on the ISP.  The advertiser can’t control what the searcher’s ISP is doing.  So there could be a 1% DNS lookup failure rate, or more.  Site redirects to hide tracking URLs.   This could cause a lot of problems as well.  THe logfile based solution could add a 5% error.  Javascript is actually more accurate in tracking clicks up to this point. 

Javascript tracking grabs element and the DNS lookup on Javascript source.  Execute tracking Javascript.  DNS lookup on data collector?

Logfiles vs javascript tracking - might be ultimately more

www.marketmotive.com/anatomy - jmarshall@marketmotive.com

Largest contributor to error is the actual implementation of Javascript tracking.  Also suggested we watch for redirection - it’s not always accurately implemented and tracking.

Great book - Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Eric Enge - Stone Temple Consulting

Eric started off by asking how many of us were concerned about accuracy in analytics - most of us were.  Not one person thought that analytics were 100% accurate. 

Eric showed 5 different packages, Clicktracks, Google, IndexTools, Unica, HBX.  The latter program reported the lowest number of uniques and page views compared to the other programs for the same site.  Another issue - sources of variance.  You get bad or ambiguous data, and some data is thrown out.  Packages make judgment calls.  Another issue is session tracking timeout.  Industry standard is 30 minutes but some use 15.  New SE visit starts a new session?  Clicktracks tracks every 15 minutes?? - need to verify this - Clicktracks will start a new session every time someone comes in from a search engine.  - need to verify this as well

Sources of error often implementation problems, misunderstanding the terminology.  For example, the visit URL vs the entry page URL.  Javascript placement is crucial.  The issue is the delay before the execution.  Best practice: bottom of page. 

PPC tracking scenario - cross check and calibrate, and track your orders with other tools.  Match up orders on the backend.  If you’re considering a site acquisition, use free Google Analytics or Clicktracks free version.  Cross-check the numbers and include this in your due diligence process.

Jonah Stein - Alchemist Media - installed three different tools on one website - and has compared the data. Jstein@alchemistmedia.com - Jonah was most interested in latency tracking.  Jonah must have attended Guy Kawasaki’s presentation - size 40 font for each slide.  Prices range, implementation ranges.  So you can set up the packages on your site, all of which results require a lot of assumptions and interpretation.  Are you comparing visits, unique visitors, page views as the baseline? 

Data from one tool company, that for their sakes will remain nameless here.  Orders according to one program measured 2,660, another 2,570, another said 2,624 orders.  87 orders from Index Tools showed revenue was zero.  131 orders from Clicktracks showed revenue was zero.  Two causes - authorization failure.  Also Clicktracks only captured revenue for the first transaction in a session. 

So how do you audit orders?  Unique identifier for each order, create two tables, join all that match, add all invoices unique to table 1, and all invoices unique to table 2 - and you come up with a number that is really accurate.

Avinash Kaushik - Author, Blogger, Analytics Evangelist - The Web Analytics - Inside Out in Fifteen Minutes

Data sucks so just get over it - he has a blog post that you should read - i’ll find the link.  Web Analytics an Hour A Day.  He’s also a consultant at Google, and most recently co-founded Market Motive with John Marshall (who was formerly the owner of Clicktracks).  Avinash is not a fan of web logs whatsoever.  It’s old world, black and white.  Marketers want to sell, IT folks want to protect their server.  It’s a tag world.  Javascript and other types of tags.  Packet sniffers are also possible in collecting data.  There are also hybrids where you combine a lot of things.  Most of us love javascript and favor it over other types of data collection methodologies. 

Current Players:

Indextools, WebsideStory, Unica, Microsoft, Google Analytics, Clicktracks, HBX, Coremetrics, Indextools, and Omniture.  It’s getting harder, however, to monetize web analytics because some are offering it for free such as Google and soon Microsoft.  The biggest issue in web analytics - it’s a stand alone data center that is not integrated with other data centers.  There is a lack of people investment.  Because people matter - by Jurriaan Kamp - building an economy that works for everyone. 

Web analytics is dead - by the WebTrends CEO - it’s all about marketing optimization.  HBX has custom excel reports.  Visual Sciences - God’s gift to analysis.  You can do anything you want with it.  Got retail?  Seems like they have Coremetrics.  Lifetime Individual Visitor Experience.   Indextools has not acquired anyone.  Custom reporting, anything by anything.  Enterprise class analytics for the cost of little. 

Clicktracks was purchased by J.L. Halsey - ease of use, unleashes the power of segmentation.

Unica acquired Nettracker, which allows you to do custom reporting, and allows multichannel campaign tracking. 

Microsoft will be a free tool.  Visual, free, and demographic segmentation.

Web Analytics Association has presented 26 new web analytics definitions, including building block terms, visit characterization, content characterization and conversion metrics.  I’ll find the link and post.

Posted in SES San Jose 2007.

 

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One Response to “SES San Jose - Analyzing the Web Site Analytics Players”

  1. VisualRevenue | Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2007 (Web Analytics viewpoint) Says:
    June 17th, 2008 at 9:31 am

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