Tag Archives: best practices
None Is Not An Option!
“None” is a telling symptom of a problem and “None is Not an Option” encapsulates an approach to diagnosing and resolving the problem. When reports are designed such that None is Not Option and “None” appears in a report, it becomes an important tool for diagnosing the problem. The resulting reports not only cover all user behaviors but with discipline allow the reports to address multiple questions and with extra diligence support multiple actions.
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From Worst to Best: How to Report Metrics & Measures
No issue is more controversial and yet more fundamental than visitors vs visits. Several experts have put forward strong cases for unique visitors being “the worst metric”, “wildly inaccurate”, “no basis in reality”, the methods for determining unique visitors “render the resulting numbers useless!” I have taken a fundamentally different position in what I consider my best advice to web analysis. Caught in the head lights of expert opinion, it looks like I have some “splaning” to do. So do I crash burn or do these experts even have a chance. Read on to see how I work my way out of this predicament. Continue reading
Illustration of Skirting Axioms: Unique Visitors
I have presented the 5 fundamental axioms that define web analytics in a previous blog and also have argued that analyst and tools attempt to skirt these assumptions. This provides an illustration of what can happen when a major vendor attempts to skirt one of these fundamental assumptions. Confusion ensues. Continue reading
Visitors vs. Visits
One would think that Visitors and the Visits they make would go hand in hand, but in some cases that is not true for many web analytic solutions. Visits or Sessions have their place in web analytics but not as prominently as one would think. Caution: This is a no spin zone! Let us take a new and honest look at this fundamental concept in web analytic analysis. Continue reading
Mind Before You Mine 