Tag Archives: metrics
Visits are a Wet Blanket
Beware How You Count Events! I am aware that a large segment of the HIPPO market advocate visit based metrics*, but honestly, one can get into trouble if he blindly adheres to “Visits are what count.” All I am saying is perhaps a little more thought should be taken in setting up and serializing events. Quick and non reflective solutions can truly lead to pain down the road. Continue reading
Segment or Die: The Mechanics of Segments
If you have not yet discovered that segments are the life blood of analytics then consider the following as a quick review of how segmentation is used to convert measures into actionable insights. In part 1 I deal with the basic survival skills of segmentation analysis. I use the much maligned and debated bounce rate metric to illustrate the mechanics of segmentation. For all others you treat this as a quick review before we get to the hard stuff. Continue reading
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
Desperately Tracking Susan: Online / Offline Behavior
Now I realize choosing a variation on a movie title that is 25 years old (gad, has it been that long) has it’s risks. But consider a want Ad now called a tweet seeking an allusive enigmatic person, think customer, and searching here and there for Madonna, obsession with connecting online and offline behavior. It seems to capture the gestalt, wouldn’t you agree? 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
The Axioms of Web Analytics
The subtitle for this is “And How Analyst and Tools Attempt to Skirt Them”. Axioms are suppose to be immutable and unchallengeable, but hey, in this day and age is there anything that does not go unchallenged. Is it possible that there is logic to Web Analytics? This argues yes – as simple as 10th grade Geometry. Continue reading
Mind Before You Mine 