The Pre-Commerce Blog

Web Site Analytics Revisited: Numbers Numbers Everywhere

There's nothing more important than measuring how many people are coming to your web site, and what they're doing. And there's nothing more frustrating than trying to believe these numbers are 'accurate'.

The web wasn't built for precise measurement. So analytics vendors do their best to reliably capture data and overcome the many strange and unfriendly technical realities. And using a good web analytics package (meaning reading it daily not just installing it and checking overall site traffic once in a while) can improve nearly every aspect of your online business efforts.

But when you try to match what your analytics say as compared to your accounting system, or your ad server, or your CRM package, or outside services such as Comscore and Alexa, or your paid search engine reports, any other number that by all rights should line up darn near exactly, you'll find that website analytics is latin for 'a hopefully close approximation'.

Or the analytics are perfect an each of these others are screwy. Of course, since NONE of these ever seem to line up to any other, there's a pretty strong case to be made that there's plenty of blame to go around. (Excluding your accounting system of course, that one I'd believe...)

This all came to mind this morning because the 'A-List' is an uproar about a Comscore study on blog traffic and advertising, which publicly reported some numbers that challenge the assumptions of who's "A+" and who's just a lowly "A". A summary and links galore can be found on Buzzmachine.

This study was a panel study - where they asked real people what they do - so of course both the methodology and 'wetware errors' guarentee these numbers are way wrong. Jarvis of course, nails this:

My first reaction is that all this shows how messed up panel research is. This is the method used by Nielsen et al to measure TV and radio and print readership — affecting billions of ad dollars — and it is and always has been relative bullshit.

The bigger picture is that unless the basic technical mechanisms of the web change, we're all going to have to get used to the fact that web site numbers are approximate. This doesn't make them any less valuable or important. Think of them as right but not accurate. Look at all the numbers you can get from as many reasonable sources as you have, check your gut, then take some action based on the average of it all.

Web Analytics Confidence Game

Why would a major web analytics vendor want to undermine the confidence of the web site analytics market? Perhaps because they see it as a way to differentiate themselves in an increasingly crowded and competitive market. In a marketing effort that would make Frank Luntz proud, Webtrends has been orchestrating a PR campaign suggesting that cookies aren't reliable enough to use for high-end analytics. Or more directly, as summed up by a line in their own press release:

Report distortion from cookie rejection is much greater if the web analytics solution heavily relies on cookies for purchase histories or campaign responses, or, as the solution's only method to sessionize visits.

They may be right. I certainly don't know and it's very clear that all web analytics vendors have some work to do, because of the technology of the internet, to make their reports more accurate and stable. It's just the methodology by which Webtrends is propogating this 'don't trust cookies' campaign that I find interesting. A few hours ago I watched a White House Spokesman on Chris Mathews incessantly repeat the phrases 'up or down vote' and 'delay tactics' incessantly in a clear effort to shape the debate without addressing the actual issues. I'm a little surprised to see these advanced (and effective) yet somehow discomforting tactics being used to position analytics software.

Jupiter made the first splash about cookie deletion with their report a few months ago. Then there was some claims and counter-claims about the accuracy of the study, which seamed to end with support for the initial report.

Around that time, Webtrends was on a national roadshow - I attended a New York date - where they were only too happy to talk about the study and casually but in some detail go through all the issues and risks with cookies. Since then I've noticed several articles linking them to bad mouthing the cookie, until today an eMarketer article came out citing them as the source in this study of 'marketer confidence'.

I'm not sure why it matters if marketers are confident or not. It only matters if reports are accurate or not. Todays article reminds me of the MSNBC daytime polls - 'Did Micheal Jackson Take Advantage of Young Boys? - email us your thoughts' - does it matter what anyone thinks, especially while there is a jury of 12 people listening to the actual facts and arguments and making that very decision?

Seeing the report, and the blogosphere echo of it, made me realize that Webtrends had set their sites on a long term campaign to discredit cookie-based tracking. As I said, perhaps they're right and doing a service for all of us. I can say that they’ve inspired me to send an email query to our primary analytics vendor (Omniture) to get their take on the issue (I'll report here when I get an answer back).

If Webtrends is either a) right or b) able to convince everyone that they’re right, I assume that all the top tier firms would quickly support new tracking methods that don’t rely on 3rd party cookies so heavily. It’ll be interesting to watch, and to see if the ‘don’t trust cookies’ story gives Webtrends an advantage in the analytics wars.

A Patent on Counting

NetRatings has filed a lawsuit against Omniture and Coremetrics for patent infringement.

"The suits, filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware, allege both of the firms infringe on four patents relating to the collection, analysis and reporting of data concerning people's computer usage, according to the plaintiff. NetRatings claims to hold or control six patents covering work in the area, including No. 5,675,510, which relates to a "computer use meter and analyzer," and No. 5,796,952, which covers "a method and apparatus for tracking client interaction with a network resource and creating client profiles and resource database."

Yet another insane lawsuit to waste the time and money of the courts, increase costs for consumer, and help reduce the pace at which software and the internet advance. The irony is that NetRatings is also Nielson, who has proven repeatedly that counting really isn't their speciality.

Web Analytics Challenges

An article on ClickZ today calls analytics 'the bedrock of interactive marketing'. Whether this is wishful thinking or just lazy writing is unclear, but the article does include some interesting insights into the issues with applying analytics to online marketing. Some of the better quotes: * The (sic) dilemma begins when an analytics tool is plugged in, turned on and starts spitting out reports, then ends with a general lack of interest and finally dies in a fog of ennui. * True customer and business understanding does not come from online metrics alone -- they come from a combination of online data, offline data, order data, financial data, and external data. * The analytical culture is different from the general business culture at most companies. In the high accountability business model, people are driven by testing and performance-based results. * Most Web Analytics solutions provide such an overwhelming array of reports that most users cannot focus on the key metrics that drive successful outcomes. * Although the data we have is precious in terms of helping us understand visitor search behavior so that we can optimize our algorithms, finding the manpower to conduct the analysis is difficult. These insightful comments point to just some of the challenges in using analytics to make better decisions. But dispite the difficulties there really is no choice - without analytics you're flying blind.

PDF Success Metrics

Offering PDF downloads is a great way to distribute certain types of information, and the act of downloading a file is a good 'success metric' that tells you something about a users level of interest. Unfortunately it's sometimes difficult to track downloads, and requiring an email registration before enabling the download severly reduces the number of people who will download your file.

A new service from Remote Approach allows you to tag your PDF files in a way that will allow you to distirbute them freely and yet get notified when people open and read it. You'll even find out if they send it around themselves and how many subsequent readers the document gets to. (more from Yahoo News)

As a reader I might not love the idea of what documents I open being tracked - that's certainly not how we think about PDF files today. Apparently the Remote Approach software neither documents nor transmits anything personal - just the fact that 'someone' opened and read the document. But it's not hard to imagine more intrusive versions of this technology.

But while it's innocent, as a publisher or marketer I'm hungry for the data, and plan to give it a try.

Revenge Of The Cookie Monster

I'm at an analytics seminar (again) today, and the speaker has just taken some time to cover the issues and reactions to the recent Jupiter report that nearly 60% of people delete their cookies on a regular basis. The primary takeaway seemed to be that only 3rd party cookies are being deleted (those written to the visitors machine from a site other than the URL they are browsing) and so analytics guys (who tend to serve 3rd party cookies) are going to have to find a new approach.

Here's a good article discussing the issue and ramifications.

Better Analytics

When two of our partners announce a partnership we take note. And today LinkShare and Omniture announced the following:

LinkShare and Omniture Announce Integration of SynergyAnalytics(TM) with SiteCatalyst(TM) Suite

Powerful Online Analytics Solution to Provide Deeper Analysis for LinkShare Channels

NEW YORK, Feb. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- LinkShare Corporation, a leader in performance-based marketing solutions, and Omniture, the largest provider of on-demand online analytics, today announced a partnership to seamlessly integrate LinkShare's SynergyAnalytics solution with Omniture's SiteCatalyst Suite thus expanding each company's ability to measure the performance of a client's affiliate marketing channel. This partnership is one of the first in the performance-based marketing industry to provide true integration and show affiliate channel performance against other marketing channels, even on an individual campaign-by-campaign basis (e.g. email, banners, SEM, etc.), through a direct link into LinkShare's reporting environment for deeper analysis and direct management of their LinkShare affiliate programs.

Omniture's SiteCatalyst Suite provides both on-demand and historical, in- depth, actionable analysis and reporting to measure and optimize online marketing initiatives, driving increased revenue from online business. Clients using the SiteCatalyst Suite will be able to leverage the comprehensive, in-depth clickstream data to analyze and address the factors that affect customer behavior, conversions, lifetime value, etc.

Unlike other partnerships that may pass and share a single piece of data, Omniture will be able to provide in-depth channel-specific data directly through the LinkShare account interface to reveal a much deeper view of their channels, when requested by joint clients. Among other things, these clients will also be able to share this deeper level of information with their affiliate partners in order to facilitate greater innovation of unique or better ways to drive revenue.

"We selected Omniture for their leadership in the web analytics industry. This partnership will not only provide overall managers with a view of cross channel information but channel managers will now be able to go even deeper into the programs that they manage through LinkShare," stated Stephen D. Messer, Chairman and CEO of LinkShare. "Our approach provides a seamless interface to users, and much deeper data analysis than any single interface can offer."

This partnership brings best of breed technologies together to create a customer-centric, 'outside-in' approach that will allow marketers for the first time to analyze LinkShare channel data both before a customer clicks through to a website, as well as after. Looking at what happens before a customer gets to a marketer's website is just as important, if not more important, than what happens while the customer is at the website.

"More than ever before, enterprises depend upon a variety of online marketing tools to measure, manage and track the performance of their initiatives. The SiteCatalyst Suite provides a robust platform for unifying and providing actionable analysis from these various online marketing solutions," said Josh James, CEO and co-founder of Omniture. "We are pleased to add LinkShare to our impressive group of online-marketing solution partners, a group of technology leaders that allow our clients to most effectively understand and manage their marketing campaigns."