Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Competing on Analytics
i am not the one to lecture you about the importance of web analytics or how it works.
Since you are reading this topic, i expect that you already know the importance and
value of using analytics in your business. instead, i aim to show you how to create a
situation where you are able to
compete on analytics
; that is, to gain a competitive
advantage using web analytics. For this to happen, you are simply forced to do more
sophisticated analysis than just looking at reports about the number of page views or
the number of visits on your web properties, an activity also known as report surfing.
Note:
Report surfing, where one looks at reports without a clear agenda, is not only unfortunate web analyt-
ics tool-usage behavior, it is one of the greatest sins a web analytics practitioner can do. The phenomenon and a
solution suggestion are debated here:
http://visualrevenue.com/blog/2007/09/web-analytics-
report-surfing-and-how-to.html
.
4
to compete on analytics, you need a sophisticated data collection strategy,
because you cannot analyze data that you have not collected. it is that simple. You
cannot collect too much data on the behavior of your visitors. You can present and
report on too much data, but that is a debate we will undertake in Part ii of this topic,
“Utilizing an enterprise Web analytics Platform.”
Yahoo! Web analytics and other similar applications on the market have
achieved a high level of sophistication only by collecting the correct data. Simpler
applications that deploy what some call either plain-vanilla- or simple footer tagging
offer nothing more than basic insights.
Plain-Vanilla Tagging
This is also known as
simple footer tagging
. Tagging your complete website by using the provided
default tracking script and simply applying that to the footer of your website templates does not
collect enough data to create the insights you need to be competitive.
if you are in doubt about the value of collecting data—and bear in mind that i
am saying this with my Yahoo! hat on—why do you think that Yahoo!, Google, and
Microsoft provide you with free analytics tools? Partly because even the
leftover
data
(aggregated visitor data across multiple websites) provides so much value that it makes
up for the cost of giving away the tool. now imagine the value you can get out of your
highly customized, nonaggregated data. isn't this just fascinating to think about?
Yahoo! Web analytics provides industry-standard reporting that includes pool-
ing multiple visits into visitor profiles, differentiating new visitors from returning visi-
tors, applying campaign attribution choices on first touch point and not necessarily last
