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My Blogger Friends
There are advantages and disadvantages to all methods of web data collection, be that javascript page tagging or log file analysis (or packet sniffing – but I will leave packet sniffing for my next post).
Have I missed any out? Which do you prefer? My preference is for a hybrid model with a web analytics solution that uses both javascript page tagging and log files (remember there can be political reasons too – for some big companies they like keeping control of their web data so a pure page tagging model is not ideal).
Page Tagging Advantages
Measure events in Web 2.0 rich Internet applications built with Ajax or Flash
Measure traffic on portions of your site embedded in other web sites where you don’t have access to logs
Track page views even if they were cached in ISP proxy servers
Track page views following a click on the browser’s back button
Measure behavior within web pages, such as scrolling down or changing form fields
Measure shopping cart activity
Measure client side information, such as the browser’s screen size, etc.
Capture additional information items such as user login names or form field data that are passed through customized tags
Breaks through proxy and caching servers – provides more accurate session tracking
Client side capture of ecommerce data – server side access can be problematic
Visitor data can be collected in near real time
Page Tagging Disadvantages
Set up errors lead to data loss and you can’t go back in time, if you make a mistake with your tagging you have a hole in your data
Firewalls can mangle or restrict tags
Cannot track bandwidth or completed downloads, tags are set when the page/file/event is requested not when the download is completed (although you can tag different stages of an event/file)
Log Files Advantages
Historical data can be processed easily
No firewall issues to worry about
Can track bandwidth and completed downloads and differentiate between completed and partial downloads
Monitor paths and drop-off points of search engine robots that index your site to help you with search engine optimization
Capture click fraud activity that does not execute JavaScript and remains invisible to page tags
Monitor page delivery performance, abandoned page views, and incomplete downloads
Securely capture http user names
Load historical information from before page tagging
Avoid the effort of modifying your web pages and scripted pages for inserting tags and then acceptance testing the modifications
Avoid the effort of monitoring your site for pages that are missing page tags
Measure views, for example, of your PDF documents that were directly found and clicked from search engines such as Google
Measure mobile browsers/visitors which may not fire JavaScript page tags
Measure page views even if the viewer clicked on to the next page before the page tag fired
Log file disadvantages
Proxy/caching inaccuracies, if a page is cached, no record is logged on your web server
No event tracking, no javascript, flash or AJAX tracking
Time consuming web server log file management and log file transfer from disparate web server farms
Thanks so much for reading and let me know if you think there are advantages or disadvantages to either that I haven’t mentioned.
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recent posts
- 7 Ways to make web analytics work better in companies
- Measuring social media, influence, debate, buzz monitoring
- Web analytics winners and losers? It’s the people that make the difference.
- Simple segmentation for your website and better web analytics understanding
- Web Analytics Wednesday in London – the future of web analytics
- Digital cream: revealing debating at econsultancy’s marketing event
- Google Analytics Tip: Ecommerce tracking set up, screenshots and why it’s useful
- Reliving my customer’s experience and some nice screenshots
- Internal site search part 2
- The best charts ever and food for thought for us web analysts
recent comments
- Perry Williams: Hello Dear, I am strongly agree with your point that the web analytics is associated with the social...
- Philip Sheldrake: Nice overview Marianina. I wanted to post a link to an article in Business Week from June about the...
- Luisa Woods: Hi Marianina, I think you make a very good point about the importance of segmentation. I like to carry...
- Eric T. Peterson: Marianina, Nice to have seen you Monday in London! I just got this post so perhaps something odd is...
- Marianina Manning: Hi Luisa, Thanks for your thought-provoking comment! I agree that new ways of looking at web...
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Web Analytics Princess by Marianina Chaplin
December 10 2007
Hi Marianina, nice post! There is another technology I’m following some years ago that works pretty good, packet sniffing. Let me suggest you to read an interview I did to Ivo Rehberger, from Nextwell. They have a nice tool called Clipen that works over Packet Sniffing technology.
http://www.analytics20.org/web-analytics/packet-sniffing-for-web-analytics-amazing-interview-to-ivo-rehberger-from-nextwell/
December 12 2007
Hi Juan
I am using a packet sniffing tool at the moment which captures everything (except for caching and ajax/flash/RIA – although you can tag some form fields within ajax etc – another thing is it will only sniff and catch stuff on your servers – so if you have a google map on your site you wouldn’t be able to see any activity. the good thing about is you can then watch your visitor’s website journey’s like a video, but it isn’t a web analytics product.
but packet sniffing puts alot of demands on your IT department too – if for example you are doing load balancing configuration this can affect your packet sniffing environment too.
There isn’t a perfect webdata capturing solution but as long as we go for trends, segmentation and precision (wrapped up with some actionable insights) we should hopefully be alright
Marianina
January 16 2008
Hi Marianna,
Great article – I think you have captured almost everything.
Amethon is focused on web analytics for mobile web browsing and the key disadvantage of page tagging is the lack of javascript support in most handsets. This means that page tag solutions have to use a 1×1 pixel which cannot provide referrer and search engine information.
Even if the handset does support javascript, it adds significant ‘weight’ to a mobile web page which impacts on the end user experience and adds to their data charges!
Our Mobile Analytics product family uses packet sniffing for this reason.
Love to give you a more indepth look at the product if you are interested.
Cheers,
Michael Stone
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