It seems that forever one of the advantages paid web analytics tools had over Google Analytics was path analysis. Not anymore – for a few months now GA has had something called Visitors Flow and it is pretty cool. This “new” feature allows you to segment on the fly and visually view a chart of the different ways site visitors traverse your website. For me the best part is that the visitor flow feature works retroactively with your data, unlike some setup and configuration which works going forward from the time it was set up. More posts to come about this really nice feature addition – the pressure continues on paid web analytics vendors!
Author: MitchellT
-
Google Analytics Visitor Flow feature
-
Toolbox Post: WhichLoadsFaster.com
Most of my posts are probably ‘toolbox posts’ as it turns out. Ever wondered which of two sites load the fastest? A site called Which Loads Faster can help you win bets, or at least get a handle on what is going on when two web sites load in the browser. Use the site to perform a test between two sites in the splash screen when you first hit the site, or select your own matchups. Have fun learning!
-
Web-enabled Wireframes
IA people, it’s time to get excited! Mockingbird is a nominally priced web-based wireframing tool which works in your browser. It was created by San Francisco based Some Character.
-
Excellent Analytics
Nice post title, right? Excellent Analytics is something we all strive for, but this time the topic is actually the name of a plugin / add-in for Google Analytics which allows you to pull Google Analytics data directly into an Excel spreadsheet for further processing.
Excellent Analytics is free and open source, and has been around for a couple years now, so there’s no reason not to try it except for the fact that it relies on Windows and the Microsoft .NET framework. Click the link above to get the plugin, view the FAQ and a little gallery of sample results.
On the same topic of pulling GA data into other tools, this blog post explains how PBS has automated some of its web analytics reporting with other paid tools such as DataGrabber ($299 street).
-
The future of tagging
An interesting whitepaper crossed through my email inbox today titled ‘The Future of Digital Measurement and Personalization’ by Gary Angel at Semphonic. I always enjoy the papers written by the fine folks there, and you may find this document insightful as well. Basically the concept put forth is that tagging websites for web analytics, functionality and interactivity is unweildy and worsening because governance (change control and stability) is a huge challenge as time goes on. I like the concept of a TMS (tag management system), and we’ve seen each web analytics vendor put forth the bones of TMS such as Webtrends Tag Builder. This document focuses on Celebrus and their tag management and data warehousing solutiuons and I plan to study their solutions in the coming days. Thanks for reading!
-
Mobile User Experience (UX) topics
This well laid-out writeup of mobile web experience delivery came through a LinkedIn discussion today. I enjoyed reading it, because it mentioned the Responsive Web Design concept, which I can’t seem to get enough of. The following methods are detailed, and pros and cons for each delivery method are listed:
- Standard Website
- Responsive Web Design
- Mobile Website
- Mobile Application (mobile apps)
Enjoy!
-
WATS plugin aids SiteCatalyst implementation and troubleshooting
I just read about the WATS tool, a Firefox plugin which helps users troubleshoot SiteCatalyst implementations. As always, any help working through Omniture tracking issues is welcome!
-
Something new called Pion
Happy New Year! I just read about Pion – a tool from Atomic Labs which works with all the leading web analytics products available today. I will learn more about it and write what I find out. A free edition is available as well as paid service levels.
-
More tag management
Yeah, this topic deserves more than one post.
Web analytics tag management is important because getting good data into the WA tool you’re using is essential to creating good results. Adobe is now providing the Tag Manager solution which seems to be a flexible, serious tool for managing your tags in a way which gives you the ability to track versions and more. When you visit the link above, take a look on the right sidebar, and sign up to receive the Forrester guide to tag management tools – its a nice freebie indeed.
-
Web Analytics Tag Management
We’ve all tried all sorts of tricks to manage our web analytics tags: server-side include files, JavaScript include files, etc.
Here is a tidy little post which lists some online tools to manage web analytics code tags. It does not mention the Webtrends Tag Builder, probably because it is too specific. But I mention it again, because it is a valuable tool for those using Webtrends and the Source Data Collector (SDC). I am anxious to see the Adobe Tag Manager when it becomes available – I think it will be a huge help managing Site Catalyst installations.