web analytics

Since the early days of the Internet, Web site owners have strained to understand who is coming to their sites and what those people are doing. At first it was all about "eyeballs" and the sheer number of visitors. Reports would contain the number of visitors per hours, per day, per week, etc. Growth trends were easy to see, and everyone was looking for the "hockey stick." Pie charts, bar charts, and data grids ruled back then.

This quickly turned into a goals-based analysis where site owners would define a series of pages they wanted their users to travel, followed by an action, which could be purchasing a product, submitting a form or simply spending time on a content page.  Sites like WebAnalyticsBook and Digital Vinci cover this in detail.

The field of web analytics tools has grown crowded and the offerings all seem to blur together. Some of the current frontrunners are Google Analytics, Urchin, Omniture, and Web Trends. There are also some new faces that put a specialized spin on an old theme. LeaderLander and Overstat are two great examples. Leadlander specializes in focusing visitor information to close sales and Overstat strives to display visitor behavior graphically with Flash technology.  The next generation of tools will have more specialty than today's "all purpose" tools and we all hope their interfaces improve.

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Original Technorati articles tagged “web analytics”

• in Technology
  Google's Chrome: Now The World's Number 2 Browser
  Chrome is just heating up and ready for browser wars!
  by joshner / on Dec 5, 2011
• in Technology
  Twitter Gets Analytical
  Will new Twitter web analytics solve the traffic tracking problem?
  by laurencubed / on Sep 14, 2011
• in Technology
  Hope, Heroes and Startups: Spring Metrics
  Do web analytics have to suck?
  by ScentTrail / on Jun 14, 2011

Latest blogosphere posts tagged “web analytics”

 

• Twitter Silently Opens Up Its Analytics Service To Everyone, For Free [Updates]

  
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  5 days ago

• The 3 levels of visitor Recency

  
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  > interesting metric for engagement . Just as for Bounce Rate , it is sometimes hard to get an idea of your data performance in term of last period since last visit of your audience : is it good when users take ten days before coming back to my website ?    No doubt the amount of time that passes ...
  6 days ago

• Best Practices to Tackle a Chaotic Marketing Landscape

  
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  6 days ago

• GAIQ studying random facts #3

  
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  > memos and notes about Analytics issues In Google Analytics, Page Depth is the average number of pages on a site that visitors view during a single session. In the Audience > Behavior > Engagement report, Page Depth is used as a dimension, and Visits is used as a metric. In this way, you can see ...
  6 days ago

• Canadian Tablet Web Analytics

  
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  Google Tablet web analytics is more important since 1 in 10 Canadian tablet owners use the device as their main computer: study. Learn more about Tablet market research reports available in Canada.Tablet Web and Mobile AnalyticsTablet ownership in Canada may not be as high as in other countries, but BlackBerry ...
  6 days ago

• Recommended Reading 06/13/2013

  
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• Memo : parts of a URL

  
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• SMX Advanced 2013: Maps and Metros – Surviving And Thriving In Local Search

  
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• WASP: “Trail buzzing” the field of digital analytics quality assurance

  
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• A Beginner’s Guide to Google Analytics

  
  Skadeedle — Authority: 492
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• Determining Relevance: How Similarity Is Scored

  
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• SMX Advanced 2013: Getting Curation Right

  
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• The Myth of Direct Response Marketing

  
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  1 week ago

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