This is part 3 in an arc on noisy data in web analytics. So far we've defined noisy data and extended the concept into creating standards for new web technologies. This post considers where metrics, standards and noisy data might take us if we're not careful.
We pick up with where metrics are now and how we might extend them.
I was talking with Frank Faubert, Vice President, Internet Marketing Solutions for Unica and several other Unicans at this past Wednesday's WAW in Boston (Waltham, really. Come on over and join us. Or join one more local to you) about the subject of noisy data and they agreed it exists and may get worse in Web 2.0. One way that Unica handles the issue is by creating metrics using both tag and log information. Ajax can be used to send event driven information directly back to the log in any case and that picks up our 2.0, etc., discussions.
One of the challenges I've always had with analytics is that they deal with what's happening at the machine, the computer, and not in the heart and mind of the person sitting at the computer. I'm not discrediting any web analytics provider or any web analytics package. In fact, NextStage and our technology suite is web analytics provider agnostic. We work with them all equally well, and I've repeatedly written and said that NextStage doesn't do web analytics.
That offered, figuring out what's going on with the person sitting at the computer is one of the reasons NextStage exists; just as there's more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio, there's more that happens between the user and the computer than ever happens between the browser and the server, and when you take the user's psyche into account? The numbers become truly astronomical.
This returns us to differentiating behaviors from actions or "the reason I'm typing is definitely different from the reason you're typing" and how noisy data is going to be shaping things. (more to follow...)
Links for this arc:
- Articles on noisy data affecting analysis:
- Eric Peterson's Web Analytics Demystified
- Posts mentioning WAA:
- Posts on new web technologies:
- The Noisy Data Arc:
- Web Analytics Association Links:
» Standards and Noisy Data, Part 4 from BizMediaScience
Continuing "Are we measuring acts or the reason for the act?" with "What are we able to measure?" versus "What would we like to measure?" [Read More]
Tracked on: January 14, 2007 5:31 PM | Permalink to Trackback