Web analytics, web metrics, and how to use them to track and improve conversions

Online Measurement, according to Jeff Jarvis, creates as many issues as it solves; often the wrong things are tracked or there's not enough data on areas that should be tracked:

"..Measurement is holding back so much progress online — both because there’s not enough of it and because what there is of it is too often tracking the wrong things. Without good measurement, we won’t get money and without money we won’t be able to sustain so much of what we want to do online.  "

I think it's true - as there are more and more widgets and web services that present themselves on a sub-atomic page level (they're not being seen as a page, but as a part of a page - the and the content is separated from how it's displayed and presented).

".. I predict that we’ll soon see brands that essentially don’t have sites but become huge because they are distributed (think apps on Facebook that have no home page). I’ve often said that Google’s audience is many times what is reported because Google distributes itself as widgets — ads, maps, feeds. Google doesn’t care because it’s measuring only one thing: revenue. And Google knows everything it needs to know. We don’t. "

And then there's a whole bunch of things that ought to be measured, that aren't including:

".. RSS, widgets, mobile, apps — and kinds of content — video, podcasts — but also of new sorts of measurements — such as influence, meme-starting, involvement, creation, engagement, popularity — that aren’t even being tackled. And there are new dimensions that need to be explored, such as measuring a person’s trust, influence, or even fame across many platforms, sites, applications, and so on. "

Advertisers want the relevant online measurements so they'll know how much money to pour into a campaign and what the benefit of that campaign is - and yet, online media measurement is not developed, often, to the point that intelligent answers are able to be provided (at least, I don't think it's developed well enough yet).

Jeff Jarvis's answer to all of this - A Measurement Summit (interesting!).  Sounds like Jeff Jarvis needs to attend the Emetrics Summit in DC ... if he's asking these kinds of questions - because that's where the questions get asked and often answered.

"...I’ve suggested before the need for a measurement summit. Maybe that’s one way to tackle this. Or perhaps we need to find ways to better educate advertisers (but we’ll never educate them out of wanting metrics). Or perhaps this is something academics should take on with foundation help because it will support invention: measure it and they will come. "

Don't want to over plug the Web Analytics Association, http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org, or my own Social Media and Community Committee at the WAA, but I really believe the answers for better online measurement can be found from within the ranks of the Web Analysts - who have their hands deep into the web data....data that is used for business intelligence and to drive traffic and revenue.