Web Analytics is based on standards, but each vendor interprets standards in their own way (ie: …the standards of how data collected from a web site to determine which aspects of the website work towards the business objectives).
Eric T. Peterson voiced his opinion today, which I totally agree with, but did not write anything last week, when Avinash Kaushik and the Standards Committee of the Web Analytics Association released the WAA Web Standard Definitions v 4.0 document at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose.
First, Web Analytics is largely a vendor driven solution to understanding how a website is functioning - with Omniture, Visual Sciences/WebSideStory and WebTrends on the top tier while Google Analytics is on the middle/bottom tier. ClickTracks is continuing to losing ground, in my opinion, and will probably shrink in market share ongoing (especially since John Marshall left and formed a Joint Venture with Avinash Kaushik and a few others).
Eric Peterson (WebAnalyticsDemystified.com) mentioned how each Web Analytics Vendor created their own definition of what a page view, visit and unique visitor that can't easily be matched or backed out of with major ramifications for both the vendors and some of their clients that have pegged their progress against numbers churned out by the vendor solutions they have bought to provide answers to how the websites are working:
"… it is not the definition of standards that makes a difference, it is the adherence to standards by technology vendors that will provide the portability of skills, knowledge, and solutions so desired by many in our industry. Jason Burby sagely points this out in his Clickz article on his volunteer work when he says:
“Companies often switch metrics tools and subsequently change the terms they use to discuss analytics. One tool will call something one name, while another tool calls it by a different name or applies different meanings to a very similar name. When people switch tools and bring data with them, they don’t get an apples-to-apples comparisons. As a result, companies lose the important year-over-year view.
Though the new standards won’t instantly take care of that issue, they provide a step in the right direction.”
The Barrier to the Adoption of Standards
The problem as I see it is this: For many web analytics vendors, the way they calculate some of the critical metrics in web analytics is the “secret sauce” in their solution. Consider the WAA’s definition of unique visitors which states that unique visitors are:
“The number of inferred individual people (filtered for spiders and robots), with a designated reporting timeframe, with activity consisting of one or more visits to a site. Each individual is counted only once in the unique visitor measure for the reporting period.”
This is perfectly reasonable, but the definition goes on to say that “a unique visitor count is always associated with a time period (most often a day, week, or month), and it is a non-additive metric.”
"..One of the major value propositions at Visual Sciences (at least during my brief tenure) was that time was irrelevant — if you wanted the number of unique visitors for the football season, you dragged your mouse across the calendar; if you wanted the number of unique visitors for a few hours during the day, you dragged your mouse; if you wanted the number of unique visitors to your site since recording began, you dragged your mouse"
In other words, what the Web Standards Document failed to do is actually tell vendors what the Web Analytics Association believes Should BE the definition of a Page-view, Visit and Unique Visitor and how it should be measured; a step in the right direction yet too weak to be effective on the real level where it counts - the Vendors.
In the Social Media Committee of the Web Analytics Association, which I Direct, we're going to chart a different path. Not only are we going to define Social Media (much as the Standards Committee has done for Web Analytics Definitions) but we're going to show vendors HOW we think it should be measured and WHY. This is where the Web Standards Document fell short; however, the Standards Committee would have had a hard time had they actually tried to tell vendors what they should have told them ….. how the WAA thinks those measures should be derived.
In Essence, the Web Standards Documentation was little more than a copy of Coremetrics/Surfaid definitions that already existed, or those that any vendor might produce for their own analytics solution.
For Social Media, we have the advantage that no one actually has established a de-facto standard on almost anything that locks any vendor into defining it this what or that way.
For example, there's no actual definition of "Friendship" in a Social Network - it can be defined in any number of ways - and we intend to define what the WAA Social Media Committee thinks Friendship in a Social Network actually is and how it would be measured. We can do that because we don't have 10 years of solidified vendor solutions for each of these things that we'd have to work though … ours would be the first actual definitions in Social Media to bring a whole industry together.
At least, that's my vision and my committee, already 35 strong … is moving swiftly to come up with at least, a fundamental set of definitions for Social Media. Even as I say this, I realize the field is already so vast, that new forms of Social Media are being invented and created even as I write this post.
Getting back to Eric T. Peterson's' solution for the Web Standards Definitions, as they stand today:
".. would love to see the Standards Committee create a matrix of standards compliance for each of the vendors in the marketplace today. Basically a checklist that details on a term-by-term basis which vendors are currently using the WAA definitions that would let companies looking for a solution to include that criteria in their assessment. Something that would let everyone quickly determine:
- How standards compliant a given solution is (and which solution today is “most compliant”)
- Which standard definitions are calculated out-of-box in each solution (for example, “Original Referrer” and “Bounce Rate”)
- Which currently available solutions dramatically differ from the norm in their use of standard terms
Something like this would probably have to be backed up with some documentation or examples as proof points, just for reference. And yeah, this is kind of a lot of work, b
ut if you think about it all you really need is for one WAA member per solution to poke around in their documentation and then someone (Jason and Angie maybe) to collate the results and write it up. I would be happy to contribute the matrix assessment for the web analytics solution I’m using now if that would up!Who knows, maybe we’d discover that all the vendors are already standards compliant and there really isn’t a problem with definitions!"
And actually, what Eric is proposing is much what we in the Social Media Committee are already planning to do for Social Media. BTW, if you want to learn more about Social Media Standards and Web Analytics Standards attend the Emetrics Summit in DC October 14th-October 17th:
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eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit
Washington D.C., October 14 - 17
Make your website more valuable to your customers
Make yourself more valuable to your company
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Getting back to Social Media here's a video I shot earlier this summer where Gary Angel, one of the founding members of the Social Media Committee of the Web Analytics Association, suggested our main mission should be - and I have adopted it and we are running with it.
