Google Analytics

We are all familiar with untagged campaigns and pages. We also know that URL parameters sometimes fail to help us collect data.

Absolutely ensure the redirect is encoded with tracking parameters (version of the ad, name of the magazine, location of the billboard, offer in the radio ad, and so on).

The best analysts have a deep technical side, in the sense that they possess an understanding of JavaScript tags, URLs, parameters, redirects, and web pages. They are better able to answer this question: “How does the data get collected, and then how it is interpreted by the analytics tool?” To see practical examples of how important it is to know

Remember, there is nothing particularly magnificent about how Omniture collects data. Google Analytics does not have patent-pending exclusive CIA techniques in its tags. Webtrends has no secret sauce. Just use tags. Have ’em on all the pages. Use first-party cookies.

With search dominating the landscape, at least for now, look for how much traffic you get for search engines (in your referring URL’s report), and then dive deeper into what keywords and key phrases send traffic from each search engine. This is a gold mine of actionability, specifically for search engine optimization (SEO) and, if you are big enoug

This form of tracking has become very much in vogue with the rising popularity of the ‘software as a service’ (SaaS) concept, and has been fuelled by the introduction of free, powerful and highly configurable analytics services like Statcounter (www.statcounter.com) and the very popular Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics). Once the code is