WA introduction Flashcards
What is web analytics?
Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.
What is trace data?
Data that is left behind as a result of internet-customer interaction.
What question does the behavioral data answer?
What
What question does the attitudinal data answer?
Why
What is a transactional log?
Behavioral data from websites are often collected and archived in some type of storage location. This storage location is typically a log file and characteristically known as a transactional log.
What are the steps in web analytics?
- Data collection as accurate as possible
- Reporting
- Analysing
What is KPI?
KPI is expanded as Key Performance Indicators.
A Key Performance Indicator is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives.
Organizations use KPIs at multiple levels to evaluate their success at reaching targets.
High-level KPIs may focus on the overall performance of the business, while low-level KPIs may focus on processes in departments such as sales, marketing, HR, support, and others.
What is the actual definition of Web Analytics?
The Web Analytics Association (WAA) defines
Web analytics as “the measurement, collection,
analysis, and reporting of Internet data for the
purposes of understanding and optimizing Web
usage”
What is reporting?
Compiling data in some aggregate way for clarity and
simplification
How web analytics work?
Most analytics tools ‘tag’ their web pages by inserting a snippet of JavaScript in the web page’s code.
Using this tag, the analytics tool counts each time the page gets a visitor or a click on a link.
The tag can also gather other information like device,
browser and geographic location (via IP address).
Web analytics services may also use cookies to track individual sessions and to determine repeat visits from the same browser.
For whom - customer support. How is it supportive?
Satisfaction
For whom - offline stores. How is it supportive?
Online data
For whom - operations. How is it supportive?
Order fallout
For whom - purchasing. How is it supportive?
Inventory
For whom - sales and marketing. How is it supportive?
Revenue and brand
For whom - IT. How is it supportive?
Website
For whom - senior management. How is it supportive?
ROI - Return On Investment
For whom - finance. How is it supportive?
Budgeting
What are the challenges faced in web analytics?
- Managing and integrating data
- Ensuring data quality
- Staffing and management commitment
- Communicating and interpreting results
What are the foundations of web analytics?
- Web log
- TLA - Transaction Log Analysis
- SLA - Search Log Analysis
Define web log
A Web log is an electronic record of interactions that have occurred between a system and users of that system (websites).
Define TLA
TLA is the methodological approach to studying online
systems and users of these systems.
Peters - defines TLA as the study of electronically recorded interactions between online information retrieval systems and the persons who search for information found in those systems.
What is behaviorism?
Behaviorism is the conceptual basis for Web analytics.
Behaviorism emphasizes observed behaviors without
discounting the inner aspects (i.e., attitudinal characteristics and context) that may accompany these outward behaviors.
What is a variable in web analytics?
Variables - session duration or number of clicks
Define variables by their use in a research study (e.g.,
independent, dependent, extraneous, controlled, constant, and confounding) and by their nature.
Based on the nature of the variables, how are they classified?
Three types of variables:
- environments (i.e., events of the situation, environment, or context),
- subjects (i.e., events or aspects of the subject being studied), and
- behavioral (i.e., observable events of the subject of interest)
What are the 3 general categories of behaviorism?
- Behaviors are something that can be detected and, therefore, recorded.
- Behaviors are an action or a specific goal-driven event with some purpose other than the specific action that is observable.
- Behaviors are reactive responses to environmental stimuli.
What is an ethogram?
An ethogram is a taxonomy or index of the behavioral
patterns that details the different forms of behavior that a particular user exhibits.
What is bounce rate?
Bounce rate is the percentage of site visits that are
single-page sessions, with the visitor leaving without viewing a second page. It is typically used as a measurement of a website’s overall engagement.
How is bounce rate calculated?
Bounce rate is calculated by the total number of one-page visits divided by the total number of entries to a website.
What are the general types of trace data?
Researchers classify trace data into two general types:
1. erosion 2. accretion.
Erosion is the wearing away of material leaving a trace.
Accretion is the buildup of material, making a trace.
Both erosion and accretion have several subcategories.
Is trace data unique?
Yes.
Trace data is unobtrusive and non-reactive data.
Based on what criteria should the trace data be analysed?
- Credibilty - concerns how trustworthy or
believable the data collection method is. - Validity - addresses whether the measurement
actually measures what it is supposed to measure. - Reliabilty - used to describe the stability of the
measurement. Essentially, reliability addresses whether the measurement assesses the same thing, in the same way, in repeated tests.
What are the 3 kinds of validity (in trace data)?
- Face or internal validity: the extent to which the contents of the test, method, analysis, or procedure that the researcher is employing measure what they are supposed to measure.
- Content or construct validity: the extent to which the content of the test, method, analysis, or procedure adequately represents all that is required for validity of the test, method, analysis, or procedure (i.e., are you collecting and accounting for all that you should collect and account for).
- External validity: the extent to which one can generalize the research results across populations, situations, environments, and contexts of the test, method, analysis, or procedure.
What are unobtrusive methods?
Unobtrusive methods are research practices that do not require the researcher to intrude in the context of the actors and thus do not involve direct elicitation of data from the research participants or actors.
Why is it important for the research not to intrude upon the environment? (3 justifications)
- Heisenberg uncertainty principle - when researchers are interjected into an environment, they become part of the system. Therefore, their very presence in the environment will affect measurements of the components of that system. A common example is in ethnographic studies where the researchers interject themselves in a given context.
- The observer effect refers to the difference that is made to an activity or a person’s behaviors by it (or the person) being observed. People may not behave in their usual manner if they know that they are being watched or when being interviewed while carrying out an activity.
- Observer bias is error that the researcher introduces into measurement when observers overemphasize behavior they expect to find and fail to notice behavior they do not expect.
What are the factors for web analytics as an unobtrusive method?
- scale
- power
- scope
- duration
- location
What are the limitations in data collection for web analytics as an unobtrusive method?
- abstraction problem
- selection problem
- reduction problem
- context problem
- evolution problem
Each research method for data collection tries to
maximize three desirable criteria. What are they?
- generalizability
- precision
- realism
Is high bounce rate a bad thing?
It depends
If the success of your site depends on users viewing more than one page, then, yes, a high bounce rate is bad.
For example, if your home page is the gateway to the rest of your site (e.g., news articles, product pages, your checkout process) and a high percentage of users are viewing only your home page, then you don’t want a high bounce rate.
On the other hand, if you have a single-page site like a blog, or offer other types of content for which single-page sessions are expected, then a high bounce rate is perfectly normal.
