New Analytics for a Web 2.0 World
July 11, 2007 – 5:45 amWith many websites moving to the world of Web 2.0, specifically the use of Ajax, a new means of measuring website traffic is needed. Unique visitors, visits and page views provide a good sense of how much visitors are using a site when Ajax is not involved.
When an Ajax request is made, the statistics should show a new page view, but currently that does not happen. So one of the big players in the web analytics world Nielsen NetRatings is implementing new methods based of measuring website traffic by using data on time spent browsing the website per visitor, according to Forbes.com.
The problem is that time spent on a website may not be an accurate indicator of web traffic. It is only one piece of the puzzle. I suggest that you include analytics code in your Ajax requests to help you maintain a clear picture of your own web traffic.
You could create a wrapper that executes each time an AJAX request is made that stores data that interests you. I believe the unique visitor, visits, time spent and page view combination gives the best overall picture of web traffic. But ideally, you should tailor data collection to your specific application to gather data that is useful to help make future design and business decisions.
So if you add code to record a page view for AJAX requests your web analytics picture should remain clear (at least as clear as it was before).
Currently at ThemBid.com we use Google Analytics, AWStats and some custom data collection in our code for web analytics. We also consult with Alexa.com on occasion. What analytics tools are you using?
2 Responses to “New Analytics for a Web 2.0 World”
I’ve had some experience with HBX from WebsideStory. They have a pretty configurable interface to support many types of statistical gathering.
I still myself rely on AWStats and Google Analytics as well
By Aaron Saray on Jul 30, 2007