Cheers,
Ian

If you’re part of a company like HP that targets consumer AND business customers, and your focus is on the business division, how would you measure yourself to Dell, that also has a business division. Simply comparing the main domains (hp.com VS dell.com) won’t provide actionnable information because of the lack of segmentation. Thanks.

1 – Cookie deletion / blocking

Until last Nov I worked for a UK analytics vendor called RedEye for many years. Back in 2003 RedEye produced a comprehensive report on cookie deletion; go here for more info http://www.redeye.com/bestpractice/white_papers.php. This paper is still highly relevant today and goes in to more detail than pretty much any report written since and is worth a read.

The key to RedEye’s report was being able to look at the behaviour of a set of logged-in users (of transactional sites) and to analyse how many different cookies and IP / user agent strings each visitor had used over varying periods of time.

In summary, cookie deletion and blocking can be rife or negligible, but to what extent largely depends on the nature of the web site and the make-up of its visitors.

For example, consider a site whose best customers access it many times per day, such as a gambling site, verses a site whose best customers only visit once or twice a month, such as a supermarket. The number of cookies per visitor for the gambling site is likely to be much higher for reasons already discussed; such as multiple PCs (I can place a bet from any PC in approx 1 minute), multiple browsers (phone and PC), deletion (do I want people to know that I visited a gambling site?) and so on.

And yes, it’s also possible for each logged in visitor to have multiple logins which really does make ‘100% accurate’ measurement a pipe-dream, but as Avanash says the data is still fantastic for planning and analysis. Tip – steer clear of any vendor who says that their data is 100% accurate – you’d be surprised at how many claim they are.

2 – 3rd party verses 1st party

It’s not just a question of which type of cookie you set as many companies will use both. For example, a brand can set a 1st party cookie on the web pages which it manages and use the same tracking domain to set a cookie on any white labelled content which is hosted by a third party. In this case, cookies set from the white labelled pages will be 3rd party cookies during the same session.

3 – Cookies are no longer just browser cookies

You can also set cookies through Flash. In principle a Flash Cookie has the same basic objective as a browser cookie but as it is set via an embedded object in Flash it’s browser independent.

They’re also tricky to block and delete.

This is good news because Flash Cookies can very easily and significantly improve the ‘accuracy’ of reported visitor figures due to very low deletion and blocking rates. However, it can also be bad news because their use is not flagged up in IE’s Web Page Privacy Policy or through the usual Firefox plug-ins (WASP etc), so any brand using them needs to be even more conscious of best practice data protection and privacy wording. Go to http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/author_25880/paul-cook.html for a view on this and also http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/security/privacy_policy/faq.html

He is even giving a Procter & Gamble example. So read this article.
[...]

He is even giving a Procter & Gamble example. So read this article.
[...]

Fantastic post. I may be slow at getting around to reading these, but they are always tremendously useful. I’ve checked out your suggestions for handling phone contacts, and it looks very promising. I know that this blog is geared towards larger sites, but I generally work with much smaller sites (10-100 visitors a day), and measuring the impact of brochure sites where there is no e-commerce capability and there is a small sample size of visitors has always been a challenge. I think it’s interesting that most of these companies “know” that they need a new website every few years, but quantifying the value that they derive from it is a major challenge, especially when you are generating leads for complex products that have high value. Take a custom programming outfit, for example. One lead that converts into a $50k sale (potentially 10x that much in lifetime value of the customer, even without factoring the value of referrals) can justify a lot of web work, but you may only get one a year! My clients struggle (as do I) to quantify the web work that they received and how much of it is related to this one magic lead. This is a more extreme example, but it is not that uncommon. My world is one of very small sample sizes, and separating out the signal from the noise is a constant challenge. Any advice on this would be much appreciated.

On a slightly different topic (this is what I get for posting at 1:11am!), I’ve often wondered if there are ways to quantify the quality of a website for visitors that do not perform an action that is immediately trackable (call/email). Sort of the equivalent of the good will that someone buys in a company acquisition (obviously an imperfect analogy). For example, I had a client recently tell me about someone who came into their office and said: “Your website was far and away the best of all the companies that do [service] in [location]! This is the only reason I picked your company.” You can’t get much better press than that, but I’d love to know if you can measure that more actively instead of hoping a visitor tells your client and that your client tells you. Any thoughts?

Thanks again for the great post - sorry for the rambling, long-winded comment :)

Cameron

The informed ones will probably say “thank you google” :), because now they can access their own data for free and also take advantage of their competitor’s data.

The other thing to consider is that for Publishers who want advertising on their website this is a great mechanism / “marketplace” to highlight the value that advertising on their websites and the kinds of relevant audiences, or not, that that they can effectively deliver. That will give the advertisers more confidence in results, more accountability. Win-win.

Adnan: Perhaps you can email me a bit more context / clarification, unfortunately I don’t understand your question.

If you want data for your own website just use the Ad Planner.

If, assuming a bit here, you don’t have data for your site in the Ad Planner (because of small size) you could see if it is in HitWise, which is a paid tool but also has this kind of data and it is a tool I am quite fond of. If that does

If it does not exist there then you could get it from something like a 4Q type onexit survey.

Mike: Here’s my personal perspective on quantcast from a recent comment:

“Unsure of the real value in terms of others out there. When I have used the site the signal is not very strong from the noise. On paper they are certainly on the right path, I am positive in time they’ll get there.

Until then I am much happier with Compete, Google Trends for Website, HitWise and others I mention in the post.”

In summary: It is a matter of how big the noise is that is being listened to and the ability to parse a signal from that noise.

Steve: I assure you that I have let my own inquisitiveness get the better of me way more than you!!

In terms of “verify”. I think it sounds good on paper, and this is my personal opinion, I am not sure that there is a incentive structure in place for any vendor to participate in that. As you and I well know this is not unique to Competitive Intelligence, this is exactly the same case with Web Analytics as well.

Hence the stress on not so much understanding which tool is most accurate, but rather gaining strong confidence, through public research, which one is least inaccurate. :)

-Avinash.

Would you agree that CI data would be better if we could somehow (and I’m just speculating) verify to some level the accuracy of the data?

Interesting to actually see Google slowly (but not so subtly) shift from search giant to ALL media (even offline!) and media planning strategies. As an employee at a full-service agency it will be good to keep an eye on how Google almost single handedly shifts/combines the responsibilities of media buying and interactive. Thanks again, good stuff as always.

Keep up the great work.

Great post as usual and I really appreciate this series of posts on competitive intelligence tools.

What if I want to track the same demographic data about my own site. What is the best way for me to do so while engaging the visitors other than exit surveys?

Best regards,

Adnan

I am joining this conversation a bit late! 2006, wow! : )

Currently I am reading “Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics” by Brian Clifton and I am scanning all the sections that hit Google AdWords because I need to decide on 10 words.

About your post, the fact that Google Analytics integrates tightly with Google Adwords sounds fine to me. It is a suite of free products that Google offers and it is up to the web analyzer to decide whether to use them or not. I believe in free markets too. However, I have to agree with Rob that “page rank” is critical and Google has the upper hand in that. This is definitely something to consider in the future.

I have 2 questions regarding AdWords. I have to decide for 10 words in the next 10 days. I have found that most of the terms from our website are two-worded (e.g. photo sharing). Most single words have better relevance that double words (e.g. photo VS photo sharing).

What is the main difference?

Also, what about being redundant? Is it worth our while to select “photo sharing” and “photo” to cover both chances?

Many thanks in advance for your help!

Cheers,

Damian

All jokes aside this is absolutely great. It will be good to use against comscore and other sources to get a more comprehensive look at what sites we should be targeting.

I wonder if there are any other companies out there who’s first reaction upon finding out this is “Oh my god, our info is out there for anybody to see!!! Damn you Google!!!”