Web Site Measurement Hacks

Understand Where Data Gets Lost

In web measurement, there are a number of ways that data can be lost. By understanding these sources of loss, you can work to minimize their likelihood.

Losing valuable data can taint your web measurement efforts. The more data that is lost, the more inaccurate the web measurement information you produce will be. Data loss generally occurs as a result of one of the following scenarios:

Measurements are not taken.

The web data that you collect begins with the measurements that you take to record the activity on your site. If a measurement is not taken, usually you have lost that data forever. For this reason, it is important that you carefully plan your measurement strategy in advance.

A vendor loses your data (and won’t recover it).

Many companies rely on third-party vendors to collect data for them. Because of the volume of this data and the pressure to reduce costs and stay competitive, vendors often extract parts of your originally collected data for their databases and throw away the rest. In still other cases, vendors mix your data with the data of other customers, making the future extraction of your data time-consuming and expensive.

Your data is incorrectly indexed, misplaced, or destroyed.

Whether your data is collected in your facilities or at the facilities of a vendor, it must be reliably indexed and stored. While you may have a reliable contact with your web measurement vendor, at the end of the day, it is always your responsibility to ensure ...