Web Site Measurement Hacks

Know Which Technographic Data to Ignore

Not all technical data is as useful as it looks at first glance. Knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore can save you time and prevent frustration.

As you’ve certainly surmised by now in reading this book, web measurement applications provide a wealth of information about your visitors, most of it good! While the vendors certainly mean well, often they provide information because they can—not because there is a great business reason for doing so. Unfortunately, not all the available information is useful, especially when you’re talking about technographic reports (Figure 5-13).

Since most vendors provide the same technographic data, it is worth reviewing which of this information you should use and which you should ignore.

Technographic Data to Use

The following are technographic data points and reports that are generally useful to web data analysts.

Browser type

Your web developers and quality assurance group will benefit from a complete list of visitor browser types. Use recent (last 90 days) samples to ensure QA efforts map well to current browser trends.

Browser width

A central concern for web developers is how much screen real estate to use, and the schism between 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 screen resolutions. Keep a close eye on how these numbers evolve; looking for the opportunity to use more screen real estate [Hack #70] will help you make more effective design decisions.

Figure 5-13. Representative sample of technographic data ...