The User-Centric Approach – Google Universal Analytics vs. Mixpanel

About 6 months ago, Google released Universal Analytics, which – in a nutshell – offers 4 new key features: Measurement Protocol – an API that can be used for multi-platform tracking Improved Feature Configuration Management – through the GA admin screens, rather than the JavaScript agent Custom Dimensions and Metrics – very similar to the[…]

Linking events to a specific user in Google Universal Analytics

In this post I will show you how to send events for a specific user from both the JavaScript agent (Analytics.js) and the Measurement Protocol. I could not find any existing information about how to do so. After some research, I did, however, find a great presentation by @techpad that talks about improving e-commerce tracking[…]

My Google Tag Manager Wishlist

The Google Tag Manager (GTM) is indeed a great tool to have. Although several tag management services did exist before (such as tagman and ubertags), none of them were as simple and as easy as GTM – at least not for me. I know the GTM has only been with us for few months, and[…]

Changes in the Web Analytic Market Landscape, Part II

In my previous post, I described the changes that the Web Analytics Industry has seen over the past 6 years (more or less). From there being very few vendors, we have now reached a point where for each segment there are literally dozens of companies offering their services. In addition, huge changes have occurred in[…]

Changes in the Web Analytics Market Landscape

The real evolution of the Web Analytics Industry, in my opinion, began when Urchin was acquired by Google back in 2005. In reality, web analytic tools already existed prior to this event, and Urchin was not the first company to use a JavaScript agent. However, what made their solution unique was that (a) they were[…]

Goal Analysis (Part II) – Measuring Distances to Goal Completion

In the post about the differences between first, total and unique goal completions, I talked about the possible differences between site goals and business goals, and how different metrics might be required to measure the latter. In a nutshell, there are goals where the total number of completions is important, such as a total number[…]

Looking at Funnel Data Incorrectly…

“Over the past 7 days, 58% of users clicked X, 88% of those users checked in = don’t remove X!”   This is part of a tweet I recently read. I’m sure the guy who tweeted this knows what he is talking about. I, on the other hand, have no idea what X means. This[…]

setCampValues for Google Analytics

A few months ago I published a post about setting GA campaign tracking using JavaScript, offering a detailed explanation of the problem (the fact Google Analytics does not provide a way for setting campaign tracking information using JavaScript), together with a solution for overcoming this problem (implementing extra JavaScript coding).   Many people have since[…]