It all began with a server migration and improving the way 404s were rendered.  While poking around the Web, I happened across a promising Google Analytics tip on tracking these evasive creatures.  So I captured the code, pasted it in, and a day later looked at the results.

Nada.  I then looked at the code more closely and realized it was the old format, which one usually puts in the footer.  No problem. But a day later still nothing.

Now it was a challenge and I was determined.  I found one blog post using newer code format, but one part of the JavaScript looked off.  Given that I’m no JS ninja, I tried it.  It turned out to be a step in the right direction, but sure enough — that one bit of JS was indeed off.  All of the results were the same. “404.html?p=/page_not_found_uri/”.

More scrambling…. and somewhere along the way, buried in a forum as I recall, I found some code that looked right.  Jackpot.  Now when I check our Google Analytics Top Content and enter /404.html in the page filter at the bottom I get a lovely tidy list of 404s, including their source.

To save others who might be on the same quest, here’s the code to use in your 404 html pages.  Just replace “UA-xxxxxxx-x” with your account number.  Then get out your virtual feather duster and start cleaning out those cobwebs.

<script type="text/javascript">
google.load("jquery", "1.4.2");
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-xxxxxxx-x']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>


Two Books on Analytics (both excellent)

• Web Analytics: An Hour a Day
  by Avinash Kaushik
• Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics
  by Brian Clifton

Google Analytics Resources

• Google Analytics Website
  Just do it
• Google Website Optimizer
  A related tool, now part of the GA suite; for A/B testing
• Google Analytics Help Center
  Searchable support: my first resort when I have a specific question
• Google Analytics Glossary
  If it’s terminology, this is my first resort
• SiteScan
  Free Google Analytics diagnostic tool to give you an audit of your Google Analytics setup
• Conversion University
  Training videos, etc., from live training
• Google Analytics Help Forum
• Google Analytics Blog
  If you want to stay on the cutting edge of analytics, this is a must; and its helpful to alert you to changes
• The Ultimate Google Analytics Plugins, Hacks & Tricks Collection: FutureNow. Oct. 1008
• Videos on YouTube
• A Primer for Nonprofits: Using Google Analytics
  A helpful 16 minute video screencast by Beth Kanter

Other Analytics Resources (in no particular order)

• Analytics Toolbox: 50+ Ways to Track Website Traffic: Mashable, June 2007
  Extensive links of analytics and related usability tools, grouped into five categories: (1)
  Web traffic visualization, (2) Blog and RSS Feed Analysis, (3) Market Research Data and Site Rankings, (4) Analytics Software Packages, (5) Log File Analysis
• 14 free tools that reveal why people abandon your website: Conversion Rate Experts
• Six Revisions’ 15 Tools for Monitoring a Website’s Popularity
  includes links to Alexa, Quantcast, Technorati, and similar tools
• Smileycat’s 9 Free Tools to Analyze and Improve Your Website
  includes links to Crazy Egg, SEOCentro and a potpourri of other analytics tools
• When to Use Which User Experience Research Methods: Jakob Nielsen
  Outlines various usability methodologies; includes an excellent graph
• The Web Analytics Association
• The Web Analytics Forum
  “The world’s largest conversation dedicated to web analytics, founded in 2004″
• |Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik: Web Analytics Blog
  IMO Kaushik (who now works for Google) is the foremost analytics expert
• Award of Achievement in Web Analytics Program
  University of British Columbia’s excellent online series of four courses; if you want to be a pro, take these classes

I expected it would be beautiful in upper east Tennessee (Harrogate, to be precise) this time of year, but I underestimated. It was breathtaking. I can see why that part of the world breeds authors. But more than that, the TCPRA people were delightful. Belmont University had a large contingent of their PR staff, with wonderful inside stories about the historic Belmont08 Debate, while Sam Watson of the Johnson City Press had an upbeat prognosis for their newspaper business. Astonishing. A newspaper that’s not at death’s door? They’ve embraced Web 2.0 and are making a go of it.

To TCPRA members (Doug Williams, in particular), thank you for including me. I promised I’d post my slides, so here they are. I’m not sure they’ll be much use out-of-context, but a promise is a promise — and in the next few days, I’ll also post a list of my favorite Google Analytics resources for you.

Understanding this a wonderful thing, unless you slip into thinking it’s the only type of Google account. This is where I fell into trouble. There’s at least one other: a Google Analytics Account. Your Google Account can give you access to multiple Google Analytics Accounts. And people can share administrative rights to the same Google Analytics Account. Can you blame me for getting confused?

Specifically, I ran afoul setting up Google Analytics for my church. After getting comfortable with it at work, a few months later I set up what I thought was a separate set of analytics for my church. Wrong. In fact I’d set up a “profile” of my work’s account for my church. Church and state. Hmmmm….. But the important point is that profiles are subsets of a Google Analytics account, and if you want to share administrative rights to that account, you share all profiles.

Now it’s a very good idea to share administrative rights to your Google Analytics accounts, assuming the website is not just yours. But could I share this hybrid account with anyone at work or at church? Well, actually I could have. There is one member of my church whom I work with, but I don’t think he would have been happy with this faux solution or with me.

Given that my church had much less data and need for the data, that account was the one to go. What I did was set up a separate account for my church and uploaded the new tracking code. The next day I checked to be sure the second account was working. It was, so I exported a boatload of PDFs from the old account – essentially archiving this data in case we ever need it in the future. And now all is well.

Meanwhile, a picture being worth all of the words above, here is a quick graph of Google Accounts vs. Google Analytics Accounts vs. Google Analytics Profiles. May it prevent you from falling into the same trap.

Wrong. That way madness lies — or at least eyes-crossed by a sea of numbers. The usual pattern is you get your analytics tool to work, you’re enchanted by what you see, you poke around in the numbers, you show your supervisor, she is impressed too, and then what? You return a month later, and the numbers are up. That’s great, but you have no idea why and you’re smart enough to know that if you don’t know why, it won’t be too long before they go the other direction. One month later, the numbers are plateauing, and you still don’t know why. The next month you don’t go back. You’ve got better things to do with your time.

It seems to me (in retrospect) that it’s like trying to teach yourself finance by looking at ledger sheets with no one to explain them to you. Chances are you will see some things, but not enough to make it worthwhile. It will be an exercise in frustration.

And then the day comes when your boss says: “What about those statistics? Do you have something I can share with the Board?”

You could continue to give her the big picture numbers and be done with it. But I would suggest there’s a better way that will be a great investment of your time not only for your company, but also for your career. And it doesn’t even take that long.

I took one day each week in April to learn analytics. Specifically, I took the University of British Columbia’s online Introduction to Web Analytics course. It’s the first in a series of four, leading to the UBC Award of Achievement in Web Analytics, a certification recognized by the Web Analytics Association.

The result? To my surprise, with just this one course, I am (for now) Vanderbilt’s foremost expert at web analytics. That won’t last long. Several others are interested, and as soon as one of them takes the second course, my moment of analytics glory will end. But more important than that, I’m already finding easy ways to apply analytics. Best of all, as promised in the course, these simple things are already making management happier. And as you might imagine happy management makes a very happy web diva.

Of course, there are other ways to learn analytics. There’s an excellent book by Avinash Kaushik: Web Analytics: An Hour a Day. And there are plenty of tutorials on line. Just search YouTube. However, I’d caution you not focus too much on any one analytics application to start with — not even Google Analytics.

The first step is to learn the fundamental principles and practices. After that, the tools will make more sense, so you can use them more effectively. If you possibly can, take the UBC course. It’s first-rate.

There are two compelling reasons to carve out some of your valuable time and learn analytics.

1. Using analytics moves website improvement past opinions into hard data. No longer will site design and architecture be based on subjective viewpoints — not even on HiPPOs — the Highest Paid Person’s Opinions.
2. It bridges the communication gap between senior management and web professionals. It speaks to what’s happening on your website and what can happen in terms that are much more familiar to management, e.g. data to back up the ROI (return on investment).

Daniel: You know, Sammy, I’m sure she’s unique and extraordinary, but… the general wisdom is that, in the end, there isn’t just one person for each of us.
Sam: There was for Kate and Leo. There was for you. There is for me. [holds up one finger] She’s “the one”.
Daniel: Fair enough.
-Love Actually

I have the devil of a time picking what to focus on about the web. The problem is I love it all: PHP, databases, XML, CSS, Flash, convergence, standards, and so on. But for the past six weeks I’ve been focused on one that shows strong signs of trumping the lot: analytics.

I can’t begin to share all that I’ve learned in one or two posts. Instead, I’m going to take it in bite-size chunks. And today’s topic is…

What the Heck Is Analytics?

Once upon a time (measured in web eons, meaning back in the 1990s) analytics meant geek aracana like log file statistics, hits, page views. In other words, it was all about the raw numbers.

Then it evolved to mean the application that gathered the numbers — typically Google Analytics.

Now, however, as it comes into its own, it means much more. In essence, analytics is the process of matching core goals with objective numbers.

For those wanting a more thorough definition, it’s the practice of collecting, analyzing and reporting meaningful numbers about website usage. The data must be analyzed in an objective way through testing and measurement by those responsible for the site. Then the resulting information is used to optimize the site to more effectively accomplish the organization’s goals.

In other words, it’s powerful web juju.

The deciding factor wasn’t the cost, the distance or even the speakers. It was the need of the Cancer Center. While I can’t say we have an expert at either search engine optimization or usability on the staff, nonetheless those are better covered then analytics.

And analytics really matter — in a way that reminds me of budgets. They are both about numbers, and numbers can be used to help management understand better what’s needed and why.

Needless to say, once I learn more, I will be posting more on this subject. For now, all I can say is get Google Analytics. It’s by far the best website number-cruncher I’ve used, and I’ve tried quite a few.