This morning I was catching up on some back blog posts from Dennis Mortensen’s Visual Revenue Blog. Dennis was the former COO at IndexTools, Inc. which was recently purchased by Yahoo! Congrats to all at IndexTools. Looks like Yahoo is going to take a run at Google Analytics.

Dennis is now Director, Data Insights at Yahoo.

My new function will very much be around driving and evangelizing the Analytics strategy for Y!, so envision a more commercial version of Avinash or a less British version of Ian or the nemesis of Omniture if you will… ha ha.

I’m glad to see he will be continuing the blog and staying in the industry. I personally found his blog way too late and wish I had been reading it longer.

In the post I was reading this morning, Dennis makes a table that shows how IndexTools complies with the Web Analytics Association’s published terms and definitions. Since Mobilytics is a member of the WAA and this was a recent topic, I thought I’d do the same. I know they did not have Mobile in mind when they created this document, but let’s see how we stack up.

 

Term: Page

Compliant

A page is an analyst definable unit of content.

 

Term: Page Views

Compliant

The number of times a page (an analyst-definable unit of content) was viewed.

 

Term: Visits/Sessions

Compliant

A visit is an interaction, by an individual, with a website consisting of one or more requests for an analyst-definable unit of content (i.e. “page view”). If an individual has not taken another action (typically additional page views) on the site within a specified time period, the visit session will terminate.

note: We have set timeout to 10 minutes since mobile web pages are much smaller. If you have not viewed a page in 10 minutes, it is a new session.

 

Term: Unique Visitors

Compliant

The number of inferred individual people (filtered for spiders and robots), within a designated reporting timeframe, with activity consisting of one or more visits to a site. Each individual is counted only once in the unique visitor measure for the reporting period.

note: While we filter spiders and robots, we show them in the campaign page and on certain screens. The purpose of this is to identify if spiders are clicking on ads you are paying for. Lack of Javascript leads to spider ad clicks.

 

Term: New Visitor

Compliant

The number of Unique Visitors with activity including a first-ever Visit to a site during a reporting period.

 

Term: Repeat Visitor

Semi-Compliant

The number of Unique Visitors with activity consisting of a Visit to a site during a reporting period and where the Unique Visitor also Visited the site prior to the reporting period.

note: While we track this, and the value can be calculated easily by the user, it is not displayed on our dashboard. This will be added.

 

Term: Entry Page

Compliant

The first page of a visit.

 

Term: Landing Page

Compliant

A page intended to identify the beginning of the user
experience resulting from a defined marketing effort.

note: Mobilytics currently does not distinguish between landing pages and other pages. Our goal and campaign tracking can use any page for a landing page. Also, and Entry Page and Landing Page are the same.

 

Term: Exit Page

Compliant

The last page on a site accessed during a visit, signifying the end of a visit/session.

 

Term: Visit Duration

Compliant

The length of time in a session. Calculation is typically the timestamp of the last activity in the session minus the timestamp of the first activity of the session.

note: Mobilytics uses the term “Avg Time per Visit” which is the total time divided by the number of visits during specified period.

 

Term: Referrer

Compliant

The referrer is the page URL that originally generated the request for the current page view or object.

note: Mobilytics uses “Referring Site” for this term

 

Term: Internal Referrer

N/A

The internal referrer is a page URL that is internal to the website or a web-property within the website as defined by the user.

note: Mobilytics does not currently use “Internal Referrer” as a term.

 

Term: External Referrer

N/A

The external referrer is a page URL where the traffic is external or outside of the website or a web property defined by the user.

note: Mobilytics also uses “Referring Site” for this term

 

Term: Search Referrer

Compliant

The search referrer is an internal or external referrer for which the URL has been generated by a search function.

note: Mobilytics uses “Search Engine” for this term.

 

Term: Visit Referrer

Compliant

The visit referrer is the first referrer in a session, whether internal, external or null.

 

Term: Original Referrer

Semi-Compliant

The original referrer is the first referrer in a visitor’s first session, whether internal, external or null.

note: This info is available on screen as the referrer from the first visit. We plan to put it on the “Visitor” screen which already exists.

 

Term: Click-through

Compliant

Number of times a link was clicked by a visitor.

note: Mobilytics also uses ”Clicks” for this term.

 

Term: Click-through Rate/Ratio

N/A

The number of click-throughs for a specific link divided by the number of times that link was viewed.

note: Mobilytics does not track external ad impressions, only clicks. We also do not calculate click-through rates on internal and outgoing links. We recently added outgoing link tracking and this is being added.

 

Term: Click-through

Compliant

Number of times a link was clicked by a visitor.

note: Mobilytics also uses ”Clicks” for this term.

 

Term: Page Views per Visit

Semi-Compliant

The number of page views in a reporting period divided by number of visits in the same reporting period.

note: Mobilytics uses “Avg. Pages/Visit” and ”Pages/Visit” for this term. We will standardize on a single term asap.

 

Term: Page Exit Ratio

Compliant

Number of exits from a page divided by total number of page views of that page.

note: Mobilytics uses “Exit %” for this term.

 

Term: Single Page View Visits (Bounces)

Semi-Compliant

Visits that consist of one pageview.

note: Mobilytics tracks this and uses for “Bounce Rate” but does not display total. We will add to interface.

 

Term: Bounce Rate

Compliant

Single page view visits divided by entry pages.

note: Mobilytics calculates this as the number of bounces divided by the number of visits. Result is the same.

 

Term: Event

N/A

Any logged or recorded action that has a specific date and time assigned to it by either the browser or server.

note: Mobilytics does not currently use the term “Event”. It is being added as we integrate tracking of downloads, sms, installed apps, outgoing links, outgoing ad tracking and other non-page content.

 

Term: Conversion

Compliant

A visitor completing a target action.

note: Mobilytics uses “Goal” as  the action taken to trigger a “Conversion”.

Well that’s it. I’d say we are pretty compliant. Let’s get the same info from some of the other mobile analytics products as well. The more transparent we are about how we calculate and define metrics, the better the user can understand what they are seeing.

Thanks to Dennis Mortensen for a great post and simple display of the standard terms.

 

 

This entry was posted on Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 8:51 am and is filed under Mobile Advertising, Mobile Web, Web Analytics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.