Web Analytics Central » WebTrends

WebTrends Helpful Tip – Client Side Tracking for Mobile

Dorian D. Regester — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:56:49 +0000

WebTrends provides two methods for tagging and tracking your mobile WAP sites. The first is the tagging approach which involves adding code to each page of your site which will be discussed in this blog posting.

Before you begin, you will need to set up a mobile space for your WAP site within WebTrends. If you do not know how to do this, you can read “Creating a Mobile WAP Space” where I go into detail of how you can go about setting this up for your site.
Once you have this set up, you will need to do the following:

Take the webtrends.js file that was created when you developed the tag (webtrends.lite.min.js or webtrends.lite.js) and place it on the server where the WAP site is hosted
Locate and open the webtrends.lite.html file
Edit the file so that the path to the JS file on the server is reflective of your setup
Place the HTML code for the WAP site within the tags. Below is an example of the tag:

That’s it! With this tag in place (in addition to having the mobile wap space created for the site), you will be able to leveraged WebTrends for tracking your client side WAP site.

WebTrends Helpful Tip – Creating Mobile Site Space

Dorian D. Regester — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:30:57 +0000

Before you begin tagging a mobile WAP site for WebTrends Analytics tracking, you will need to create the WAP space within the interface to begin receiving the data. This blog posting will help you take the necessary steps to set this up.

One caveat for this blog posting is that it assumes you are using Analytics 10 for WebTrends. If you aren’t, I will write a posting later this week that will describe how to do this in an earlier version. To set this up in Analytics 10, please do the following:

Open the spaces dashboard
Find the Mobile Website link
Click on it
Enter the WAP domain that you wish to track within the provided text field. Once entered, WebTrends will retrieve an image of your site’s home page and the site title
If you like the image used, you can click continue to proceed further. If you do not like the image, you can select upload image to add one from your PC or MAC.
Pick the time zone that the site will reside in. This is necessary for WebTrends to calculate how the days are defined within the reports.
Decide on which users you want to have access to this. If you are unsure now, you can always come back and add them at a later time.
Save what you created.
Download the JavaScript tag and implement it on your site (via client side or server side implementation).

That’s it. Now you know how to go about setting up mobile WAP spaces in WebTrends that will house the analytics data you want to track.

WebTrends Helpful Tip – Creating Backups

Dorian D. Regester — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:58:34 +0000

Backing up data from a web analytics platform is critical to success simply because if the data is lost, you will not be able to recover it. WebTrends provides a simple and easy way to go about backing up the data that this blog will describe.
When you create a backup profile in WebTrends, the system backs up all the analytics data for that given profile. Backups can be created manually or automatically for all new profiles created. This data is stored in the backup repository and can be easily restored. Just remember that after you restore the data, you can then recreate your reporting for the period after the backup. To do this you will need to run an analysis based on the restored profile. To set up a backup for a single profile, you will need to follow the below steps:

Locate and Find the Scheduler link
Click on it and navigate to Scheduled Jobs
Click on New
Locate the Job Type box and click on Backup Job
Select the profile you wish to have backed up
Click Next
Type a name/description for the new backup job you are establishing
Click Next
Within the Host Binding and Priority area, you will need to select that you want the backup to run on the available host
Next, select a job priority. If this is the only job in the queue, then you don’t need to worry about this step. If there are more, you will need to figure out when you want this to run vs. the others and adjust accordingly
Click Next
Look over the summary information and make sure all the data contained within it is accurate
Click Save to schedule the backup

Once you have established the backup, you will be able to view these backups including the name and date when they were created. To view these, you will need to go to the WebTrends Administration area and then selecting Admin -> App Settings -> System Management -> Backup/Restore -> Restore Backup.

That’s it! Once you take those steps, you will need to be able to backup all of your WebTrends data so that in case of a complete meltdown, you will still have your data safe and secure and can quickly restore it.

Please Note:
Backups can also be created if you have host groups set up in your installation.

WebTrends Helpful Tip – Disable Third Party Cookie Tracking

Dorian D. Regester — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 03:13:22 +0000

Continuing from the previous post of “Disabling First Party Cookie Tracking“, I wanted to discuss how you could disable third party cookies for SmartSource Data Collector. This post will discuss how you can go about doing this.

There are two methods available to disable third party cookie tracking. The first method is to edit the dcs.cfg file. To go about setting this up, you will need to feel comfortable with and editing the dcs.cfg file. If you are not, you should work with IT or WebTrends on getting this squared away. To disable tracking in the SDC, you will need to edit the above file and set the [cookieserver] section to false.

The second method available is a hybrid method leveraging both a JS tag and editing the dcs.cfg file. Within the dcs.cfg file, you will need to add the following line if its not present:

cfgbyhit=true

If it is already there, you will need to edit it to equal true. Next, you will need to add the below tag to the JS implementation:

DCS.dcscfg=1;

That’s it. With this in place, you won’t have to worry about WebTrends setting 3rd party cookies for your visitors.

Please Note:
To prevent OnDemand from setting third party cookies, you can edit the data source and use the DCS.dcscfg=1; line just like we did for the non-on demand implementation.

WebTrends Helpful Tip – Disable First Party Cookie Tracking

Dorian D. Regester — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 02:58:22 +0000

If you work of a company that doesn’t allow visitor data to be tracked via cookies, WebTrends provides a way to disable first-party cookie tracking. This blog explains how to go about setting that up on your site.
To enable this, you will need to edit your SmartSource data sources and recreate the JS tag so that the cookie tracking functionality is disabled. Below are the necessary steps needed to go about disabling this.In the left hand navigational pane, click on Administration.

Under Admin, click on settings and then data sources
Find the data source that you wish to edit
Click on Edit on the action pane (menu)
Find and click on SmartSource Data Collector
Click on Tracking
Find the box that says “Enable 1st Party Cookie Tracking”
Un-check it (clear the checkbox)
Click generate Tag
Work with IT to implement the new WebTrends JS tag on your site.

That’s it. With this in place, you will disable first party cookie tracking so that you are conforming to your company’s policy of tracking visitor data via cookies.

WebTrends Helpful Tip – Server Tracking

Dorian D. Regester — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 01:37:55 +0000

Do you have a site that is hosted on several or more different servers and you want to see how each performs (in the case of performance on the load balancer)? Well, within WebTrends this can be done by leveraging the WT.sv META tag.

WebTrends has dedicated the WT.sv META name to track page views for each server within your setup. Below is an example of the tag:

So if you have four servers that you want to see performance across each, you would need four separate tags:

“WT.sv” CONTENT=“Server_A“>

“WT.sv” CONTENT=“Server_B“>

“WT.sv” CONTENT=“Server_C“>

“WT.sv” CONTENT=“Server_D“>

If you have a server farm, you will be able to retrieve the server name and dynamically pass it to the META tag using server side programming.

That’s it. With the above in place, you will be able to see how each server performs and optimize accordingly.

WebTrends Helpful Tip – Tracking Page Titles

Dorian D. Regester — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 07:00:18 +0000

There are certain instances where you would look to tweaking the page title prior to it being sent over to WebTrends for processing. This blog posting will help you understand how to go about changing this within the META tags.

While URLs are normally a reliable variable to leverage for differntiating pages, there are many instances where the URL doesnt change which would lead to over inflated numbers. One example of this is dynamic content. For many sites, this dynamic content is based on either URL parameters or just on actions/interactions that generate unique content but do not refresh the page URL. While this can be extremely frustrating, there are work arounds for this.

To circumvent this, the best practice approach is to use a server side snippet of code to handle tweaking the title to something that fits better into your current nomeclature. Once you create that logic, you will need to feed the new title into the WT.ti tag (see below):

Once in place, you will be able to work around certain shortcomings with tracking page titles.

WebTrends Helpful Tip – Tracking Paid Search

Dorian D. Regester — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 03:04:54 +0000

Do you have paid search campaigns that you would like to track within WebTrends but do not know how to go about doing that? This blog posting will describe what you need to do to go about having that insight within the interface.

WebTrends has allocated a dedicatedquery string parameter for tracking paid search efforts called WT.srch. This parameter is used within the Analytics solution for custom reporting as well as visitor history to show paid search traffic vs. non-paid (or organic). Below is an example of the destination URL with this in place:

www.webanalyticscentral.com/?WT.srch=1

That’s it. With this in place, you will be able to track paid search efforts moving forward. Please take a look at the note below for a caveat that you need to be aware of.

Please Note:

WebTrends reports on WT.srch=1 but is limited to only those search engines that are defined on the Webtrends paid search engine list. If you use this but the search engine isn’t on the list, then WebTrends will not recognize results from those given engines. So be sure to work with your WebTrends account rep on making sure that list is up-to-date.

WebTrends Helpful Tip – Tracking Shopping Cart Additions

Dorian D. Regester — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 04:40:16 +0000

Tracking shopping cart interactions is of the utmost importance within web analytics platforms. This blog posting will describe how to leverage some of the tools within WebTrends to track this activity.

One tool that can help assess shopping cart interactions is the Scenario Analysis. Below are the parameters that you need:

WT.si_p = Step by Name Method
WT.si_x = Step by Number Method
WT.si_n = Identifies the shopping cart scenario
WT.pn_sku = Designates the product SKU

One thing to note though is that using WebTrends Analytics, you have the ability to select whether you want to use the step by name method (WT.si_p) or the step by number method (WT.si_x). I tend to stick with the WT.si_p method since its specifically by name and is easier to view within the interface vs. having to remember the number of steps, where they are fired from, etc. with the WT.si_x method.

So lets say you wanted to track when a user adds an item to the cart. To use Scenario Analysis, you will need to use the parameters defined above. There are two methods that WebTrends provides to you for tracking these efforts. The first is via META tags. Below is an example of how it would look:

The second method that is available is assigning those values for SKU, Shopping Cart Scenario and Step by Name method directly to the parameters. Below is an example of this:

_tag.WT.pn_sku=abc12345;
_tag.WT.si_n=ShoppingCart;
_tag.WT.si_p=CartAdd;

With either of the above approaches, you will still get the below example query string parameter:

www.webanalyticscentral.com/?WT.pn_sku=abc12345&WT.si_n=ShoppingCart&WT.si_p=CartAdd

That’s it! With that logic in place, you will be able to leverage scenario analysis to see shopping cart additions for the given SKUs captured.

WebTrends Helpful Tip – Using Both Third and First Party Cookies

Dorian D. Regester — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 02:23:44 +0000

Reading the title of the blog probably confuses many of you as it seems counter productive to set both cookies on a site. However there are situations where it makes sense and this blog posting will discuss those points where you might want to consider it.
Let’s look at the points where it makes sense to have both:

Setting a cookie for returning visitors who were only identifiable previously through a third party cookie. If we were to disable the third party cookie, we would lose all the historic data on those visitors and they would then be classified as new visitors until the 1st party cookie is set.

If you have multiple domains (i.e. webanalyticscentral.com, webtestingcentral.com and webinsightcentral.com), you will need a third party cookie to track the user across the sites while having a 1st party cookie on the main site (prior to migrating between domains)

If you wanted to classify a visitor for session based tracking.