Re: Metrics Program-Access_Log Solution

From: Thomas Bosilevac <Bosilevac_Thomas_at_cat.com>
Date: Wed 30 Jun 2004 11:51:11 -0500

Thanks Jim,

(BTW, I love your e-metrics guide ebook!)

The main reason behind our decision to not use SDC was for caching issues,
not neccesarily privacy concerns. Our technical architecture relies
heavily on caching pages. Furthermore, there is no way to load the header
portion of a page template without reloading the entire page. Therefor,
in order to redistribute the tracking bug each time a page is loaded
(whether from the Back button or clicking through) we would have to load
up the entire page, eliminating our cache strategy and overloading our
servers.

This said, this is a unique issue. After much due dilegence, WebTrends
has eliminated many of the concerns with tracking bugs.
The cookie is 1st party, meaning the cookie comes from your domain, not a
third party, eliminating many privacy concerns.
The cookie portion does not even need to be used, and can rely on the
tracking pixel, not a cookie. (Obviously Returning Vs. Unique visitor
counts may be jaded, but this is life).
The tracking bug does actually work well with most caching strategies,
just not ours.

I would highly recommend using WebTrends tagging strategy. Using log
files is about as outdated as still counting visitor "hits" to analyze the
popularity of your webpage. I am currently looking into using the SDC
server for other internal projects here, just not our mega-site.

Thomas Bosilevac
Web Metrics Analyst
309-494-4377







Received on Wed Jun 30 2004 - 11:51:11 CDT