There are tools out there that find bogus links on your site, and some even try to find links outside your site that point to nirvana. But your friendly marketer likely wants to have better data than that, so she asks you to build tracking for 404 pages. Now what? Let me explain, both for … Continue reading Tracking 404 Error Pages
Author: Jan Exner
German expat living in Switzerland (formerly UK and France). Consultant and member of the Multi-Solutions Group at Adobe, working with the Digital Marketing Suite. Father of 4 girls.
Automating Tests
[180418 - updated to reflect move to ChromeDriver] I feel like a fraud! For months — no! Years! — I have been writing about testing, more specifically automated testing. I have shared my Site Infrastructure Tests github, I have spoken about it at the Adobe Summit in London, and I have mentioned multiple times that … Continue reading Automating Tests
Debugging 2017.02
It has been almost 3 years since I wrote my article on debugging. I read through it the other day, and couldn't help but notice that my workflow has indeed changed. Time for a new article! I'll stick with client-side this time, as this is where the changes have happened. The second big difference is … Continue reading Debugging 2017.02
Discussion – Customize Analytics in DTM
There is no "standard deployment". A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with a colleague who hadn't worked with DTM before. He asked me lots of intelligent questions about his somewhat non-standard requirements, and I replied with what I think is the best approach. Whilst doing that, I kept thinking about "the other approach", … Continue reading Discussion – Customize Analytics in DTM
Wanna test? Mac Edition
![[screenshot]](https://webanalyticsfordevelopers.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/170103-success.png?w=656&h=300&crop=1)
[2018-04-13 - update - this article has been updated to use ChromeDriver] Yay! Testing! My beloved pet peeve! When I wrote the step by step article on how to set up for testing on Windows, I optimistically and somewhat dismissively wrote I am 100% sure you can easily show your friendly marketer how to do … Continue reading Wanna test? Mac Edition
2016 for Developers
Here we go, yet another year under our belts. Time flies when you're having fun. In 2016, this blog had more than 30000 visitors, and it is close to cracking 100000 views. That is so incredible, I can barely believe it! Thank you all so much for reading what I write! This really makes me … Continue reading 2016 for Developers
Load Times & DTM
![[Screenshot]](https://webanalyticsfordevelopers.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/161206-aaabbx.png?w=656&h=233&crop=1)
If I say "BAADFX", do you flinch? You're a developer, so I guess you should. I'm talking about the results for your pages on webpagetest.org. Each letter is the result of a specific category of the test. A is better than F. In the example above, images should be compressed (the D in position 4), … Continue reading Load Times & DTM
Setting up for using the Reporting API – with R
I recently spent a very valuable two hours listening to Tim Wilson's introduction to R at the eMetrics Summit in Berlin. Given that when I last wrote about setting up for using the Reporting API, I ignorantly omitted R completely, and that Tim made it sound pretty easy, I shall try to remedy that mistake. … Continue reading Setting up for using the Reporting API – with R
SPAs, DTM, and clearVars
For some reason, I see a lot of SPAs right now, some of them actually embedded into otherwise harmless and perfectly likable web sites. I guess they're not going to go away anytime soon. This article is part of my "don't fight it" exercise. It is a follow-up to the article on tracking single-page applications. … Continue reading SPAs, DTM, and clearVars
Tracking Versions
I have seen a lot of different people do the same thing: track some sort of a version of their tracking setup. It makes sense, because it allows you to track down bad choices in your tracking. Questions like "so when did we lose the site section eVar?" or "Do you remember when we started … Continue reading Tracking Versions
Web Analytics for Developers 