I am sure you have all been thinking "how does he find what to blog about, and how does he write his articles?" Right? No? Well, I am writing, and you are reading, so the whole mechanism is in my favour here, and if I want to explain these things, there's nothing you can do. … Continue reading Behind the Scenes – How I Blog
Category: Opinion
Articles that are less technical and more opinionated
Don’t track New/Repeat Visitors!
In a rare case of development on my part, I am today going to tell you to not follow the advice in an article I wrote some time ago. I'm talking about Plugins: New/Repeat vs VisitNum. At the time I told you to do your friendly marketer a favour, track visit number for her instead … Continue reading Don’t track New/Repeat Visitors!
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
Testing is like an Onion
I have tried to justify my approach to testing for digital marketing a couple of times. Given that tools like ObservePoint or HubScan are available, the fundamental question is: do you need my approach at all? My personal answer to that, obviously, is yes, you do! If I have formerly convinced you, feel free to … Continue reading Testing is like an Onion
Tracking Single-page Applications
or: why AngularJS makes our lives harder Single-page applications are web sites that "live on a single page", i.e. when the visitor clicks anything, the browser will not load a new page (as it usually would). Instead, it will modify the existing page using Javascript. SPAs can be quite complex, and people build them because … Continue reading Tracking Single-page Applications
Data Layer – Yet Another Reason
If your new year resolutions for this year included "help your friendly marketer be more successful", I have something for you today. It's a fairly straight-forward thing to do, but it'll help her big time: build a proper, solid data layer for her. There are countless blog articles out there about the advantages of having … Continue reading Data Layer – Yet Another Reason
Agile? Not yet!
I have to make a confession: we're not ready for agile. I don't expect anyone to jump up and angrily shout "of course we are! We're doing agile right now!", because, frankly, it is not about what we do that I worry. Analytics loves Agile When I was a developer, back in the late nineties, … Continue reading Agile? Not yet!
Plugins: New/Repeat vs VisitNum
Here: I would always use the getVisitNum plugin instead of the getNewRepeat plugin. They have a similar use case. Your friendly marketer will probably compare your new visitors against those who've been to the site before. I bet you she has targets that are linked to acquisition of new visitors or rather new customers. Most … Continue reading Plugins: New/Repeat vs VisitNum
What does a Digital Analytics department do?
I was going to move on to the next step of my journey, replacing more plugins with Dynamic Tag Management features when I came across and article written by Richard Hayes, that I really want you to read, especially if you are a developer and not an analyst or marketer. Read this: What does a … Continue reading What does a Digital Analytics department do?
Data Elements vs Data Layer
Have you used a Tag Management system yet? And a Data Layer? Both are good ideas in our business, for a variety of reasons. The one I think is most relevant in this context here is that defining a Data Layer makes a lot of requirements, possibilities, assumptions and limitations explicit. I think in a … Continue reading Data Elements vs Data Layer
Web Analytics for Developers 