A developer's guide to web analytics – decommissioned in 2021
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I feel that standards are a good thing. I think that each of us should strive to follow standard approaches, because it'll make all of our lives easier. I also think that a Data Layer is an adornment on every site, and a svelte way of helping analysts and marketing do their work more flexibly. … Continue reading Using a CEDDL Data Layer with DTM
(I mentioned two weeks ago that I sometimes blog because I want to learn and/or remember things. This is one of those articles.) Whether you are a regular reader or just generally interested, I'm sure you know that most (if not all) analytics tools these days work by sending "tracking calls", "hits", "beacons", or whatever … Continue reading Quick tip: Tracking Server & SSL
This year, I had the opportunity to run a hands-on lab about data quality at the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas, and I'll run the same lab again in London on the 10th. The lab was mainly about the test framework I also write about here a lot. My hope was that I could introduce … Continue reading Data Quality at the Adobe Summit
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!
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
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
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
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
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You know what the problem with luxury is? You get used to it. And then it becomes hard to enjoy the little things. I am so used to tag management by now, that when I see how popular the mini-series on the s_code.js file still is, I keep wondering why would people even look at … Continue reading Everything but the TMS
In 2014, I went to Berlin to attend "Digital Analytics Hub", probably the best "conference" in our business. DA Hub evolved out of Gary Angel's Xchange. You sit in small groups of people with one discussion leader, and you speak about interesting subjects. Those "discussions" can be anything between good and outstanding, depending on the … Continue reading Test-driven & agile Analytics revisited
Web Analytics for Developers 