FUZZY NUMBERS: OBSERVATIONS ON MEASURING USER BEHAVIOR ONLINE
As much as we would like to have precise data on how users interact with devices, we are not there yet. This is not an in-depth study of analytics methodology but a statement about how I see web analytics used and some of the apples and oranges comparisons I have seen. To those that practice measuring user behavior online this may seem obvious. To those that rely on reports about user behavior online this may at first be an unsettling opening statement. I have recently come across a few instances where the definitions and nomenclature used by technical and marketing people vary in definition. This has led to some confusion as to what we are measuring, why we are measuring and how we measure. The Business of Data Collection has Changed Online behavior analytics has matured greatly over the past ten years. Architectures involving web services have also evolved from mostly 3-tiered models to n-tiered Serviced Based Architecture (SOA) models. In addition to the shift from dedicated se