[thelist] Basic Traffic tracking question

Martin martin at members.evolt.org
Wed May 2 18:06:01 CDT 2001


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John Handelaar wrote on 2/5/01 5:43 pm

>> Unless you have an issue on a Federal level, you aren't going to 
>> be able to
>> do much with those numbers.  Trust me.  
>
>Fortunately, no-one has to.
>
>Run it through something like Geektools' lookup and you'll
>find out either what the number represents, or at least who
>owns the number block.

Still doesn't answer "Why do I care?" in terms of "How does
it help me make decisions about how to do things differently?"

I really worry about software like WebTrends/Analog (or
rather people's reliance on them) - it gives you tons of
data, but almost no useful information. You can end up like
the KGB, who had records down to what colour socks people
wore on a certain day. But because they had so much stuff,
they drowned in it because they couldn't analyse it into
anything which helped them.

A far better thing to do is to mark key events which *do*
help you better understand and serve your users (marketing
speak: Segmentation). Like you may consider that the valuable
users of your site aren't the ones who register to get the free
stuff, but those who actually do things with it and participate.

Cheers
Martin
(doing this kind of analysis for some big clients right now)

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