Web Analytics Blog

Viralheat Measures And Analyzes Real-Time Content On Twitter, YouTube And More

2009-05-26T10:35:00.002+01:00

As YouTube and Twitter have become essential marketing tools for brands and companies, there has been an emergence of startups that help marketers track the buzz around a certain individual or brand. Radian6, Visible Measures, Omgili, Omniture and a plethora of others offer tools to monitor blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other social media sites for mentions of a company or individual’s name. Startup Viralheat is entering this space with the private beta launch of its affordable social media measurement product that scours social video sites including YouTube, Hulu and Vimeo, and Twitter to deliver real-time results of consumer generated content on these sites.

Full article....

Optimizing Website

2009-05-22T17:59:00.003+01:00

By Bryan Eisenberg May 22nd, 2009

“Talk to the dog in the language of the dog about what matters to the dog.” Roy H Williams

This past month, I shared my 10 step process for optimizing copy for websites or landing pages on my Market Motive training call. I was able to convince my friends at Market Motive to let me share the full presentation video with you (normally they only share the first few chapters unless you are a paid member). Unfortunately, it will only be available to be viewed on the blog until June 3rd.

Optimizing Website & Landing Page Copy - A 10 Step Process | FutureNow's GrokDotCom / Marketing Optimization Blog

Posted using ShareThis

HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on Twitter

2009-05-21T11:06:00.003+01:00

Today, Twitter has roughly 6 million users and is projected to grow to 18.1 million users by 2010. With all those people, the chances for networking are endless and connecting with new people can lead to career opportunities, so it is essential that your personal brand exists on the service. Last month we showed you a step-by-step process for building your personal brand on Facebook, and today we’re going to show you how to do the same thing on Twitter. By leveraging the Twitter platform to build your brand you can showcase yourself to a huge and growing audience.
Full Article

Posted using ShareThis

YouTube Offers Brand Partners Another Carrot: Google Analytics For Their Channels

2009-05-20T20:18:00.003+01:00

YouTube, a site that was once notorious for pirated content and user-generated videos that were practically useless to brands, has made great strides in the last few years as it looks to appeal to its growing number of advertisers and content partners. Today the site is adding a new feature that makes the platform even more useful, adding Google’s powerful (and very popular) Analytics reporting to YouTube brand channels, adding some credence to YouTube’s claim that it’s the “world’s largest focus group”.YouTube Offers Brand Partners Another Carrot: Google Analytics For Their Channels

Posted using ShareThis

Estimating the effects of cookie-deletion

2009-05-20T18:50:00.001+01:00

A great post from Angie at ShowMeAnalytics There are differing opinions on how to label the metric historically known as “Unique Visitors”. On one side of the fence are those who think it should be relabeled “Unique Cookies”, since that is the most popular method used for calculations. On the other side of the fence are others who think the metric is a catch-all for the “best available” measurement (authenticated visitors, cookies if those aren’t available, IP/UA combination if neither is available) and should be replaced with a different term if/when a better, standardized way to measure people comes along. What we all agree on, though, is that a Unique Visitor metric measured with cookies is terribly inaccurate. Full post

Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics - Guest Post by Eric Ries

2009-05-20T18:19:00.004+01:00

The only metrics that entrepreneurs should invest energy in collecting are those that help them make decisions. Unfortunately, the majority of data available in off-the-shelf analytics packages are what I call Vanity Metrics. They might make you feel good, but they don’t offer clear guidance for what to do.

When you hear companies doing PR about the billions of messages sent using their product, or the total GDP of their economy, think vanity metrics. But there are examples closer to home. Consider the most basic of all reports: the total number of “hits” to your website. Let’s say you have 10,000. Now what? Do you really know what actions you took in the past that drove those visitors to you, and do you really know which actions to take next? In most cases, I don’t think it’s very helpful.

Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics - Guest Post by Eric Ries

Posted using ShareThis

Next SUPA Meeting - The Place for Google Website Optimizer in Usability

2009-04-27T21:42:00.005+01:00

The next Scottish Usability Professionals Association (SUPA) talk is a practical discussion on how to improve usability using a powerful (free) tool: Google Website Optimiser. Design is very subjective, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. A website may look ‘pretty’ in your opinion, but design is not just about how something looks, it has a job to do – it needs to be usable. If your design is not doing the job it’s supposed to do, i.e. making you money, it doesn’t matter if it looks nice. Many arguments have been had (and time wasted) choosing one design over another, “I think that one is better!”, “why?”, “erm… I don’t know, it looks better?”. To borrow a phrase from Harry Hill, “There’s only one way to find out… fight!”

We prefer not to spill blood these days and that’s where Google Website Optimizer comes in; science to the rescue. By measuring which page layout is more effective at achieving the desired conversion we can quickly determine which design is best and learn from that to help make design decisions easier in the future. One image or line of copy may mean the difference between being profitable or not. We’ll be using lots of case studies to show you how we’ve started using Google Website Optimizer to run A/B Split and Multivariate Tests in the development of a social networking/gaming site and share some of the mistakes and lessons learned. It would then be good to open the meeting up to discuss how to use optimisation tools to improve website usability.

Steve Young – Creative Director and Jim Williams – Web Analyst, both from WeeWorld, will take you through how to fight nice between competing designs: may the most usable win!

We will be at Scottish Enterprise again, so thanks to them for the use of the venue:

Venue: Scottish Enterprise, Apex House, 99 Haymarket Terrace, Edinburgh, EH12 5HD

Sign up here

Advanced Segmentation with 4Q from iPerceptions

2009-02-17T19:25:00.005Z

4Q, is a simple free “voice of customer tool” created by iPerceptions in collaboration with Avinash Kaushik 4Q lets you ask the most important survey questions to your website visitors:

1. How satisfied are my visitors?
2. What are my visitors at my website to do?
3. Are they completing what they set out to do?
4. If not, why not?
5. If yes, what did they like best about the online experience?

Launched in February 2008 4Q gave organisations with small budgets the ability to inexpensively listen to voice of their customers. And on the eve of their one year anniversary and after hitting its 2 millionth respondent, 4Q has evolved to offer advanced visitor segmentation capabilities.

Adding supplementary customer questions to the customer survey:

6. Which of the following best describes how often you visit this website?

This is my first visit ever
First visit in last 3 months
2 - 5 visits in the last 3 months

7. How did you arrive at the website today?

Typed the URL into a browser
Bookmark / favourites
Search engine result
Clicked on an advertisement
From a link on a blog, forum or social network
From a link on another website
From an e-mail link
From a link sent to me by a friend
Other

These visitor segments can be cross-tabulated with the core 4Q results on task completion and site satisfaction to give you a clearer understanding of how well your site is catering to the needs of your diverse visitor segments.

Why is segmentation important? To quote Avinash Kaushik: “Analyzing data in aggregate is a crime…When you look at all that (data) in aggregate you get nothing…If you want to find actionable insights you need to segment your web analytics data…Then you’ll understand behaviour of micro-segments of your website visitors, which in turn will lead you to actionable insights because you are not focusing on a glob rather you are focused on a specific.”

The satisfaction of first time visitors is critical in improving site registrations, sign ups and recruiting future new purchasers. Identifying satisfaction problems with users who visit 2- 5 times in the last 3 months can help solve retention problems and drive Life Time Value in your high value customers.

Remaining ignorant of customer satisfaction is not a sensible option and for me 4Q with advanced segmentation has got to be a serious option.

User Tenure - How Long Do Your Users Remain Active on Your Site?

2009-01-23T16:29:00.004Z

We define user tenure as the number of days a user remains engaged with our site. It's the length of time between initial registration and when the user becomes inactive. The difficulty is when do you define a user as inactive - after 30 days, 60 days 90 days of not logging in? Have the web analytics experts agreed a standard on this one? We tend to use 30 days but I have seen other companies go for 90. May be we are being too hard on oursleves and 30 days is too draconian a cut off.

I guess it will depend on the type of site - an ecommerce site is probably going to care less about tenure than a community/social networking site. On the other hand it depends on what they sell - I engage with Dell to replace my printer cartidge every 3 months - does this mean I have become inactive and will reappear as a new user. I doubt it - I am recognised as soon as I log back in. However, if I haven't been to my Facebook page for 3 months is it likely that I will return? When is the last time you went to a virtual world like Second Life? I can't even remember my user name so I guess I am inactive there. Could this be the definition I am looking for? If only I could tell when my users have forgotten their login details. How about when an email is permanently bounced?

That leads on to what you do with this information. If you know that as soon as somebody fails to log in for 3 months there is a very high chance they will never return. Then is there some marketing intervention (targetted email - not much use if the email is junk) that can be employed to re-activate these users and bring them back to the site. This could make an enourmous difference to site retention.

The Most Common Errors in Web Analytics

2009-01-22T18:36:00.002Z

This extract is taken from Sem Angel and sums up the issues facing all web analyst experts so I had to quote it pretty much in full:

Going From a Theory of Error to a Web Analytics Process

Here are a few basic causes of error that I think drive the vast majority of problems in web analytics:

1. Self-Interested Measurement. This problem is hardly unique to web analytics. Many of the institutional practices of scientists and academics are designed to protect against the force of self-influence. Though this is sometimes portrayed as venal, it is even more commonly encountered as simple self-delusion – we all have the strong desire to find that whatever we currently believe is true.

2. Lack of Statistical Significance. Statisticians are generally, widely and rightly considered to be a royal pain in the rear. They are like gatekeepers who are constantly slamming the door in your face – usually with a snide remark to go along. They are only necessary because the rest of us are constantly and helplessly fooling ourselves into believing that a pattern is real because it “looks” real. Flip a coin ten times and there’s a pretty good chance you won’t get five heads and five tails. Just as detailed analysis of all these obscure variables turns up lots of opportunities for bad analysis, web analytics reporting will do the same. You are suddenly putting lots of information into everyone’s hands. If they aren’t protected from misusing it, I guarantee you that your company will soon be betting money on numbers that don’t mean a darn thing.

3. Unreliable data and what to do about it. Nothing can create a statistically significant finding faster than bad data. As every analyst knows, the first analysis pass is usually good for little more than identifying all of the interesting “facts” that turn out to be measurement artifacts. While my first two principles are completely common to every truth-seeking endeavor, number 3 is more pronounced in web analytics than in most disciplines. God knows that this isn’t because most disciplines have clean data to work with – ours is just unusually bad. The problem has been compounded by the prevalent and thoroughly misguided idea that “trending the data” somehow protects against data quality issues.

4. Siloed Optimization. Large organizations tend to create a special class of measurement issues by creating silos of measurement that focus on single issues like organic search optimization or multivariate testing. This inevitably leads to siloed optimization where the incentive to local optimization cannibalizes success in other parts of the organization. This is a shockingly common problem and it’s an unusual one because it tends to be worst in the most sophisticated companies.

5. Metric Monomania. We see a metric move and we know it’s supposed to be actionable. So we want to do something about it. But, as I’ve argued for years now, the movement in a single metric is pretty much NEVER actionable. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a KPI or even a really good KPI. In the real world, KPIs are nearly always interrelated into systems – meaning that changes in one variable are nearly always driven by changes in other variables. Unless you understand the system you don’t understand the true significance of any given change in a metric.

6. Tactical Focus. For most analysts, tactics come much easier than strategy. Analysis of data nearly always drives plenty of micro-changes that might make a web site better. But the best uses of data are often in completely unrelated problems and contexts that have nothing to do with immediate tactical problems. You can try forty different variations of a drive to registration, tweaking everything from button color to offer text.

And this is the important bit:

But registration rates will always be crappy if you don’t give your customers a really good reason to register.

You can micro-analyze your data with powerful statistical tools, but the biggest learnings may require nothing more than looking at your overall traffic numbers.

If you build your measurement processes to deal with these six problems, you’ll have protected yourself from a heavy majority of web analytics errors.

Whats Your PayPal Completion Rate?

2009-01-07T21:23:00.005Z

I am currently working with a client who use PayPal as their payment service provider. God I hate 3rd party PSPs. - don't they make life difficult? We've been tracking shopping cart abandonment over time but have been unable to set up a full conversion funnel analysis because only a very small proportion of purchasers click the return button on the payment successful page with in the PayPal domain and return to the site.

We had suspicions that the shopping cart abandonment rate was much higher than the industry average - Fireclick estimate this to be between 66 and 82%. But couldn't get a handle on what was happening on the PayPal payment page itself. Searching for "PayPal abandonment rates" on Google failed to come up with any useful figures. Does anybody else have estimates? PayPal aren't saying.

To begin payment on the site shoppers must click on a "buy now" button (Flash) which takes them to the payment page. We obviously know the number of completed purchses. So we could have used Google's Analytics New Flash Tracking to count the number of times users clicked on Buy Now. Luckily before I got the developers to do this somebody discovered that the back office system tracked all transactions started as well as completed - presumably as the system needs to pass on order details to PayPal. So in the end it was easy - PayPal abandonment is simply the percentage difference between the number of started transactions and the number of completed transactions.

In fact our PayPal Completion Rate was very close to the Fireclick Average for Fashion & Apparel average of between 18 and 32%.

Web Analytics Association Meetings in Scotland

2008-11-27T19:24:00.002Z

I joined the Web Analytics Association (WAA) back in 2006 after attending a couple of meetings of the Scottish branch (ish). I found the meetings really useful when I knew practically nothing about web analytics and I have learnt plenty through the WAA since. Unfortunately we are quite a small group of people in Scotland and it would be good to meet up to discuss common issues and learn from each other. May be up the profile of the profession as well. We are involved in such a fast moving industry that there are so many innovative things going on. Things like voice of customer to Google Website Optimizer and I have spoken to number of web analytics experts and some vendors and I am sure we can attract some good speakers to Scotland.

So - wouldn't it be great to re-start WAA meetings in Scotland. I am thinking of an event in either Edinburgh or Glasgow sometime in the New Year and would welcome any feedback.

Several Wednesdays have been pencilled in around March time 2009 and we are now looking for ideas on venues, meeting format and suggest topics. If you have any ideas then comment or contact us at JU2 Web Analytics

Using Google Analytics with Adobe Flash?

2008-11-18T18:45:00.005Z

One of the most common implementation challenges with Google Analytics has been tracking Flash content. In the past, Flash tracking was not provided out of the box, and every implementation had to be customized. Moreover, there was a lack of standards, and new developers who tracked Flash had to create their own processes to get it working.

At the Adobe MAX Conference in San Francisco, in a joint collaboration with Adobe and third party developers, Google announced a simplified solution for tracking Flash content called Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash.

This feature is a translation of the current Google Analytics tracking code into the ActionScript 3 programming language that dramatically simplifies the ability to track Flash, Flex and AS3 content. This new Flash tracking code provides all the features of the current JavaScript-based version, including campaign, pageview and event tracking and can be used to track Flash content such as embedded videos, branded microsites and distributed widgets, such as online games.

More information on tracking Google Analytics with Flash here.

Expert web analytics advice here

Advanced Segmentation on Google Analytics

2008-11-06T18:31:00.007Z

One feature that I always thought Google Analytics lacked was the ability to properly segment site visitors. So I was pleased to notice that as part of the recent Google Analytics update not only is the interface refreshed but Google have launched a new set of features including:

AdSense now integrated into Google AdWords.
Motion Charts!
Custom Reports!
The Google Analytics API.
Advanced Segmentation.

Although analytics already had some segmentation functionality I found it difficult to implement and use. With advanced segmentation its now really easy to create intra session segments. There are a number of default segments and then ability to set up custom segments

Custom segments are created using an easy to use wizard which allows you to drag and drop dimensions (such as Visitors, Traffic Sources and Content) and metrics ( Site Usage, E-Commerce and Goals) into the segmentation tool. For instance you can segement on frequent visitors by dragging Count of Visits into the tool and defining the number of visits.

Segments can be combined by adding AND/OR statements and tested using the Test Segment function.

Once you've set your segments up you can apply them to reports by selecting multiple segments from the Advanced Segments drop down menu in the top right of the Google Analytics interface.

The real strength of Advanced Segmentation is that multiple segments can be compared side by side as above. For more information on this subject I refer you to an excellent post from Avinash Kaushik at Occam's Razor

Great Firefox Extension for Web Analysts

2008-10-23T22:25:00.007+01:00

Take a look at this extension for Firefox at http://wasp.immeria.net/analyst.htm WASP enables you to check up on your web analytics tags and cookies easily and quickly. So no more excuses for incorrect tags or not knowing what tags are on what page.

THE IMPACT OF COOKIE DELETION ON THE ACCURACY OF SITE-SERVER AND AD-SERVER METRICS A STUDY FROM COMSCORE

2008-02-28T20:06:00.002Z

Did anybody ese read the above report from comScore " The Impact of Cookie Deletion on The Accuracy of Site-Server And Ad-Server Metrics: An Empirical Comscore Study By Dr. Magid Abraham And Cameron Meierhoefer" who analyzed the first-party “B cookie” from Yahoo! and the thirdparty ad server persistent cookie from DoubleClick, The study examined the degree to which Internet users clear these cookies from their computers, thereby causing site-servers to deposit new cookies and potentially leading to overstated estimates of unique users in cookie-based site-server data.

The results of the study seemed to indicate that approximately 31 percent of U.S. computer users clear their first-party cookies in a month (or have them cleared by automated software), with an average of 4.7 different cookies being observed for the same site within this user segment. Using the comScore U.S. home sample as a base, an average of 2.5 distinct cookies were observed per computer for Yahoo! This finding indicates that, because of cookie deletion, a server-centric measurement system which uses cookies to measure the size of a site’s visitor base will typically overstate the true number of unique visitors by a factor of up to 2.5 times.

In a departure from conventional wisdom this study found that 3rd party cookies were not deleted more frequently than 1st party cookies. This is particularly interesting as in my work I observe that Doubleclick consistently reports Unique Visitors to be approx 20% higher than JDC web analytics solutions such as Coremetrics and Google Analytics. I believed this trend to be caused by greater deletion of 3rd party cookies - may be not?

Rugs Direct increase sales by 30% using first-click analytics

2007-12-29T13:00:00.000Z

RugsDirect.com boosted sales by 30% after implementing Coremetrics` technology that tracks multiple customer interactions to determine which marketing tactic first put a consumer on the path to making a purchase.

Prior to using Coremetrics, Rugs Direct attributed online sales based on the last marketing tactic that influenced the buyer. For example, a customer might have visited a web site by clicking on a paid ad, then visited a second time after clicking on a banner ad, and finally purchased following a click on a link in an e-mail. Under the last-click approach, the sale would be attributed solely to the e-mail campaign.

Coremetrics’ flexible attribution management platform enables marketers to view transactions in the context of multiple customer interactions over time, giving a comprehensive picture that allows them to allocate digital marketing investments appropriately, the company says.

See full article at Internet Retailer

Google Analytics Reverting Back to Original "Average Time on Site" Calculation

2007-09-16T17:55:00.000+01:00

Read this from the Official Google Analytics blog

"We recently introduced a new way of calculating "Average Time on Site" that removed visitors who "bounce" from your website (people who hit one page of your site and then leave). This updated calculation attempted to give you a better idea of how long engaged visitors spend on your website. However, many of you prefer the original calculation: the total time on site for all visits divided by the total number of visits. So today we are changing it back".

Web Analytics Association Delivers 26 Standard Definitions to Promote Consistency across the Rapidly Evolving Web Analytics Community

2007-08-24T19:01:00.000+01:00

WASHINGTON, DC - August 23, 2007—At Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, CA, today, the Web Analytics Association (WAA) announced a major accomplishment and milestone with the publishing of standard definitions for 26 foundational web analytic metrics covering the areas of visits, content and conversion. The result of a collaborative effort between WAA members, vendors, agencies, practitioners and thought leaders, the new definitions provide consistency of the most widely used terms across the analytics industry. Read more .....

Download the WAA Standards Analytics Definitions Volume at http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/cmt/?5

Google Analytics Changes Average Time on Site Calculation

2007-08-24T18:49:00.000+01:00

Anybody notice something strange with Google Analytics estimates for average time on site recently. We have seen them increase significantly at the back end of July. At a lost to explain this I was glad to come across Brandt Dainow's post on this very subject. It appears that Google Analytics have recently changed the way it calculates average time on site. According to Google Analytics tech support:

"Previously, the Average Time on Site had been calculated as the total time on site for all visits divided by the total number of visits. Both the total time on site and total number of visits included bounces.

As of July 20, 2007, we began reporting the Average Time on Site as the total time on site for all visits (excluding bounces) divided by the total number of visits (excluding bounces). This change also affected data from earlier dates, not just newer data.

I think this makes a lot of sense particularly if your site has a high bounce rate which would make average session times meaningless - but it would have been nice to have been told.

How to Squeeze More Out of Your Web Analytics

2007-08-23T19:31:00.000+01:00

Take a look at this excellent post by Bryan Eisenberg at GrokDotCom

Companies spend serious money gathering and trying to analyze the data they get from the Web — and they want more out of it.

His advice:

Practice Fundamentals — Invest your time and resources in getting the simple things right. Focus on mastering a few key reports to take action on, day after day and score some easy wins. The key to getting value is not in reporting data — not simply in developing insights — but in taking action.

Invest in Training — Any company that's been trying to locate that superstar analyst knows how challenging they can be to recruit and retain in today's market; there isn't a lot of web analytic talent out there. We would say this wouldn't we!

Take a look at the Web Analytics Association. they're doing incredible work especially in terms of education and standards. The Award of Achievement in Web Analytics course the WAA has produced for the University of British Columbia is excellent. Sign up for a course if you can.

Invest an hour a day in the fine analytics books out there. If you prefer hands-on learning, try the WAA Base Camp workshops. and try to attend the Emetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in October.

comScore Announces New Engagement Metrics Based on Visits per Visitor

2007-04-10T13:09:00.000+01:00

Today comScore, reported the latest worldwide rankings of top Web properties from its World Metrix service. The rankings are usually based on unique visitors and but this morning were also displayed by “average visits per visitor,” using a new suite of “visits” metrics. Included among the new suite of engagement metrics are total visits, average minutes per visit, average visits per visitor, and average visits per usage day.

A comparison of the rankings by average visits per visitor and by unique visitors shows a marked difference between the two. Only five of the Top 10 sites ranked by unique visitors (Google Sites, Microsoft Sites, Yahoo! Sites, Time Warner Network and Fox Interactive Media) appeared in the Top 10 list of sites ranked by average visits per visitor. The remaining sites on the Top 10 list ranked by average visits per visitor appear lower in the ranking based on unique visitors. Specifically, in addition to the aforementioned Asian sites, Facebook.com was the sixth-most engaging site worldwide (as measured by Average Visits per Visitor), but only the 73rd most-visited site in February, and the Web-hosting company United-Internet Sites was the eighth most-engaging property, but only the 79th most-visited site.

Measure Maps

2007-04-05T13:10:00.000+01:00

I just read a post by Avinash Kaushik called Web Analytics Tools: Does User Interface (UI) Matter? take a look at his description of Measure Map which is a analytics solution now owned by Google and currently in alpha. Have you ever seen an interface like this and there is lots of contextual data provided whne you need it. I'll take a more detailed look and get back to.

Challenges for Web Analytics Vendors

2007-03-21T10:06:00.000Z

Avinash Kaushik wrote an interesting blog post setting out what he thought the most important challenges to the web analytics vendors will be in the near future. For me they are:

1. Pagecentricity - the web page is dead how do we measure rich internet applications. Although I read recently that Omniture and Coremetrics seemed to started to address this issue already.

2. Web Analytics is not enough - vendors need to find a way of meaningfully integrating survey data into the analysis easily and cheaply.

3 ASP is not enough - there is demand out there to be able to merge javascript page tagging with log file analysis or allowing business to pay a one off software license rather than paying ASP.

4. Privacy - not on the radar for a lot of the vendors but there is a vocal chunk of people who are rightly or wrongly worried about their privacy and new and innovative ways to stay anonymous on the web. We should all be using first party cookies but we could even loose these and javascript tags . Maybe not tomorrow but surely in the near future. When that happens what do we do? Are we putting serious thought to alternative, and safe, ways to collect data?

Measuring RIA Success

2007-03-16T10:54:00.000Z

Avinash Kaushik gave an interview to Wendi Malley with the WAA Research Committee back= in October on the use of web analytics to measure the effect of RIA on website success. See http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/art/?133. The take home message for me is that the static web page is dead and if we want to measure rich media applications such as ajax or flash based shopping carts, product selectors, booking applications then we need to concentrate on measuring business events. Business events can be measured by placing javascript hooks into applications that log when key tasks have been completed by the users. Using the example of a RIA shopping cart these key business events would be things like submission of shipping details or sucessfully entering credit card payments. The web analytics vendors must be looking a this area but the mean time there may be the need for a lot of customer analysis.