In this tutorial you will learn how to use Omniture’s Link Handler Plug-in to capture additional data to describe links that are being clicked on.

Special thanks to Andreas Dierl

Code Mentioned

/*
 * Plugin: linkHandler 0.5 - identify and report custom links
 */
s.linkHandler=new Function("p","t",""
+"var s=this,h=s.p_gh(),i,l;t=t?t:'o';if(!h||(s.linkType&&(h||s.linkN"
+"ame)))return '';i=h.indexOf('?');h=s.linkLeaveQueryString||i<0?h:h."
+"substring(0,i);l=s.pt(p,'|','p_gn',h.toLowerCase());if(l){s.linkNam"
+"e=l=='[['?'':l;s.linkType=t;return h;}return '';");
s.p_gn=new Function("t","h",""
+"var i=t?t.indexOf('~'):-1,n,x;if(t&&h){n=i<0?'':t.substring(0,i);x="
+"t.substring(i+1);if(h.indexOf(x.toLowerCase())>-1)return n?n:'[[';}"
+"return 0;");

//code to capture friendly link name
var url=s.linkHandler(".zip","d");
if(url){
            var currentobj=s.eo?s.eo:s.lnk;
            if (currentobj && currentobj.innerHTML) {
                        s.eVar2 = currentobj.innerHTML;
                        s.linkTrackVars="eVar2";
            }
}

/*
 * Utility Function: p_gh
 */
s.p_gh=new Function(""
+"var s=this;if(!s.eo&&!s.lnk)return '';var o=s.eo?s.eo:s.lnk,y=s.ot("
+"o),n=s.oid(o),x=o.s_oidt;if(s.eo&&o==s.eo){while(o&&!n&&y!='BODY'){"
+"o=o.parentElement?o.parentElement:o.parentNode;if(!o)return '';y=s."
+"ot(o);n=s.oid(o);x=o.s_oidt}}return o.href?o.href:'';");

Jason Thompson

Jason is the Sr. Director of Community Solutions at Keystone Solutions. If you are interested in partnering with Jason at Keystone, in need of analytics & optimization consulting, or looking for employment/internship possibilities, please feel free to email ‘jason [at] keystonesolutions [dot] com’

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Whether you are validating the deployment of a new measurement solution, testing enhanced page tracking, or debugging an issue with your site, having quick access to the data your site measurement tool is collecting is a must.

I have used debugger tools provided by the web analytics vendors, I have used network analyzers like Charles, Ethereal, and Wireshark and tools built specifically for web analytics like WASP.

However, I find myself always going back to HttpFox. It’s Clean. It’s simple. It’s so easy to use, after I was introduced to it by my friend Michael Sanders, I went on to train everyone from quality assurance engineers to CEOs on how to use HttpFox to answer the question “what variables are we capturing on this page?”

How do I use HttpFox to validate my web analytics page tags?

1. Add the HttpFox Firefox extension to your browser.

2. Once you have installed the extension and have restarted Firefox, you will notice a new icon in your status bar.

3. Activate HttpFox by clicking the icon in the status bar.

4. Click the Start button and navigate to a page on your site. You will see a long list of records rolling in, don’t worry, in the next step we will talk about searching for the one record that matters.

5. Depending on what measurement solution you are using, the search string will be different. Here is a list of search strings that I use most often:

Google Analytics = _utm.gif
Yahoo Analytics = a.analytics.yahoo
Omniture = /b/ss/

6. Click on the Query String tab and you can quickly see all the name-value pairs that are being sent to your analytics provider.

Jason Thompson

Jason is the Sr. Director of Community Solutions at Keystone Solutions. If you are interested in partnering with Jason at Keystone, in need of analytics & optimization consulting, or looking for employment/internship possibilities, please feel free to email ‘jason [at] keystonesolutions [dot] com’

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With all the chatter on Twitter about the upcoming Omniture Summit, I began to reminisce about last year’s summit. Last year at this time, my colleague Hila Strong and I were just finding out that we had won the inaugural Omniture Developer Challenge. I thought now was as good a time as any to celebrate the anniversary of our accomplishment.

The Break Even Calculator calculates the $ value of visitors at a funnel conversion event. This value is then compared before and after a site revision or marketing event.

This can be done using a simple calculated metric in SiteCatalyst, however the Break Even Calculator goes one step further and calculates a break even point. What your conversion rate SHOULD be for revenue to break even or increase.

The Break Even Calculator will work for any conversion funnel on your site. As part of the installation process, start events and completion events can be defined. These events could be Omniture pre-defined events, custom events, or a combination of both. The conversion rates will be calculated using the two events selected by the end-user.

If you are interested in using the calculator or simply interested in seeing what we developed, feel free to download the code base and documentation from the product page.  You are more than welcome to extend the application to best meet your business needs. If you find the application useful, extend the application, or have general feedback, I’d love to hear about it.

Jason Thompson

Jason is the Sr. Director of Community Solutions at Keystone Solutions. If you are interested in partnering with Jason at Keystone, in need of analytics & optimization consulting, or looking for employment/internship possibilities, please feel free to email ‘jason [at] keystonesolutions [dot] com’

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Over a year ago, I had the opportunity to speak with Amadesa about creating an integration between their testing platform and Omniture SiteCatalyst/Discover.  Having used Amadesa for A|B testing, I was happy with the reporting they provided but I was always finding myself wanting more.  I wanted the ability to further dig into the performance of tests I was running using Omniture Discover in order to find hidden gems that were not easily uncovered in the Amadesa reports.

From that conversation, a straight forward integration was born between Amadesa and Omniture.  If you are running both Amadeas and Omniture, there is no reason why you shouldn’t have the two products integrated, here is how:

1.  Set up your A|B test using Amadesa. Contact your Amadesa representative for details on how to assign each test treatment a unique identifier that can be passed to Omniture.

2. Configure a Custom Conversion variable in Omniture. Identify an available eVar that will be used to capture test treatment identifiers.  In my line of business, optimization is a critical component of the online business and I have dedicated multiple conversion variables used for tracking on-going optimization efforts.  e.g. Home Page Optimization, Sign-up Optimization, etc.

3.  Locate Omniture Page Code. The page code will look something like the code example  below.

4. Update Omniture Page Code. Update the page code to include a reference to the Amadesa integration variable.  For example, if you are capturing your Amadesa treatment version in eVar5, you would update your page code as follows:

s.eVar5 = (window.amadesaVesrion) ? amadesaVersion:”";

5. Deploy & Test. Deploy your updated code and run your Amadesa report in SiteCatalyst to verify data is being tracked correctly.

The real power of the Amadesa/Omniture Integration is the ability to uncover hidden gems.  If you have the Omniture Discover product, you can explore how unique segments of your population are reacting to your test treatments.

Perhaps Amadesa is reporting that each of your test treatments are performing worse than your control, however upon further analysis, you discover that paid traffic is converting at a 60% lift for one of your test treatments.  This gem would have been lost if you were simply relying on the out-of-the-box Amadesa reports but now, with your shiny new integration, you can target this test treatment to your paid traffic and watch the ROI roll in.

Jason Thompson

Jason is the Sr. Director of Community Solutions at Keystone Solutions. If you are interested in partnering with Jason at Keystone, in need of analytics & optimization consulting, or looking for employment/internship possibilities, please feel free to email ‘jason [at] keystonesolutions [dot] com’

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Even for amateur blog authors, understanding your site traffic is critical to building a site that provides information and services that people are asking for.  Even if you are just blogging about your kids soccer game, understanding where your traffic is coming from and what they are doing on the site can not only prove interesting but may help you target your posts for your most faithful readers.

Google Analytics is by far the most popular free web analytics service that is available but with Yahoo’s acquisition of IndexTools in the summer of 2008, Yahoo has been dipping their toe in the deep end and it looks like they are poised to give Google a run for their money.  If I had to bet one way or another, I’d put my money on Google but I wouldn’t count Yahoo out yet as Google has failed to do anything that would suggest they are ready to step on the throats of their competitors.

I have recently been experimenting with Yahoo Web Analytics (YWA) and have been pleasantly surprised with their offering. For a part-time blogger it is more than powerful enough to give you insight into your site activity.

Recently, Rudi Shumpert, released a WordPress plug-in that automatically deploys YWA tracking to your blog.  You don’t need to know PHP or anything about Yahoo’s tracking code, you simply install the plug-in, provide a few details, and the plug-in does the rest.  I have been testing the plug-in and had it installed and running in under two minutes.

What I love most about the plug-in, is that it is theme independent.  I can change my theme a thousand times and never have to worry about moving my analytics tracking code from theme to theme, the plug-in simply applies to code to all the pages of my blog.  It’s a beautiful thing.

If you have an existing YWA account, installation of the plug-in is easy.  Under the Plugins section in your WordPress admin, click ‘Add New’

Search for ‘YWA’ and click install.

For detailed information about configuration steps and plug-in versions, please visit Rudi’s plug-in site

Jason Thompson

Jason is the Sr. Director of Community Solutions at Keystone Solutions. If you are interested in partnering with Jason at Keystone, in need of analytics & optimization consulting, or looking for employment/internship possibilities, please feel free to email ‘jason [at] keystonesolutions [dot] com’

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Version 0.4 of the Omniture Twitter Analytics Plug-In is now available. The new version offers a simplified way of tracking multiple keywords.

Tracking Multiple Keywords in v0.3

$q = “+omniture+OR+omtr+OR+adobe”;

Tracking Multiple Keywords in v0.4

$q = “omniture,omtr,adobe”;

You no longer are required to know the exact syntax of the Twitter search, simply add a list of comma separated keywords and the plug-in will format the search string for you.  Although this seems like a simple enhancement, I have received numerous requests about how difficult it was to track multiple keywords, so I’m hoping this makes things much easier.

If you are an existing user of the Omniture Twitter Analytics plug-in user (v.03 or older), email me at ‘jason [at] omnituretwitteranalytics.com’ and I’ll send you a download link and instructions for how to deploy the updated code base.

If you are a new user of the Omniture Twitter Analytics plug-in, head over to our product site and request the application.

Jason Thompson

Jason is the Sr. Director of Community Solutions at Keystone Solutions. If you are interested in partnering with Jason at Keystone, in need of analytics & optimization consulting, or looking for employment/internship possibilities, please feel free to email ‘jason [at] keystonesolutions [dot] com’

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Step 1: Update your s_code.js file with the Omniture TnT Integration Plugin – Version 1.0

/*
* TNT Integration Plugin v1.0
*/
s.trackTNT = new Function("v", "p", "b", ""
+ "var s=this,n='s_tnt',p=p?p:n,v=v?v:n,r='',pm=false,b=b?b:true;if(s."
+ "getQueryParam){pm=s.getQueryParam(p);}if(pm){r+=(pm+',');}if(s.wd[v"
+ "]!=undefined){r+=s.wd[v];}if(b){s.wd[v]='';}return r;");

Step 2: Determine if you will include the integration call in your standard SiteCatalyst page tag or if you will require to use a Custom Link call.

Is your SiteCatalyst code block located after the last mBox call on your page?

YES!  Simply add the following before you call s.t():

var tntInput = s.trackTNT();

s.eVar47 = s.tnt = tntInput;

Is your SiteCatalyst code block located before the last mBox call on your page?

YES! This will take a bit more work but, if you ask me, worth it.  I have our SiteCatalyst code directly following the <body> tag.  This has greatly improved our data accuracy.  Moving the code to accommodate an integration with Test & Target was simply out of the question.

To send the Test & Target information to SiteCatalyst using a Custom Link call add the following after all mBoxes on the page:

<script>
var tntInput = s.trackTNT();

trackTNT(s_account, tntInput);

function trackTNT(s_account, tntInput){
	var s=s_gi( s_account );

	s.linkTrackVars="tnt,eVarN"
	s.linkTrackEvents="None"

	//variable for TNT classifications
	s.eVarN = s.tnt = tntInput;

	s.tl( true , 'o' , 'For tracking TNT' );
	}
</script>

Step 3: Classify the Test & Target Campaign and Recipe ID. Omniture has a behind the scene integration to automatically classify your TnT integration. However, I have been told it is limited to one (1) report suite. I found it easy enough to simply do this myself.

Step 3a: Create a Custom Conversion variable to capture your Test & Target integration IDs

Step 3b: Classify your conversion variable to include a text based classification called ‘Treatment’

Step 3c: This part is a little hacky but hey, it works.  Log into Test & Target and view your campaign.  The TnT plugin will return a value like ’4503:0:0,’.  To get the values hover your mouse over the preview icon for each treatment

Now, look down in your status bar and you will be able to see the values you need to write down.

Now you can compile a list of Ids and treatment names

4503:0:0,       Control

4503:1:0,        Improved Headline

Step 3d: Download a SAINT template for your TnT classification.  Map each treatment id to your friendly treatment name.  Upload.

Step 4: Create and activate a plug-in offer in Test & Target.  This plug-in will pass the Test & Target identifiers to the page.  For detailed instructions on creating this offer, refer to ‘Configuring the SiteCatalyst Integration’ in Test & Target online help.

Step 5: Analyze your results.  Test & Target is great for giving you a dashboard view of your treatments and how each one is converting (with statistical significance).  However, you still are not able to fully understand how your tests are changing user behavior inside your site.  This is where SiteCatalyst and more powerfully, Discover, comes into play.  Use SiteCatalyst and Discover to slice your visitor population to better understand how your Test & Target campaigns are influencing user behavior beyond the conversion check point.

And by uploading a friendly treatment name via SAINT, this job is made much easier.

Jason Thompson

Jason is the Sr. Director of Community Solutions at Keystone Solutions. If you are interested in partnering with Jason at Keystone, in need of analytics & optimization consulting, or looking for employment/internship possibilities, please feel free to email ‘jason [at] keystonesolutions [dot] com’

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I recently spoke with a friend of mine about my experience using Omniture’s ClickMap product and I thought it may be beneficial to others if I recorded my findings here.

I feared the day that the executives at my company caught wind of the ClickMap tool, it was my experience when I worked at Omniture that executives would gloss over all the sweet features of SiteCatalyst and the sheer power of Discover to droll over the sexy display of ClickMap, yet the data was always questionable.

I decided rather than to shy away, I would dive into ClickMap and test, test, test, until I fully understood how it worked.

Allowing the ClickMap tool to automatically track our links was out of the question, the data was far too inaccurate to be of any value. Omniture recommended I deploy something they called “ObjectID tracking” to solve my tracking issues.

From my testing, the s_ObjectID works perfectly on all link types (simple links, links with query string parameters, exit links) if I manually assign the ID, so that gave me a sense of hope. However, without an automated delivery method, it will be unusable.

My next attempt was to use a plug-in supplied by Omniture that automatically assigns the s_ObjectID to links.

The plug-in is generating the ID based on a combination of the destination link and a sequence number that is applied to the end of the ID. I spent some time trying to get the plugin to work and it seems, after breaking it down, that it works as expected on all link types except links that contain a ‘?’ in them. Any links with a ‘?’ were failed to be overlaid by ClickMap until I added one simple line of code to the plug-in:

ID=ID.replace(“?”,”_”);

What do you know? It fixed all my problems!

Jason Thompson

Jason is the Sr. Director of Community Solutions at Keystone Solutions. If you are interested in partnering with Jason at Keystone, in need of analytics & optimization consulting, or looking for employment/internship possibilities, please feel free to email ‘jason [at] keystonesolutions [dot] com’

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