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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A few years back, I remember reading a blog post by Avinash Kaushik on the subject of Multiplicity. In theory, I completely agreed with the idea of multiplicity however in practice, I found myself being a laser beam for all things Omniture. I was the perfect case study for the “single source of truth” model. I found myself sitting in strategy meetings where analytics was being discussed and I found myself sitting on the outside, only to be brought in if there was an “Omniture issue” or a question we needed “Omniture to answer”.

It didn’t sink in, that the model I had deployed for myself was against everything I believed in, until I found myself in the mountains, shooting scenes of nature, with two cameras and several lenses. It was then that it hit me, I was doing myself and the company I worked for a disservice by being an “Omniture Shop” rather than a “Web Analytics Shop”. In photography, there is never a single camera or lens or aperture setting that is right for every situation and the same is true for web analytics. If I was going to be a successful analyst, I needed to move outside my Omniture comfort zone and I needed to incorporate more gear into my bag.

Today, I make use of several tools to complete a job. Sometimes, what is required is a high end tool like Omniture Discover, other times something like CrazyEgg will get the job done. And yet others will take a combination of Omniture Discover, Omniture Test & Target, and ProClarity to get the job done right.

It is a mistake, one that I have been guilty of, to think that your high priced analytics tool is the only tool you’ll ever need. If I had made that mistake in my photography, I would have never put down my dSLR and picked up a $12 toy camera from China.

Taken with a $12 Holga camera from China

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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We tend to gravitate to the sensational, hence why nightly news shows are filled with stories of rape and murder and conspiracy, we know deep down it’s wrong, yet we can’t look away. When we get sucked into this world of mystery and intrigue, we tend to throw out logic and believe anything that is flashed before our eyes.

Welcome 2012. The year the world will end. Well, according to popular Mayan belief. But was it really their belief that the world would end on December 21, 2012?

Popular theories of the Mayan’s prediction of the end of the world are based on a very limited set of artifacts. Many believe the Mayans predicted the end of the world based on evidence found in a single book and a set of stone discs. What if the set of discs was incomplete? What if the book was part of a larger volume?

Is this a fair representation of what the Mayan culture believed? Imagine if 10,000 years from now, archeologists discover a single book, containing the story of Hansel and Gretel, while unearthing a public library in Upstate New York. Would it be fair to say that, based on this finding, people that lived circa 1800-2500 lived in houses made purely of a sugar based substance, sometimes baked, other times not, and whose children were susceptible to being eaten by hunched over old ladies wearing over-sized black hats?

Yet, we do this all the time when we analyze the behavior of our web site visitors. We take a nugget of information, a singular fact, and from that we generalize a grand explanation for how an entire system works. I have been guilty of this way of thinking many times.

If we can take one lesson from the apocalyptic hype surrounding the year 2012, it is that we as analysts should be careful about getting sucked into the emotion of sensational news. Rather than becoming overly excited about the first artifact we uncover, we should center ourselves and logically look at all the information we have available to us. We should continue to dig for more truths. And, we should be slow to profess universal truths based on a limited set of data.

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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Why does everyone with a WordPress blog and a Google Analytics account all of a sudden think they are experts in the field of web analytics? I have never been one to heavily self market or promote myself, so perhaps because of that choice I don’t have the right to complain, but this is my blog and I can do what I want.

It frustrates me to no end to see people, whom in my opinion, are given undo credit, opportunity, and financial gain because they are good at creating an image. “oh snap, this dude has a blog and he calls himself a web analytics expert, he must be good, lets listen to him and follow like blind sheep!”

Perhaps my frustration has more to do with the state of our economy then with the web analytics industry per se. I just see this mentality being a common theme that runs through our society. We have stopped buying products and services because of their value and we have started buying because of their perceived value.

I can’t say it any more beautifully than Mr. Tyler Durden:

“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”

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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