COMP7880: E-Business Strategies
Creating effective web presence
Dickson K.W. Chiu
PhD, SMIEEE, SMACM, Life MHKCS
1
Strategic Premise
Building a Web Site for an Enterprise or
Non-Profit is Not an Exercise
in Either Technology Or Aesthetics.
It is an Exercise in Creating Satisfying
Customer Experience in a Way that Leads to
Cost-Effective Execution of Marketing Strategy.
Dickson Chiu
COMP7880-web-2
Effective Execution of Marketing Strategy
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Building Web sites that deliver satisfying
customer experience and do so in a way that fits
both strategy and budget.
Visual attractiveness is a plus, but not a
necessity.
If technology gets in trouble, it is a negative, not
a plus, e.g., flash intros/demos.
Web sites is an important marketing strategy but
not the only one - that must be cost-effective.
Most Web sites should eventually be expected to
produce a reasonable return on investment.
Dickson Chiu
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Web Site Development Process
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Not too different from marketing / communications planning
Planning a Web site should be first
Foremost a business/marketing planning process
Good business sense should take precedence
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Establishing Site Objectives
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Enterprise/Unit Marketing Objectives
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cascade with levels
The Interactive Nature of the Internet
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Communications/Branding Objectives
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Behavioral Objectives
Role of Web Site on Overall Marketing/ Marketing
Communications Strategy
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integration of online and offline strategy for multichannel marketers
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Identify / Describe Target Market
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Demographics, Life Styles
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Motives for using the site
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Tasks they wish to perform
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Consider utility and customization
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Stepwise scenario development / use case
analysis
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Site Content / Navigation Structure
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What content do visitors need/expect?
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How do they access content?
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More than just a straightforward replication of offline content
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Interactions
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Marketing research
What role should visuals/graphics play?
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Simple and Usable
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Content and structure more important
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Typical Site Hierarchy
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Enough second-level pages to clearly categorize content but not create
confusion
Visitor should never be more than 2-3 intuitive mouse clicks away
Avoid dead ends 
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Main Page Design

marketers should specify the goals and requirements to
guide the technical people
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Site Design Issues
Content
 Navigation
 Color (especially background)
 Font
 Minimize Scrolling
 Artwork
 Animation/Graphics/Rich Media
Demo Case: http://www.cnet.com/
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Deployment and Tuning
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Uploading site server / hosting service raises
many technical issues
Calibrating and fine tuning for best site
performance is highly technical
Reliability and scalability issues
Test at your target customers’ regions and
environment!
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Measure / Evaluate / Improve
Performance & Effectiveness
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Measuring and Improving site performance is
a technical task
Measuring and improving the business
effectiveness of site is a marketing task
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Measurement Techniques
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Concept Tests - basic marketing research
techniques
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Prototype Tests
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Beta (Functional) Tests
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Customer Usability/Satisfaction Feedback
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Measuring Web Customer Satisfaction
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Employs research methods developed offline
Adapted for the online environment
Single measures vs multiple measures
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Satisfaction with Content
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Satisfaction with Transactional
Experiences
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BIZRATE.com Surveys Customer
Experience to Rate Sites
At Checkout and After Delivery
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E-Commerce Satisfaction Drivers
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What Should The Marketer Do
To Create Good
Customer Experience
On The Web Site?
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Stages/Elements of Customer Experience
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Continuous Improvement Essential
Figure 9.12
TOP Image Only
Goes Here
Figure 9.13
TOP Image Only
Goes There
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Elements WSJOnline Offers
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Usable Site
Navigation Made Easier By Familiarity With
Print Version
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Personalization Options
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A Trusted Brand Name
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E-Mail Notices—Features, Breaking News
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Community Through Feedback/Discussions
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Web Site Costs
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2 to 3 times as much to maintain a site as it
costs to develop it initially!
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More on website evaluation
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The Power of Clickstream to Produce
Internet Metrics
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Tremendous amount of data produced on the
Internet.
One of the main challenges for the Internet marketer
is to control this data to improve existing marketing
programs and to gain insights into additional
marketing efforts that have a high probability of
being productive
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Purpose of Usability Testing
Visitors expect smooth navigation suiting their
need
 To be pleased and not frustrated
 The fundamental basis of Web site usability is
user task performance.
• Visitors come to the Web site motivated to
accomplish some goal, to perform some task.
• Usability testing is designed to ensure that task
performance is not only possible, but hopefully
efficient and entirely satisfactory.
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Types/Stages of Usability Testing
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Concept Testing - testing site design concepts
to see if they make sense. This is primarily site
structure, not design approaches.
Prototype Testing - testing prototypes to see if
they fit the manner in which users expect the
site to be organized and laid out in order for
them to complete tasks in an orderly fashion.
Full Usability Testing - Testing the full usability
of the site when it is functionally complete and
most if not all of the content is there.
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Pareto Curve for Usability Testing
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Over 75% of the problems can be identified with 5
user tests; only 15 are need to find 100% 
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No Website can Ignore the Need for Usability
Testing
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Usability testing is critically
important.
A careful marketer can
learn to do it, especially
one who has had focus
group training or
experience.
It can be outsourced to
interactive marketing
agency or a specialized
marketing services firm.
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Site Performance Metrics
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Traffics & Audience Metrics
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Site Administered
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Hit Counters
Purchased Services
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Server Request Log Data
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Coded Web Pages
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Customer Panel Data
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Hit Counters are Often Free
They Provide Simple But Useful Reports
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What is a Server Log?
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Server logs record every hit (every file
requested) and most pages have many files.
This is a necessary lead-in to understanding
that the IT people use server log data to run
the site and marketers use it (after much
processing) to understand the performance of
their marketing programs.
Includes, e.g. IP address, date and time of
request
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Basic Metrics – Site Traffic
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Hits
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Impressions.
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recorded each time a file is requested
little value in measuring site effectiveness.
Typical advertising usage applies here.
Each time a visitor has an opportunity to view an
item, an impression is recorded.
Page views (page impressions).
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recorded each time a page is requested.
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Basic Metrics – Site Audience
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Visitors - simple count of the number of people who visit
a site
Unique visitors - the number of different people
Identified visitors - the next step up; now we know who
they are
Unduplicated audience - the number of unique
visits/exposures in a specified time frame.
Traffic and audience measures are obviously related.
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Traffic simply measures the activity on the site.
Audience measures are of more interest to marketers who need
information about the composition of that traffic.
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BASIC

METRICS
ALMOST INFINITE
NUMBER OF
SPECIFIC VARIABLES
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Sample ROI Report
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Sample Traffic Report
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Sample Path Report
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Sample Site Effectiveness
Reports
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Almost Infinite Number of Variables/
Reports
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By Single Variable
By Multiple Variables
By Day
By Time
Marketing Objective
By Specific Page
Should Guide the Choice
Etc., etc., etc.
Dickson Chiu
COMP7880-web-41
Need for Ratings
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Management to assess performance
Investors to assess potential & returns
Advertisers for traffic numbers
Must be accurate & verifiable
External audit is the preferred option
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Television Ratings
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Create-once-sell-many medium
Production costs don’t change with number of
audience
Producers cannot directly count their audience
Independent panel-based measurement companies
are preferred, e.g. ACNielsen
Survey a representative sample of viewers and the
TV channels to which they tuned
Set-top box is used to record the viewing behavior
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Magazine Ratings
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Create-many-sell-many medium
They can count how many copies printed & sold
No way to count magazines actually opened and read
Independent companies verify circulation numbers
based on audits of financial documents, mailing lists,
postal receipts, and printing bills
Survey is much harder than TV as the number of
magazines is much higher than TV channels
No mechanism similar to set-top box
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Web Ratings
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Create-once-sell-many medium
Supply side resembles magazines but demand side
resembles TV
Can count using server logs how many pages were
“printed”
Can install set-top box like software to record viewing
behavior
Millions of web sites with billions of web pages require
prohibitively large samples
Representative samples are impractical to put together in
addition to difficulty of installing measurement software
Don’t guess but count!
Dickson Chiu
COMP7880-web-45
Something You Can Know
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The referral links let you know how much
traffic is coming from where?
Also captured are the search terms visitors
typed into portals like Yahoo!
Can discover the most-used entry and exit
pages
How long did they stay on each page?
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Dickson Chiu
COMP7880-web-47
IAB Online Measurement Study
Background & Objectives
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Online Advertising Measurement Study
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Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)
Media Rating Council (MRC)
Advertising Research Foundation (ARF)
Conducted by PricewaterhouseCoppers (PwC)
Review measurement criteria & practices for online
advertising and audience measurement reporting
Document and report the comparability of existing
metrics used by the industry
Propose a common set of industry definitions and
guidelines for data analysis and reporting
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Scope
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11 participating companies selected by IAB
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Participating companies represented 2/3 of total
industry revenue
Interviews
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portals (e.g., AOL, MSN, Yahoo!)
destination sites (e.g., CNET, Forbes.com)
third party ad networks / servers (e.g., Avenue A, DoubleClick)
what types of audience and advertising data are measured
how the data is measured and how it is reported
Verified collection methods & definitions using scripted
testing
Identified discrepancies between definitions, editing
procedures, and reporting
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The Fundamental
Standard Metric Definitions
+
Well-Controlled Process
=
Reliable Ad Campaign Measurement Reporting
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The Top Five Metrics
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Ad Impressions
Clicks
Unique Visitors
Total Visits
Page Impressions
Time Spent on Page
Number of Completed
User Registrations
Conversions
# Participants
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Ad
Impressions
Dickson Chiu
Clicks
Unique
Visitors
Total
Visitors
Page
Impressions
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Top ≠ Currency Metrics
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Ad Impressions
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Clicks
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Contracts based on the Cost-per-Action pricing model
Page Impressions
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Metric upon which revenue-generating contracts are based
Content or page sponsorship
Email Subscribers
Email Messages Delivered
Email Messages Opened
Conversion
Referrals
# Participants
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Dickson Chiu
AI
Cs
UV
TV
PI
COMP7880-web-53
Ad Impression
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A measurement of responses from an ad
delivery system to an ad request from the
user browser
filtered from robotic activity
recorded at a point as close as possible to the
actual viewing of the creative material by the
user browser.
Dickson Chiu
COMP7880-web-54
Page Impressions
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A measurement of responses from a web
server to a page request from the user
browser, which is filtered from robotic activity
and error codes, and is recorded at a point as
close as possible to the actual viewing of the
page by the user browser.
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Ad Impression Measurement
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Server Initiated Measurement
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prior to serving a web page to a user agent
request
the page is built with links to an ad
resource
ad impression transaction is recorded in a
log
Client Initiated Measurement
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direct connection between a user agent and
the ad server via advanced HTML tags
recorded via an independent request to a
special ad transaction logging server
Dickson Chiu
# Participants
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Server
Client
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Ad vs Web Server Logging
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Ad Server Logging
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after receiving a request from the
web server
prior to rendering the content
Web Server Logging
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after the ad server responds to the
request
prior to rendering the content
Dickson Chiu
# Participant
4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
Ad Server
Web Server
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Ad vs Counting Server Logging
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Ad Server Logging
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after receiving a request from
the client
prior to rendering the content
Counting Server Logging
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after the ad server responds to
the client
a separate redirect call to the
ad counting server
# Participant
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Dickson Chiu
Ad Server
Counting Server
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Cache Busting for All
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Cached ads result in
undercounting impressions
Cache busting technology
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reduce an ad request to be
cached in either a web browser
or a proxy server
append a random number to
the end of an ad request
append a time stamp to the
end of an ad request
All 11 participants support
cache busting technology
# Participant
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Dickson Chiu
With Cache Busting No Cache Busting
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Clicks
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A measurement of the user-initiated action of clicking
on an ad element, causing a re-direct to another web
location.
Tracked and reported as a 302 redirect at the ad
server.
This measurement is filtered for robotic activity and is
recorded at a point as close as possible to the actual
viewing of the destination web location by the user
browser.
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Uniform Use of 302 Redirects
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All 11 participants track clicks &
share a common definition
A click is a user-initiated action of
clicking on an ad element causing
a redirect to another web location
A click does not include
information on whether or not the
user completed the redirect
transaction
All base click metric on 302
redirects (or transfers)
successfully processed by the ad
server
Dickson Chiu
# Participant
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Tracking via 302 No Tracking via
redirects
302 redirects
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Unique Visitor
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After resolving the two issues related to the
visitor definition, consider the additional
issues for defining unique visitors, including
the use of sampling and estimates, and the
treatment
include or exclude visitors that do not accept
cookies) of new cookies for cookie-based
calculations.
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Unique Visitors
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10 out of 11 participants
track unique visitors
Cookie Based
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8 use cookies with 2 using
also IP address
recurring vs new cookies
Registration Based
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# Participants
8
7
6
5
4
3
2 use registered users or
user login counts
2
1
0
Dickson Chiu
Cookie
Registration
None
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Cookie Based Unique Visitors
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Should new cookie be
counted?
Count all new cookies
Exclude all new cookies
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# Participants
4
3.5
3
a unique cookie must visit
the site at least twice to be
considered a new visitor
Exclude some new cookies
based on historical data
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using known user data
estimate of new cookies
representing repeat visitors
that do not accept cookie
Dickson Chiu
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
Count All
New
Cookies
Count No
Count
New
Some New
Cookies
Cookies
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Total Visits
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Resolve whether the approaches to
determining visitor counts can be addressed
in one definition (I.e. cookies, user
registration)
require disclosure of the definition
Resolve whether session time limits should
also be included in the definitions.
Dickson Chiu
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Total Visitors
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10 participants calculate
total visitors
Definitions vary among
participants
Actual
Sampling
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# Participants
6
5
4
sample user activity (e.g.
several days over a period)
Statistical Analysis

to perform statistical analysis
to estimate total visitors
3
2
1
0
Dickson Chiu
Actual
Sampling Statistical
COMP7880-web-66
Web vs Ad Server Tracking
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8 participants track page
impressions
6 use standard web server logs
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2 use web beacon technology
(see Yahoo)
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with successful HTML status codes
filter from robotic activity
# Participants
6
5
4
3
A Web beacon is an object that is
embedded and invisible but allows 2
checking that a user has viewed the
1
page or e-mail.
no third party entity does the
tracking
Dickson Chiu
0
Web Server Ad Server
COMP7880-web-67
Robotic Activity Filtering
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All participants perform some
such filtering
Basic
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List of Known Robots
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prevent robots from scanning
the ad server
exclude transactions from
empty agents or “bot” agents
based on User Agent Strings or
IP address
varied from 10 to 700
Behavioral Filtering

define business rules to identify
robotic behaviors
Dickson Chiu
# Participants
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Basic
Filtering
List
Filtering
Behavioral
Filtering
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Internal IP Address Filtering
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Eliminate any activity
generated by internal
monitoring tools
Demographic of
company users may not
be representative
Eliminate any activity
generated by internal
testing
# Participants
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Dickson Chiu
Remove Internal Include Internal
IP Addresses
IP Addresses
COMP7880-web-69
Independent Verification
# Participants
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Process
Audit
Activity
Audit
Process & No Audit
Activity
Audit
Dickson Chiu
COMP7880-web-70
Resources
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Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success,
Jim Sterne
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002
IAB Online Ad Measurement Study
PricewaterhouseCoppers, 2001
Dickson Chiu
COMP7880-web-71