Web Operations

Other Metrics Marketing Cares About

We've concentrated on performance and analytics, because it's your job to manage the former and you know if you're succeeding by tracking the latter. But there are two other aspects of end-user monitoring we should touch on briefly, because on a modern website, everything's related.

Web Interaction Analytics

While analytics looks at a user's entire visit across many pages, Web Interaction Analytics (WIA) focuses on the usability and interaction within an individual page. This kind of data can help you pinpoint web ops problems, even though it's mainly used by application designers.

You may find that reported bugs aren't really bugs—users may be misunderstanding the user interface, clicking on buttons that aren't actually buttons, or not scrolling far enough to see controls. More advanced WIA tools capture mouse movements and keystrokes, and may help you to troubleshoot tricky application problems because they overlap with RUM tools somewhat.

Voice of the Customer

Voice of the Customer (VOC) tools ask visitors what's on their mind. They solicit feedback from people who visit the site, either by asking them to participate in a survey or by offering them a feedback button on pages.

VOC surveys are usually conducted to find out demographic and psychographic information about the site's audience. Here, too, there's useful data for the web operator. A few questions about operating systems and network speeds will show you what kinds of client environment you ...