Web Site Measurement Hacks

Define Useful Page Names and Content Groups

Make sure that everyone in your organization can decipher your page and content group names.

One aspect of implementations that is often overlooked is the importance of establishing meaningful page names and content groupings. Fight the temptation to take shortcuts during implementation, and instead strive to define useful and human-readable names for your web pages. For example, rather than allowing the overworked implementation team to create incomprehensible page names like pv_133221, invest the few extra seconds it takes to make a more meaningful name like Product View: Product ID 133221. Translating developer-speak into human-readable names dramatically increases the likelihood that non-techies will be able to make use of the information.

Good Names, Bad Names, I Know You’ve Had Your Share

If you’re using a web measurement solution based on a JavaScript page tag [Hack #28] , make sure you actually set a page name programmatically instead of using the document <TITLE> or script name (for example, index.asp) and always make sure you follow any directions your vendor provides regarding the script, such as converting spaces and removing illegal characters. If your data source is a web server logfile, you start at a disadvantage; generating useful page names usually requires some type of translation table [Hack #22] . Some examples of good and bad page names include:

index.html

BAD. This default filename provides little or no insight into ...