Archive for the ‘Tracking’ Category

Google Jiffy-Web – Webpage Instrumentation & Measurement Suite

The first beta of Jiffy-Web was released on 23/6/2008.  Good news to developers, Jiffy is an end-to-end real-world web page instrumentation and measurement suite.

What does it do?  You can use Jiffy to:

  • measure individual pieces of page rendering (script load, AJAX execution, page load, etc.) on every client
  • report those measurements and other metadata to a web server
  • aggregate web server logs into a database
  • generate reports

How does it work?

  • Measurement – using the jiffy.js script to measure activities on webpages
  • Configuration – Apache proxy configuration
  • Log – an ingestor that posts logs to a database
  • Working DDLs for Oracle XE and higher
  • Reporting – for Oracle, but MySQL is coming
  • Reporting user interface – using the Yahoo! User Interface Library

According to Google Code,you can use Jiffy end-to-end by

More simply, you can combine Jiffy and the Firebug add-in to view Mark & Measure results for a single developer client.

Read more about Jiffy-Web

Google Urchin Vs Google Analytics

Many people are familiar with Google Analytics.  Indeed, Google bought the Urchin Software back in 2005 and developed Analytics out of it.

The reason why Google Analytics is so popular is that it is free.  However, it is facing a competition now – which is the Google Urchin.  urchin.gif

You may ask, what is the difference?  Here you go:

  1. Analytics is free, Urchin costs $2,995.
  2. Analytics cannot track through security firewalls / other restrictions, Urchin can.
  3. Analytics is an online service, but Urchin can be installed on your own server(s).

Urchin is availabe in 9 major languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Brazilian Portuguese.

Google Analytics – Great Reasons to Use

Google Analytics should not be a stranger to any of us. In fact, many people still prefer to use other tracking services.

Google Analytics is Google’s (who else) visitor tracking facility. It allows webmasters to track where the visitors are from, through which media channel, time of stay, conversions number and values etc. All is needed is a few simple lines of code on the website. It is a free service. Comparing to other free and similar services, Google Analytics has no limitations, rather the other ones might limit your log size etc.

In the middle of July, a new interface was employed and hence increased usability. Graphical presentation provides more information for reporting and analysis.

The map overlay interface indicates the geographic location of the users, on a map. Clicking on a country provides more details.

The site overlay interface provides information on users’ behaviour.

Setting goals and funnels on ecommerce tracking allows reporting and analysis of a shopping website. The setup is simple enough – copy a few lines of code, define values and that’s done. “Funnels” refers to a path that a user must go through to complete a transaction.

It is highly effective. Why not give it a try? It is free.

If you and your company is good enough on this product, you can apply to Google to grant you a “Analytics Authorized Consultant” title.