Mobile web analytics learn about the behavior of mobile website visitors in a manner similar to traditional web analytics. In a commercial context, mobile web analytics refers to the use of data collected when a visitor accesses a website from a mobile phone. This helps to determine which aspects of the website work best for mobile traffic and which mobile marketing campaign works best for businesses, including mobile advertising, mobile search marketing, text campaigns, and desktop site promotion and mobile services.
Data collected as part of mobile analytics typically includes page views, visits, visitors, and countries, as well as specific information for mobile devices, such as device models, manufacturers, screen resolutions, device capabilities, service providers, and preferred user languages. This data is typically compared to key performance indicators for performance and return on investment, and is used to improve the response of viewers of website or mobile marketing campaigns.
The majority of modern smartphones can explore websites, some with a browsing experience similar to a desktop computer. The W3C Mobile Web Initiative identifies best practices to help websites support mobile search. Many companies use these and mobile-specific codes like Wireless Markup Language or HTML5 to optimize websites for viewing on mobile devices.
Video Mobile web analytics
Weaknesses apply traditional web analytics
To get started, the way users interact with their phones or tablets is very different from the way they interact with desktops or laptops. The action of clicking with the mouse has been replaced with a swipe action with the finger. Scrolling pages longer with all the relevant information in one place has replaced heavy heavy navigation style. These factors greatly affect clickthrough rates, and consequently, how web analytics can be used.
Collecting mobile web analytics data has proven to be less easy than traditional web analytics because of several decisive factors.
Traditional analytics software on mobile websites only provides data for HTTP requests coming from the most advanced mobile browsers; such as those found on iPhones and smartphones and other PDAs, with no data on other mobile devices browsing the site.
General web analytics software that uses parsing server logs to associate various IP addresses with "unique visits" may fail to completely identify unique visitors. This is because the IP address of each mobile device comes from the gateway IP address of the network access provider.
Some dynamic server-side platforms are used to develop mobile sites. Server-side tracking codes are recommended for more accurate analytics reporting.
Maps Mobile web analytics
Platform
- HTML/JavaScript
- WordPress Mobile Pack
- PHP
- .NET
- Java
- Python
- ColdFusion
- Ruby on Rails
- node.js/Connect
- TypePad Pro
- Unify (Gravity4)
Different process or tracking mechanisms are available for each of the above platforms. For unsupported/HTML sites, the most commonly used JavaScript pixel tracking mechanism.
Because mobile websites are usually open to access from any network - fixed, Wi-Fi, mobile wireless, satellite wireless, etc. - Traditional web analytics solutions can range from fairly accurate to largely inaccurate, depending on where HTTP requests come from.
In addition, mobile web analytics involves metrics and KPIs related to mobile device information, such as models, manufacturers, and screen resolutions. This data can usually be collected by combining device identification information extracted from custom HTTP headers, such as user-agents, with device capabilities stored in the device's information registry, such as WURFL. This method is not provided by traditional web analytics solutions because it is specific to mobile web.
Problems with tracking
Identify visitors
Visitor identification is the most important aspect of mobile web analytics that can be used and one of the most difficult technical aspects to solve, especially since JavaScript and HTTP cookies are highly unreliable on mobile browsers. As a result, some mobile web analytics solutions only detect or count user visits per day. The best solution provides a reliable, persistent, and unique user identity, enabling accurate repeat visit measurement and long-term customer loyalty.
tagging a JavaScript page
Javascript-based Page Marking notifies third-party servers when pages are rendered by web browsers. This method assumes that end-user browsers have JavaScript and JavaScript capabilities enabled, although there may not be anything right. Currently, most mobile web browsers do not support JavaScript enough for this to work.
HTTP cookies are commonly used to tag and identify visitors. Cookies are standard capabilities for all desktop web browsers. With the prevalence of iPhone and Android, HTTP cookies are now supported by most smartphones, because by default, iPhone and Android phones will accept browser cookies from websites. Like desktop browsers, mobile device users can choose to disable cookies.
HTTP referrer
The HTTP referrer information that shows where visitors are navigated is generally not reserved for mobile web search. This happens because the device manufacturer has disabled the sending of the information in HTTP requests to save bandwidth during network usage, or because the mobile network's internet gateway deletes or alters the original HTTP header because of the gateway software or the use of mobile web transcoding software.
The handset caching mechanism impacts the use of images for tagging pages. In some cases, the image storage on the handset is performed regardless of the output of any anti-cache headers by the remote server.
IP Address
For desktop web search, the network address of the client machine usually provides some form of identification and user location. For mobile web search, the client's IP address refers to the internet gateway machine owned by the network operator. For devices such as BlackBerry or for phones using Opera Mini browser software, IP addresses refer to the carrier's Internet gateway machine in Canada or Norway.
Collecting mobile web analytics data
A set of mobile web analytics data requires a different approach than collecting traditional web analytics data. A number of solutions are available and best results are obtained through the use of more than one technology.
Packet sniff
Also known as tagless data capture or passive network capture, this technique uses taps between mobile users and web servers to capture the full content of client-server exchange. Tagging retrieval techniques are increasingly popular for mobile web analytics because they capture all users, work with all devices and do not require JavaScript, cookies, server logs, or plugins.
Images can be forced to work for mobile web analytics, as long as the image submitted is always unique. The level of information recorded from this transmission depends on the architecture provided by the supplier, and not all of the signal flare solutions are the same.
Link redirection
Link redirection is an important method for tracking the activity of mobile visitors. This is the only reliable way to record clicks from ads, searches, and other marketing activities. It also records the visitor who clicked the link to leave the site. This method helps overcome the lack of HTTP referrer information on mobile.
HTTP header analysis
It tells you some basic facts about mobile phones and browsers. It can be used in conjunction with a database of devices such as WURFL.
Analysis of IP addresses
Operator databases are used to identify carriers and their country based on the IP address of their internet gateway device. IP addresses alone do not identify all operators and countries, as some carriers share their mobile networks with virtual network operators (MVNO). Boost Wireless, for example, uses the Sprint network. Since these two operators have very different customer demographics, a clear difference between operators is critical to a good mobile marketing campaign. Operators can also share their mobile internet gateway, sometimes in some countries, and many changes or add to the gateway on a regular basis.
WAP Logs Traffic log
The WAP gateway log is a mine of information that can be analyzed to get relevant information as all mobile traffic passes through these servers. There are companies like OPENWAVE that have tools that can analyze these logs and provide the required information.
Further reading
- "How Mobile Analytics helps you build Better Products". CleverTap Blog . CleverTap.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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