Web analytics are derived in two primary ways, so far (more on this later), JavaScript tags and web server log files.  This is pretty much the universal way that web statistics are collected.  There are dozens of books out there that cover this in dozens of different ways;  Web Analytics Demystified (which I’m reading now), Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, Actionable Web Analytics, Web Site Measurement Hacks, Google Analytics 2.0, and diverging into a sub-topic of web analytics is Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day.  These books of course cover much more than just web analytic tagging methods, but they’re good resources for discovering more about the field.

Web analytics can be used by almost any sector of the web industry.  Some of these divisions include; content, commerce, lead generation, and self service sites.  Each of these separate divisions would track differing statistics, ranging from gross margin, gross margin return on investment (GMROI), net profit, total sales, average order size, or accessory attachment rate all the way to average page views per visit, average visits per visitor, click through on on-site ads, first-time versus returning visitors.  We analytics cover the full spectrum of feature sets in almost any type of web application you could think of.

I’ve also started to stumble into specific techno analytics speak.  One of the words that hit me kind of funny is sessionizing.  First off, it is not technically a word.  It breaks convention from a real word that would be created or used in the English Language.  But really, I guess nobody cares if it gets the point across.  Plus we’re talking about the marketing industry here; it couldn’t possibly hurt to draw more attention to something with faux words.

Sessionizing is a custom web analytics adjective.  Sessionizing is the process of assigning a unique visitor to one or more actions that occurred within a defined period or visit.  There are other words, and analytics speak, that I will cover later.  For now, I’ll just let the word sessionizing sink in a little bit.  If you think I’m joking, I’m very serious, so be aware when you hear it in the analytics industry, that it truly does mean something now.  I’m sure it will end up in the dictionary within the next few years anyway.  Then it will be as real as any other English Word.

Really though, it is just one more entertaining part of this part of the technology sector!

Some of the other things that starting here has made me ponder.  Some I can’t mention yet, others include; what would I measure on this site, how could I use this to improve my search engine optimization, and other such things that I generally don’t ponder.  I get the feeling that I’ll be thinking a lot more about these things in the coming days and weeks.  Cheers to that, I’m off for a few beers and a weekend of doing absolutely nothing in particular!

Yo!  I made a gross error of neglect in my moving on entry!

Ryan B. – thanks for giving me some serious ideas on book purchases, a very interesting “other section” at Powerll’s, and for being an all around kick ass programmer!  I hope to run into you in the future!  Maybe I’ll be able to show you some of the cool things I have going on in my set path finding navigation application.  I’ve actually started on it AND am making some decent progress.

I decided on my first official day 100% back in Portland I was going to finally get my “office” setup over in the south east side of town.  In doing so Joleen and I spent about 4 hours getting things cleared up and trash tossed, and I started stacking all my books I no longer needed or wanted.  At the end of the night I had approximately 40 extra books, that I had no use for.  Instead of tossing them in the trash with the other trash, I decided I’d let Powell’s decide if they could sell them or they could just recycle the books.

I went in today, made an amazing $6.00 credit toward my purchase of some magazines and another book.  I was stoked that Powell’s will do this.  In addition I didn’t have to throw away or worry about where to “take to recycle”, they just handled all the rest.

Powell’s ROCKS!  Love this place.  Now off to run some errands and dig into my recently purchased magazines and Ryan influenced purchase of O’Reilly‘s Collective Intelligence.

I have been working for Centerstance almost a year and 4 months and made a lot of good friends.  It has been a great ride and I’ve learned a lot, and forgotten a lot (not really), had tons of great beers (Vodkas, Wines, tasting sessions etc.) with a bunch of great guys and gals!  I’ll definitely miss many of them and I’m sure in the future I’ll be dropping by for a visit every now and then.  Shux, Portland is a small town, I might get to work with any number of my fellow coworkers again, and would enjoy the experience!

• Eric P. – Thanks for the comments, the continuous badgering to do better, and the insight and support in everything we worked on together.  Maybe we can work one of those elusive bank jobs one o’ these days.  Those first iterations where crazy, hectic, and actually fun contrary to our delirious and sometimes delusional state after 14 hr days!  Thanks also for realizing that I’m working on my “task switching”, and for helping me rock through some stuff even amid that.  You make a great lead, a truly great lead, and I wish you the best in those efforts.
• Jim M. – Thanks for the drinks, thanks for the support, thanks for not killing me a few times.  Your leadership enabled me to implement that whole crazy business rules engine (NxBRE), and the sanity to start rewriting the effort when the rules engine was tossed from the design.  Who knew!?  Also – thanks for the grand sounds of the Harley during the summer months as I walked into the office.  I always like the sounds of a good set of two wheels rolling along the road.
• Harv F. – Thanks for showing me the awesome barbecue places!  They rocked.  Also thank you for the calm leadership demeanor and many conversations we had about all sorts of business matters!  I hated to see you leave and hope you’re taking care of business in whatever you’re doing, I’m sure you are.
• Billie O. – Thanks for being the courageous CTO that the project needs!  Your determination you display has been positive throughout my tenure on project, I’ve enjoyed working with your teams very much.
• Ben – Thanks for keeping the lights on.  Thanks for making sure things stayed hooked up too!
• Annais – Thanks for the friendly hellos in the mornings during the cold winter months of late 06’ and early 07’.  Your smiling face was always nice to see.
• Aendenne A. – Thanks for the conversations, hilarious irreverence, and completely non-PC conversations.  Enjoyed discussing cars, music, and the random political diatribe with you too.  Have fun down in Phoenix!
• John – Thanks for the conversations, the slight off bit insanity spurts as we questioned the logic and complete idiocy of the tax code all the way through to the best way to arm soldiers to citizens to home defenders.  Dot five oh desert eagle baby!
• Jay W. – Excellent photo tips, great work on that “custom domain (CDM)” you had to work on!  I actually dug through some of it… so I’m not just saying that.
• Shane T. – You are an architect, the weirdo astronaut type!  You got drive and determination like I have never seen!  Keep up the good work.   It’s been great and I’m sure I’ll see ya every few days for that proverbial after work beer!  Please don’t kajukenbo my butt for rolling off!  argh!
• Dan S. – You be architect too, TT lovin’ architect.  Awesome work, good humor, and also an amazing work ethic (maybe slightly crazy?)  Dan – you need to drag yourself out after work too, I got a lot of conversations I never had with ya that I wanted to!  Awesome work fortress in the mountains… btw – when are we doing a startup project so we can get richer and richer?
• Pete S. – Thanks for the peace accords.  You’re good at that style of operation.
• Kirk M. – Semper Fi Marine!  Good work, great demeanor, respectful, and honorable.  You are a rather rare developer.  Have a good day, week, year, life, etc, I’ll be happy to run into you sometime again and hash through some code!  Maybe even some more WCF one day?  Yeah!
• C*** *. (top secret first name letters and last initial) – Thanks for the DB Schema discussions, the transit conversations, the home made, custom, turbo, awesome, kick ass, alcohol!  I’m waiting on the Vodka release!  I’m sure I’ll be running into you around these Portland parts in the future.
• Greg L. – Thanks for being a great leader, tactically and strategically I felt confident in your leadership of Centerstance.  It is nice to go to work each day and have that feeling.
• Lisa S. – Thanks for that process & firm kick in the butt when things where a bit rough.  I definitely appreciated the efforts in clearing the path for development.
• B. Cassis – Thanks for those supercharger fast DB changes!  You rock!  btw – thanks for allowing me to confuse you, and then beating me into logical-ness when I stumbled!
• Jagdish – Jag, thanks for those random coffee trips and the stories of India!  Relating with you about those and about my own area I grew up in where very interesting.  Noting similarities on opposite ends of the planet is intriguing!  Oh yeah, and thanks for those ripping fast database requests!
• James G. – Thanks for the comments, camaraderie, and random troubleshooting help.  If you ever have questions – I’ll probably answer em’, maybe.
• James S. – Where did ya go?  Awesome hanging with ya man!  Anytime I’m rolling through the Tac I’ll give u a ring.  How goes the current job hunting and/or work?
• David K. – I hope you enjoyed A Confederacy of Dunces.  Good book, true to the city.  Enjoyed working with you the short times we where teamed on some things.
• Bob W. – Are you a citizen yet?  When are you coming to Portland to have a brew?  How goes the work?  It was excellent working with you, good ranting with you, and most excellent having a non-American accent besides by southern babbling.
• Anish G. – Keep up the good work, you have some good skills!  Enjoyed working with ya, you are definitely a top notch developer!
• Sameer – Didn’t get to work with you much, but had fun when I did!  Maybe we’ll stumble into each other on some more work efforts!?
• Raghu S. – Keep that build under control!  Good job, good humor, enjoyed working and grabbing that rare lunch with you.
• Abhihjeet T. – Yo Abhi!  Excellent working with ya.  You’re gonna be one o’ those elite guys I can tell, Peterson and I believe so – but you didn’t hear that from me.  Hopefully I’ll run into you around Portland sometime.  Gimme a ring when you’re in town!
• Steve W. – Thanks for the awesome, often times educational, and entertaining conversations.  We’ll definitely have to chat & have dinner on one of my frequent future trips to Seattle.
• Trentin – Thanks for the e-mail info, random support, helping kick the VMs, and numerous hardware conversations.  Enjoy that sys admin job!  Take it easy.
• Reid R. – Thanks for the conversations, metal music, and guitar disccussions.  Keep up the work on the game servers, blogs, and other zillion things u are working on!
• Jeff L. – Prozac.  You’ll get there, just one step at a time.    Have a good trip and keep up the patterns study, but make sure to get the Martin Fowler book, it’s way better than the one with the hot girl on it you have.

For anyone I forgot, my apologies, my fingers started cramping up.  Best of fortunes to all, and I’ll see everyone around I’m sure.

…and if I don’t have your contact info (or you want your name and my 2 cents added to the list), shoot me an e-mail!

If you see the above, READ THIS!  Once again KXCD makes it to my blog.  Absolutely hilarious!  (Linked below for the lazy clicker)