1. Improving Data Quality: Why's & How's
Robert Seolas, Co-founder, ObservePoint
Jeff Jobe, Lead Tech Support Engineer, Webtrends

2. The Truth About Tags
• Tagging Technology is Fragile
– Prone to Inaccuracy and Error
– Prone to Leakage
– Prone to Loss
• 46% of companies made an inaccurate
decision based on bad or outdated data

3. Web Analytics Data is full of
Invisible Inaccuracy
Cause Effect
Incomplete Tagging Inaccurate Reports
JavaScript Errors Poor User Experience
Long Load Times Lost Sales
Broken Links Broken Pathing
Unauthorized Tags Data Leakage & Privacy Breach

4. The Top 5 Problems Seen in
Webtrends Implementations

5. #1 Pages Not Tagged
• The most common problem
– Skews data in various reports
• Bounce rate
• Page views
• Exit rates
• Conversions
– Causes self-referral problems
• Creates noise in referral reports

6. #2 Tag Versions
• Different versions of the tag
– Tag versions can have alternative definitions
of what “visitor” means, which causes
inconsistent calculations

7. #3 Tag Remnants
• Some tags should not be deployed
– Tags might remain from previous
implementations
– Worse, these may be “intruder” tags
• Data collected is not accessible to the web site
owner
• Data is available to unknown third parties
• Such collection may violate company policy,
regulatory constraints, or EU “cookie law”

8. #4 Links & Redirects
• Broken links degrade data integrity and
frustrate users.
– Conversion process killers
– Negative SEO value
• Excessive redirecting
– Causes web site bloat
– Negatively impacts conversion rates

9. #5 JavaScript Errors
• JavaScript errors cause the page to load
incompletely
– Errors interfere with execution of tracking code
– Results in data loss
– Unexpected visitor behavior
– Poor User Experience

10. How do you find out about
your data quality problems?

11. Data Quality Best Practices
• Audits • Simulations
– Page-by-page tagging – Real-world user
inventory simulation confirms
– Identify common and continuous
uncommon problems functionality
– Confirm web analytics – Real-time fault
data accuracy notifications
– For pages, tags, and
complex multi-step
processes

12. Recap: 5 Most Common Problems
• Missing or inaccurate data
– Pages missing tags
• Inconsistent data
– Different tag versions across site
• Data Leakage
– Tag remnants
• Poor User Experience
– Broken links & excessive redirecting
• Broken Objects
– JavaScript errors

13. Quality & Results: Here’s How
• Webtrends Data • ObservePoint
Quality Assessment – Self-managed platform
– Comprehensive Audit – Full Service
– Expert Assessment & – Multi-Vendor Audits
Recommendations • Conference
• Contact your Account Attendees get 5% off
Manager

14. Rate
Session
&
Speakers/
Panelists

15. Thank You
Jeff Jobe
Lead Tech Support Engineer, Webtrends
jeff.jobe@webtrends.com
Robert Seolas
Co-founder, ObservePoint
rob@observepoint.com
blogs.webtrends.com