An introduction to Snowplow Analytics and the problems it solves for analysts - presented to Web Analytics Wednesday Melbourne. 15th May 2014

1. A TASTE OF SNOWPLOW ANALYTICS
by Rob Kingston
www.optimisationbeacon.com

2. AGENDA
• Problems with analytics vendors today
• Introducing Snowplow Analytics
• Live demo
• Getting started with it

3. THERE ARE LOTS OF PROBLEMS WITH WEB
ANALYTICS TODAY…
… AND THEY PREVENT US FROM DELIVERING VALUABLE INSIGHTS THAT COULD GIVE OUR
BUSINESSES A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

4. THE STUFF OF (ANALYSTS’) NIGHTMARES

5. SOMETIMES COMPLEX EVENTS DON’T FIT INTO OUR TOOLS
Pageviews Events Ecommerce
Social /
Timing
Add to
cart
Split
test
trackingWeather
data
Logins
Item
views
Scroll
reach
Form
tracking
Copy
Paste
Offline data
Size, Price
and
Availability
External
systems
Click
trackingSocial

6. WHEN WE START GENERATING SERIOUS TRAFFIC WE’RE
SOMETIMES FORCED TO CAP OURSELVES
• … unless you go GA Premium or Site Catalyst.
Alright Google

7. BUSINESS RULES CHANGED: NEED TO REPROCESS DATA?
New
retroactive
goal
Change to IP
filters
Exclude
query
parameters
Reprocess
old logs with
new
enrichments
Excluding
erroneous
data
Forgot to
capture full
referrers
New rules
for
identifying
users
Update
session
definition

8. AND WHEN DATA IS PROCESSED, YOU CAN’T VALIDATE IT OR
CHECK THAT IT’S OK
• “Hmmm… what’s this spike in organic traffic?”
Well… it’s not organic traffic.
It should have been classified as referral

9. ONCE THE DATA IS ‘IN’ IT’S HARD TO GET OUT AND COMBINE
WITH OTHER SOURCES
• Use the Analytics API or Ask Adobe for your logs…
• Only 7 dimensions and 7 metrics at a time
Web Analytics data

Other business data

10. FOR HIGHER-VALUE BESPOKE ANALYSES YOU NEED TO HACK
TOGETHER API QUERIES
“My eyes!”

11. ENTER SNOWPLOW ANALYTICS

12. AN OPEN SOURCE WEB ANALYTICS PLATFORM
• Developed by Alexander Dean & Yali Sassoon since the start of 2012
• Their core users collect lots of data (billions of events)
YaliAlex

13. BUILT TO SCALE. SERIOUSLY.
• Can theoretically handle hundreds of millions of events per day

14. MODULAR DESIGN SO YOU CAN CHOP AND CHANGE
COMPONENTS THAT BEST SUIT YOUR BUSINESS

15. YOUR ANALYTICS DATA IN YOUR DATA WAREHOUSE
Other
Business
Data Web Analytics data


16. STRUCTURED + UNSTRUCTURED DATA
(GEEK SPEAK FOR REALLY FLEXIBLE DATA COLLECTION)

17. HERE ARE JUST A FEW EXAMPLES OF THE COOL THINGS IT
ENABLES OUT OF THE BOX
• Scroll reach heatmapping
• Total value by user, purchase latency
• Tracking split tests with enormous
samples (no example, but very much
possible to do)

18. EXCELLENT DOCUMENTATION AND AN AWESOMELY HELPFUL
COMMUNITY…
• Technical guides for advanced implementations
• https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow/wiki/Snowplow-technical-documentation
• Setup guide to get started
• https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow/wiki/Setting-up-Snowplow
• Google Group for questions support and blue sky thinking
• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/snowplow-user

19. PLAYS NICELY WITH GOOGLE ANALYTICS, TAG MANAGER
AND YOUR OTHER SCRIPTS

20. A PRICE TAG THAT WON’T BREAK THE BANK EITHER…

21. KEY SNOWPLOW TAKEAWAYS
1. Enables high-value bespoke analytics difficult to do in GA/Other vendors
2. Can be customized for many types of businesses
3. Free, open source and excellent community support
4. You own your data – and you never need to worry about sampling
5. Perfect accompaniment to a Google Analytics Standard account

22. QUESTIONS?
Rob Kingston
www.optimisationbeacon.com