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An introduction to Snowplow Analytics and the problems it solves for analysts - presented to Web Analytics Wednesday Melbourne. 15th May 2014
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A TASTE OF SNOWPLOW ANALYTICS
by Rob Kingston
www.optimisationbeacon.com
AGENDA
• Problems with analytics vendors today
• Introducing Snowplow Analytics
• Live demo
• Getting started with it
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
THE STUFF OF (ANALYSTS’) NIGHTMARES
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 dataSize, Price
and Availability
External systems Click
trackingSocial
WHEN WE START GENERATING SERIOUS TRAFFIC WE’RE SOMETIMES FORCED TO
CAP OURSELVES
• … unless you go GA Premium or Site Catalyst.
Alright Google
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
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
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
FOR HIGHER-VALUE BESPOKE ANALYSES YOU NEED TO HACK TOGETHER API
QUERIES
“My eyes!”
ENTER SNOWPLOW ANALYTICS
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
BUILT TO SCALE. SERIOUSLY.
• Can theoretically handle hundreds of millions of events per day
MODULAR DESIGN SO YOU CAN CHOP AND CHANGE COMPONENTS THAT BEST SUIT
YOUR BUSINESS
YOUR ANALYTICS DATA IN YOUR DATA WAREHOUSE
Other Business Data Web Analytics data
STRUCTURED + UNSTRUCTURED DATA (GEEK SPEAK FOR REALLY FLEXIBLE DATA
COLLECTION)
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)
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
PLAYS NICELY WITH GOOGLE ANALYTICS, TAG MANAGER AND YOUR OTHER SCRIPTS
A PRICE TAG THAT WON’T BREAK THE BANK EITHER…
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
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