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      <h1>Web analytics</h1>
<p>Analyzing web traffic involves collecting, calculating, visualizing
and critically thinking about the data generated by visitors' web browsers 
while they are viewing webpages. The resulting data provides insight into 
how visitors use the site and why they stay or leave. The key concept to
analytics is <em>learning</em> about your users so you can improve your web 
application to better suit their needs. </p>
<p>It's easy to get overwhelmed at both the number of analytics services and
the numerous types of data points collected. Focus on just a handful of
metrics when you're just starting out. As your application scales and you 
understand more about your users then add additional analytics services 
to gain further insight into their behavior with advanced visualizations such
as heatmaps and action funnels. The
<a href="http://spenczar.com/posts/2013/Sep/07/seven-stages-analytics-grief/">seven stages of startup analytics grief</a> 
post is an amusing read and provides context for how to begin and then grow 
tracked metrics over time.</p>
<h2>User funnels</h2>
<p>If your application is
selling a product or service you can ultimately build a 
<a href="http://moz.com/blog/building-your-marketing-funnel-with-google-analytics">user funnel</a> (often called "sales funnel" prior to a user becoming a customer)
to better understand why people buy or don't buy what you're selling. With
a funnel you can visualize drop-off points where visitors leave your 
application before taking some action, such as purchasing your service.</p>
<h2>Web Analytics Third Party Services</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.google.com/analytics/">Google Analytics</a> is a widely used
free analytics tool for website traffic.</p>
<p><a href="https://mixpanel.com/">MixPanel</a>'s analytics platform focuses on mobile
and sales funnel metrics. A developer builds what data points need to be
collected into the server side or client side code. MixPanel captures that
data and provides metrics and visualizations based on the data.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.kissmetrics.com/">KISSmetrics</a>' analytics provides context
for who is visiting a website and what actions they are taking while on
the site.</p>
<p><a href="https://heapanalytics.com/">Heap</a> is a recently founded analytics service
with a free introductory tier to get started.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.crazyegg.com/">CrazyEgg</a> is tool for understanding a
user's focus while using a website based on heatmaps generated from mouse 
movements. </p>
<h2>Web Analytics Resources</h2>
<p>This 
<a href="http://blog.arkency.com/2012/12/google-analytics-for-developers/">Google Analytics for Developers</a></p>
<p>This beginner's guide to 
<a href="http://www.seotakeaways.com/beginners-guide-maths-stats-web-analytics/">math and stats behind web analytics</a>
provides some context for understanding and reasoning about web traffic. </p>
<p>This post provides context for determining if a given metric is
<a href="http://fizzle.co/sparkline/vanity-vs-actionable-metrics">"vanity" or actionable</a>.</p>
<p>Read this post on <a href="http://www.bayesianwitch.com/blog/2013/howyouranalyticswork.html">how your analytics software actually works</a>
to get a better understanding of what's going on behind the scenes from
a technical perspective.</p>
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