Is your web analytics tool overestimating your traffic?
A recent article in my Google Reader caught my eye entitled, " Biometrics firm confirms: User counts for websites are 2-4 times too high ". The post details how a company used some really fascinating techniques to determine a more accurate count of unique visitors using individual's computer mannerisms for a website rather the traditional way of using cookies.
Apparently everyone has their own idosyncratic pattern when it comes to using a computer including pauses between keystrokes, mouse movements, etc. Kind of like our web fingerprint. Really had no idea that existed and impressed someone thought to measure that as a unique identifier.
While the technology is intriguing, I am guessing the more important issue is the assertion that everyone's web analytics platform might be over-counting unique visitors. Not sure if most people realize this but a majority of web analytics tools utilize cookies to determine whether or not you've been to a website. The problem with doing that is most folks own multiple computers or other devices that can surf the web. I have 2 computers at home and an iPhone, so if I went to the same site on all those machines I would count as 3 unique visitors. Additionally, I believe most cookies are browser specific so even if I used the same machine for surfing but used 2 different web browsers, I would be counted twice.
In a nutshell, the count of unique visitors has always been ripe with problems. It's probably getting worse as more devices are connected to the internet (just wait until everyone's TV is connected). This technology might help fix some of that, but in lieu of that I'd say don't worry about it . It doesn't truly matter in the end whether your unique visitor count is actually accurate. I would argue against obsessing about your unique visitor counts. Instead trends are where the relevance lies. Are the numbers still directionally correct? If the unique visitor count is 1,000 as opposed to 5,000 does that matter as much as whether the trend is up or down? Doesn't the trend dictate your action plan more than the absolute numbers?
In the past, I've used the metric 'visit's as my key traffic metric just because of the known problems with tracking unique visitors. Additionally, to me, visits lined up nicely with similar offline actions such as a phone call or a trip to a physical store. That way I could look at conversions based on user interactions/sessions and try to improve on that rate. The key point is choose a metric whether its visits or unique visitors and go with it knowing there are inherent problems with the metric.
The only full-proof way to get a correct count of unique visitors is to have a site that mandates a login. Instead of measuring the cookies, you'd been measuring the count of userids. However, I would imagine though you'd lose more than your ability to track unique visitors if you forced visitors to create a login in order to use your site.
Web analytics is great in that we can track a ton of web behaviors that the offline world can't, but with that ability comes incredible complexity when it comes to accuracy. You have to just let go that things aren't 100% accurate, and in some cases aren't close to accurate. This ain't finance or accounting, but if the numbers are showing the right trends you can make the right business decisions.
Comments
Not losing a lot of sleep over multiple visits from individuals jacking up numbers. If they're that motivated to hit my site, bring em on. Muddy data is part of the challenge of analytics. Keeps you on your toes.
I agree with the idea that visits is very powerful as a 'relative' measure of traffic. It's very similar to opens when measuring email marketing effectiveness.
So while I agree that the new biometric fingerprint technology sounds quite impressive, I think it's just dragging people further down an unnecessary rat hole.
There are a lot of people who really want to understand uniques to a site because they report that data to advertisers. I would argue that this is misguided. Advertisers care about eyeballs because they have lived too long in an offline world where numbers are loose and you can't attribute sales.
In this day and age there is no reason why advertisers should be looking at uniques when they should be asking about engagement and conversion.
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