Web Analytics for Business Insights and intelligence

I had actually promised writing about Implementation on Mobile Analytics using Omniture SiteCatalyst as a Web analytics solutions, But due to time constraints I couldn’t managed to write on it, But I will definitely will write about it actually its on queue : )

Well without disappointing this time something on Web Analytic Metrics, We normally get the request from our partners to enable MUVs ( Monthly unique visitors)  to some of the specific reports however most of the time we push them to use DUVs (Daily Unique visitors) instead of MUVs, specially if its support sites.

There is couple of reason for this,

• For me DUVs and MUVs are just numbers to watch the trend month over month for particular section of the website (you know even Avinash is also not too fond of Daily Unique Visitors : ) )
• It drives cost to the company in enabling this additional metrics to any reports.

For this reason we normally ask what is the business value that’s going to drive using MUVs in particular report, believe me 99% of them didn’t had any reason other then just watching the trend of the unique visitors.

If you ask me, Visits, Unique Visitors (Daily or monthly) are just number to watch the trend and the number of people visiting the website, that is they are not an Action Driving metric (A perfect example for Action driven metrics is Bounce Rate - A sexist web metric - Avinash Says : ) )

Due to frequent request, for MUVs (Monthly unique visitors) we have decided to enable DUVs (Daily unique visitors) for whom it requests and educate them to “Estimate” Monthly unique visitors, its little tricky here, it’s just an estimated number of Monthly unique visitors but might not be accurate.

Let’s see how in simple calculation we can calculate Monthly unique visitors using Daily unique visitors.

Assume you need MUVs in most popular site section report, however it has only DUVs enabled, here are the simple steps to add calculated metric MUVs

1. Pull Daily Unique Visitors for one month (site level)
2. Pull Monthly Unique Visitors for one month (site level)
3. Calculate the ratio of between them.
4. Pull the report where you need to MUVs from DUVs 
5. Calculate Estimated MUVs metric by Multiplying DUVs by Average ratio created in #3

1.      Pull Daily Unique Visitors for one month (site level)

2. Pull Monthly Unique Visitors for one month (site level)

3. Calculate the ratio of between them.

i,e Ratio = MUVs/DUVs

4. Pull the report where you need to MUVs from DUVs
5. Calculate Estimated MUVs metric by Multiplying DUVs by Average ratio created in #3

Have a look at the difference between the actual and the estimated Monthly Unique visitor, its negligible or I would say it’s acceptable anywhere between 10 to 20% of discrepancy.

Please drop in your comments just in case if we have better way of calculating Monthly Unique Visitors or if you feel calculation displayed above is wrong or your recommendations if any.

Note: This was not my orgninal idea, it was proposed by my co-partner who is a program manager.