On one hand, Adobe Analytics remains my favorite web analytics tool on the market. The longer I use it, the more I appreciate all the well thought-out features, from data collection to processing, storage, and analysis. Those features are even more impressive when compared with what Google Analytics has to offer. And yet, on the other hand, even I can’t avoid having to work with Google Analytics in some way or another. In a large, global company, it is basically unavoidable to find Google Analytics on some small, long forgotten marketing landing page in some market. It gets even worse: Up until last year, I personally had to maintain an inherited Google Analytics instance on a legacy website and app. What a cruel world! Besides those cases, where someone in your company actually wants to use Google Analytics, there are also more forgivable cases. For example, a company may be […]
Tag: Customer Journey Analytics
Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, Part 8: A new home
This post is the eight and last post of the eight-part-series Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, showing how web sites can be analyzed better using Adobe’s next evolution of Adobe Analytics. In the previous post, we were creating the connection from Experience Platform to Customer Journey Analytics. In this post, we are going to take a look at our web analytics data and explore some use cases. Believe it or not, but this series of posts is almost finished! Starting with nothing, we have created a sophisticated schema for our data in Experience Platform, created a tracking implementation using the new Web SDK, enriched our data in Query Service, and pulled all that data into Customer Journey Analytics. If you have been following since the start of the series, I want to say: Thank you, hope you enjoyed the ride! Now it is time for the finale, where […]
Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, Part 7: Customer Journey Analytics Backend Configuration
This post is the seventh post of the eight-part-series Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, showing how web sites can be analyzed better using Adobe’s next evolution of Adobe Analytics. In the previous post, we were enriching our basic web analytics data with some advanced fields in Query Service. In this post, we are creating the connection from Customer Journey Analytics to Experience Platform. At this point in this series, we have a world-class dataset of web analytics data in Experience Platform, ready to be analyzed. I’m personally very proud of the things we were able to achieve in Query Service, especially with the pathing dimensions. With all of that, we have even more than what normal Adobe Analytics would give us! With all the data enriched, we now have only one step left before we can start analyzing our digital user’s behavior. First, we need to pull data […]
Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, Part 6: Advanced Data Processing in Query Service
This post is the sixth post of the eight-part-series Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, showing how web sites can be analyzed better using Adobe’s next evolution of Adobe Analytics. In the previous post, we took a look at processing some basic data we need for our web analytics use case utilizing Query Service in Experience Platform. In this post, we are creating some advanced fields to our data in Query Service. I think it’s fair to say that even with just the information from the previous part, we could have a very useful web analytics tool already. But if you know me, you know that I like to take things to the next level wherever I can, especially if it involves writing code. And is SQL not some sort of code too? Entry and exit page were a nice start last time, but we have some fields still […]
Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, Part 5: Basic Data Processing in Query Service
This post is the fifth post of the eight-part-series Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, showing how web sites can be analyzed better using Adobe’s next evolution of Adobe Analytics. In the previous post, we took a look at doing the implementation using Adobe Launch, the Adobe Web SDK, and Client Data Layer. In this post, we are going to processing some basic data we need for our web analytics use case utilizing Query Service in Experience Platform. This series of posts is coming along quite nicely. If you followed all the previous posts until now, you will now have a functioning Web SDK implementation that tracks your data into Experience Platform following the Experience Data Schema we have tailor-made for our use case. Nice! Now we are ready to feed our data into Customer Journey Analytics, right? Well, we could. If we are just interested in the plain […]
Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, Part 4: Capturing Data with Web SDK (Alloy)
This post is the fourth post of the eight-part-series Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, showing how web sites can be analyzed better using Adobe’s next evolution of Adobe Analytics. In the previous post, we took a look at our business questions and how we can structure our data most effectively. In this post, we are doing the actual implementation using Adobe Launch, the Adobe Web SDK, and Client Data Layer. On our way to creating a full-scope, front-to-back implementation of Customer Journey Analytics to track a web site, we are now ready to think about our actual implementation. Since we have the data structure in place and already have an awesome Experience Event Schema, we just need some actual data. The logical choice to feed data to the Adobe stack is, of course, by utilizing their client-side tools as well. Specifically, we are going to use Adobe Launch […]
Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, Part 3: Data Structure in Experience Platform
This post is the third post of the eight-part-series Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, showing how web sites can be analyzed better using Adobe’s next evolution of Adobe Analytics. In the previous post, we took a look at the different possible solution architectures we can use to bring data into Customer Journey Analytics and decided on the best one. In this post, we will take a look at our actual business questions and how we can structure our data most effectively. From the last post we already know that we want to track data using only the new Adobe Web SDK going forward. To make that work, we need to create a schema in Experience Platform first, which defines the structure of the data that we want to capture. While some people (sometimes me included) see schema management as one of the more tedious tasks in Platform, I […]
Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, Part 2: System Architecture in Experience Platform
This post is the second post of the eight-part-series Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, showing how web sites can be analyzed better using Adobe’s next evolution of Adobe Analytics. In the previous post, we discussed the motivation and scope of this project and why, eventually, existing Adobe Analytics customers will start moving to Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics. In this post, we will take a look at the different possible solution designs we can use to bring data into Customer Journey Analytics and decide on the best one. Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics is built on Adobe’s brand new Experience Platform. With that, it is very flexible in terms of how data can be brought into the tool. Depending on the setup it may seem very easy to bring data in quickly. However, all that flexibility also means we have many ways to deviate from the ideal path, so we […]
Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, Part 1: Goodbye Adobe Analytics, my Old Friend
This post is the first post of the eight-part-series Web Analytics with Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics, showing how web sites can be analyzed better using Adobe’s next evolution of Adobe Analytics. In this part, we discuss the motivation and scope of this project and why, eventually, existing Adobe Analytics and new customers will start moving to Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics. If you found this article, chances are high you work in or adjacent to the field of digital analytics or web analytics. It doesn’t really matter if you are an existing Adobe Analytics user, on the Google stack, or just looking for your very first web analytics tool. If you have been following the trends and discussions in our industry in the recent time, you will likely already have caught on the massive changes that both our industry and Adobe’s products go through. With changes to privacy requirements and cookie […]
Privacy-centered Analytics with Matomo and Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics
Legal Disclaimer: Data Privacy is a diverse and ever-changing topic. This makes it nearly impossible to give reliable recommendations to a broad audience. Please consult your company’s legal department on whether those ideas described here are feasible under your jurisdiction. If there has been one predominant topic in the web analytics space for the last couple of years, it surely is data privacy. GDPR is a thing in Europa, COPPA in the US, ITP on planet Apple, and cookie consent banners on every website. Conducting a safe data collection practice as a global business has become more and more challenging, pushing businesses to be more and more careful. Because of this landscape, a lot of businesses are looking for a “bullet-proof” way to analyze website users’s behavior. While Google Analytics is a data privacy nightmare, tools like Piwik Matomo try to justify their existence by claiming to be more privacy […]
Even more Query Service tips to level up your Customer Journey Analytics game
It has been more than two weeks since my last post. Where have I been? Easy answer: Fully and blissfully engulfed in the blessing that is Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics. I’ve imported my Adobe Analytics data, done some custom user stitching, and created some fun things that I didn’t even knew I’ve always wanted from Adobe Analytics. This experience (pun intended) has completely shifted the way I look at my own data. Following up on my last post, I would like to share some new and cool things I discovered using some more Adobe Defined Functions, window functions, and standard SQL. I wont give a long introduction into Query Service again, but feel free to revisit the previous post for some information on how Query Service interacts with Adobe Experience Platform datasets and how to write data back to those. Getting creative with Sessionization Recreating Adobe Analytics sessions in Query […]
Adobe Customer Journey Analytics – The big Game Changer
It’s hard to follow any Adobe Experience Cloud outlet today without hearing about Adobe’s Experience Platform. At the same time, it’s very hard to grasp what it actually is and what we can use it for. If you are in the Adobe Analytics space you might also have heard about Customer Journey Analytics, which is is often mentioned in the same breath with Platform, with just as much uncertainty around it. I am fortunate enough to work in one of the first companies in Europe to actually have Customer Journey Analytics available. My dear Twitter followers will already know that I’ve spent a few days working with it and trying out some use cases. This post is about my actual first impressions with the product and why I think it might be the biggest game changer for Adobe Analytics customers in quite some time. Everything I love about Analytics and […]