In my last post on data visualization, I had a couple tools recommended to me to try out. One had a limited trial period that I didn’t take advantage of in time, and the other, a tool by VisualizeFree, was too buggy to work. I uploaded my data easily enough (still had to clean it up first like some other ones), then I can’t view the actual visualization. Lame.  I could email support, but I’m too lazy to do that again.

I think I got more out of reading this article on what is (or should be) the point of data visualization.  Its based on a talk given by Manuel Lima of VisualComplexity.com, who curates that collection of data visualization examples and resources.  The main point from Lima was this:

“We need to make a transition from tools of curiosity to tools of functionality.”

Which is true, there are many tools that provide interactivity but not much substance. On the other hand tools for fun or aesthetics only can also drive innovation. I’m torn. It seemed like a lot of people were disagreeing over separating “information art” from data visualization, but this article states it more eloquently than I can. Manuel Lima also listed some key principles for data visualization that I did not know and should probably keep in mind:

form follows function

start with a question

interactivity is key

cite your source

the power of narrative

I’ve become much more judgmental toward charts and graphs thanks to blogs like Junk Charts, Flowing Data, and Simple Complexity.  So when I tried out one of the many Twitter measurement tools, Graph Edge, and received my first report, I was confused by the charts.

Followers and "Legitimate" Followers

This graph shows my Twitter followers and “legitimate” followers (they have a definition for it). Because the lower limit of my y-axis is the number of legitimate followers, it gives a false impression of having a very low number of legitimate followers. Why not start with 0?

Net Twitter follower change

This line graph shows the follows, unfollows, and net follower change over time for my Twitter account. But I thought it was strange to include negative numbers, because it looked like I had negative 1 unfollows. Anyway, there’s room for improvement here.

Misc.

Today I created a Twitter list for #measure and web analytics people (like @ABTests did) on TLists. I think the value is that its curated so you can see recommended people who actually tweet about web analytics on a regular basis, and you can follow many people at once/discover new people. It may not be worthwhile once Twitter implements lists though. And I successfully integrated my GWO data with GA thanks to this post from the GWO Tricks blog!

Note: feel free to ping me or leave a comment if you are having major issues!

Yesterday the event tracking on a site was not working, and someone thought it might be that I had missed a call to the ga.js file or some extra Javascript. My first thought was “This is why I hate Javascript.” That thought recurred throughout my investigation process, but I decided to save some people time and effort by posting a few things you could check before giving up and crying. My particular example was an onClick event, but the same things could apply to other situations.

1. Check the JavaScript call. So you must understand that Javascript (which I shall now write as JS) can be the best and worst scripting language. Very powerful and can do cool things like animation (and your analytics tracking), but also a pain in that you must be very careful with syntax and punctuation. One easy way to see if your JS is creating errors is by installing the Web Developer’s Toolbar in Firefox, it will show you when there are JS errors and a myriad of other useful things.
   

   Example: onclick=”pageTracker._trackEvent(“Foo”,”Bar”,”JS”);” This will be wrong because you have double quotation marks instead of apostrophes within the parentheses. So the page will read it as “pageTracker.trackEvent(” which will not do anything. Fix it like this: onclick=”pageTracker._trackEvent(‘Foo’,'Bar’,'JS’);”.

2. Is the variable actually pageTracker? In most cases, if you’re not changing the Google Analytics code that is on every page, it should be pageTracker. If the variable is named anything else, like movieTracker or pageCounter, then you need to fix the call in the onClick and change it to: onclick=”movieTracker._trackEvent(…);” This is the part of the code you want to pay attention to:
   

   try {
   var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(“UA-xxxxxx-x”);
   pageTracker._trackPageview();
   } catch(err) {}

3. Where your code at? This ended up being my problem. People recommend that the GA code should be inserted at the footer of the page to not slow down the loading time of a page. The catch is, the JS file/definition of the variable pageTracker may need to be at the top of the page for _trackEvent to do its thing. If you try moving the code with the ga.js file to the head of the page, it should help. Or it helped me anyway.

As much as I hate debugging JS, I think it has really helped me to have knowledge of how it works, so if this is all kinds of confusing, try working through the W3C tutorials.

Misc.

The Grok delivers!! I was tweeting with @TheGrok and I asked if there was any way he could post about web analytics for non-profits. Brendan Regan wrote an awesomely helpful post about it. I will probably comment more about it later, but still, very cool.

And for those who use Twitter, #wa is being deprecated in favor of #measure. See Web Analytics Demystified for an explanation.

Man. The past couple of days have felt like those days where you keep JUST missing the bus (which I did both mornings). Though I did get to go to the Good Fries Place on Monday, which made me feel better.

WebTrends Update

I was kindly informed that WebTrends has a new beta version that should have a much improved user experience and features.  While I don’t have access to the beta to test it out, based on the mock-ups and callouts it does seem pretty cool. Or at least like there’s more Design behind it. Some things, like added breadcrumb navigation, are small changes but immensely helpful I think. It also sounds useful to be able to compare across profiles by metric, and see the percent changes for metrics when comparing. Basically it just looks cool, and I think the beta goes public in August? I want to try it out for sure.

WebTrends Report Screenshot

YWA

I really need to stop following Yahoo Web Analytics on Twitter, because they keep posting about all their cool features, and like the WebTrends beta, its available to a limited audience.

“Yahoo! Web Analytics is currently offered for free to all Yahoo! Small Business Merchant Standard, Merchant Professional and Store merchants, and all Advertisers that are supported by a Yahoo! Account Manager.”

Lame.com. They claim to have an advantage by using raw data and delivering in real-time. I was interested in seeing how including Twitter in their search results would play out, but I guess I’ll just have to become a Yahoo! Small Business Merchant or wait.

Epic Fails

I fully intended to go to the entire Web Analytics Wednesday event yesterday and then I was sucked into staying late at ZAAZ. I didn’t realize the structure of the event so I thought it was just mingling most of the time, but I walked into a discussion of the talk on integrating social media into web analytics. Then I had to leave early to see Harry Potter and I didn’t even get to meet anyone. What I did hear of the discussion was interesting, with people unsure about the influence and impact of social media and Twitter especially, where one person can impact exponentially more people through followers and retweets. I’m sad I missed any talk of good tools to use though.

So then I went to watch Dumbledore die, and I sat down in the front row of the theatre and realized “Oh no. This is a Harry Potter movie so its going to be at least 3 hours.” I barely stayed awake but it was enjoyable overall.

Tomorrow I’m going to the Oregon coast! Yay! Time for Tillamook ice cream, the beach, and good beer.

Bonnie, who I studied with in Scotland, is visiting with her friend Yael until Tuesday! We went to Cafe Besalu, the Ballard Farmers’ Market, and then got lost trying to get to the Mac and Jack’s brewery for the tour. So we saw parts of Redmond that are not worth seeing really.  Then we came back, ate at the Good Fries Place, and walked around the Locks and salmon ladder for a bit. Finally rounded things off with watching an episode of Real Housewives of New Jersey and deciding that one lady strongly resembles Jafar.

Real Housewife of New Jersey

Jafar from Aladdin

=

Today was my 2nd to last day at the Burke, and I got the final mock-up of new Ethnology landing pages done, as well as an analytics report on Mammals of Washington.  Ethnology curator & co. seemed to like the mock-ups, but they also seemed to forget that change is good. And the user is not like me. Etc. Hopefully it gets implemented in the near future but who knows. Tonight I finally visited Molly Moon’s ice cream in Wallingford, which I highly recommend now. Birthday cake flavored ice cream is the bomb.  Also The Grok is going to hopefully write a post about analytics for non-profits thanks to our Twitter messaging. Yay!