Enterprise class analytics tagging can be simple

The rise in popularity of free web analytics is partly due to the fact that they are so simple to install and maintain. For many, the experience of complex enterprise class page tagging has left them wondering if it’s really worth it. In stark contrast to the norm, Cognesia’s novel approach, that combines comprehensive enterprise class analytics with simple tagging, has left analysts and users asking why others don't do it the Cognesia way.

These days it seems that every system that works with your website needs a tag to be installed into your web pages. These collect data so that the system can report upon its activities. It’s not unusual to see 3 or more tags on a page. Whilst many are very simple others can appear to be, and in many cases are, very complex.

Web Analytics tags in particular vary greatly in both their competence and complexity. The free of charge systems generally use simple JavaScript file requests. These are very simple to install but record only the basic page view and visit statistics needed for volume based reporting. In order to record more than this basic information, the tag must be configured. It is the ease and simplicity with which this can be achieved that ultimately determines the success of an enterprise class web analytics implementation and the overall life-time cost.

The Cognesia page tag combines a comprehensive enterprise class page tag with a novel approach to the processing of the resultant data to achieve simple page tag maintenance and significantly reduced life-time costs. As a page is loaded by a site visitor, the tag is exercised and Cognesia Explore captures the information and processes it ready for reporting.

This processing is based on a set of rules which are individually configured as a one-off exercise for each client account. Instead of the client configuring the tag on every page, Cognesia relies on the account specific processing rules to achieve the same result. This relieves the client of the work and dramatically simplifies the job of tag installation, configuration and maintenance.

“	Comprehensive enterprise class analytics tagging can be simple.	”
	Mark Wilding Head of Product Development Cognesia Ltd

If the tags are easy to configure and install, tagging costs and the likelihood of incorrect tagging will be kept to a minimum. Unfortunately many of the other enterprise class analytics systems require extensive page specific tag configuration. This is hidden during initial implementation but rapidly becomes apparent as the site evolves. It is not unusual for the complexities of tagging to result in new web pages going live without the tags being installed correctly. The result is missing, incomplete or incorrect data and a gradual degradation of report accuracy.