Understanding website traffic and visitor behavior is critical in optimizing site usage. By measuring the performance of different elements on the site, business managers can create highly targeted marketing campaigns to drive results. We at Zobrist Consulting integrate WebSphere
Commerce with Coremetrics, the best-of-breed web analytics solution, and our goal is to tailor analytics data points to individual tracking needs. The following are the basic features that give Coremetrics a competitive edge over other solutions:
TagBar: The TagBar is a browser plug-in used to test and validate tags. The TagBar console is populated with data whenever a Coremetrics tag is detected on a page. The console has an audit feature that allows the developer or traffic analyst to determine whether tags are implemented correctly.
LIVEview: LIVEview is also a browser plug-in that provides a monitor for page performance. LIVEview gives information about the number of clicks to a particular link, the click through percentage of that link with respect to other links on the page, and the link’s conversion rate.
Coremetrics Report: The reporting tool consists of a set of dashboards that gather information including but not limited to:
- system information: end-user browser types, operating systems, time zones
- page and link conversion rates
- top entry, exit and visited pages
- top referring sites
- top browsed, purchased and abandoned products
- top cross-sold items
- most popular search terms
- performance of both on-site and off-site marketing campaigns
Category Definition File (CDF): Coremetrics offers the ability to group content data or merchandise data into categories to be reported together. This categorization is achieved through the CDF. Each Coremetrics tag passes a category ID to the Coremetrics server, and the CDF maps the category ID sent in the tag to a category hierarchy.
Real-time Monitor (RTM): RTM tracks data in real-time. It provides the business user with a configurable set of dashboards which stream customer information. Using the real-time monitor, one can track how many orders have been placed within the last x hours, the current number of active shopping carts, etc.
Coremetrics Explore: Certain businesses may have a tracking requirement that cannot be completely fulfilled using the out-of-the-box Coremetrics reports. Coremetrics Explore addresses this problem: it is used to create sophisticated ad-hoc reports tailored to unique business needs.
Data Integrity Process (DIP): DIP is an add-on service to measure the implementation accuracy of tracked e-commerce transactions. A DIP feed is generated on a daily basis with actual backend sales numbers from web orders. Coremetrics compares these numbers against the data received in the tags in order to determine accuracy.
