Measurement Best Practices

For this blog I will evaluate measurement practices, as defined by Avinash Kaushik in his blog (http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/web-analytics-technical-implementation-best-practices-javascript-tags/), for any company. I will select Kraft and their website www.kraftrecipes.com for this exercise. 

According to Avinash Kaushik there are 9 suggested practices when measuring company web pages. Here are the 9 listed on his blog:

1. Tag all your pages

2. Tags go last

3. Tags should be inline

4. What’s your unique page definition?


5. Use cookies intelligently

6. Javascript wrapped links might be a issue

7. Redirects, be aware of them

8. Validate data is being captured correctly

9. Don’t forget Flash, Flex, RIA, RSS, and Videos etc.

I feel Kraft does a good job utilizing some of the listed suggestions.

Kraft uses javascript (JS) tags on all of their pages and has them appropriately placed near the end of the source code. These tags were also placed inline. Right after the JS tags, there were tags for Google Analytics and BrighTag. I’ll be the first to admit, I never heard of Bright Tag. So, I did some research. What I found was, BrightTag provides the ability to reduce third party code and collect data while maintaining consumer privacy. Kraft’s website also had some flash material and videos to go along with recipes.

From what I can decipher, Kraft does an excellent job with their measuring practices. Aside from the tracking tags, Kraft has several meta tags that increase search engine optimization. One thing Kraft could improve on would be changing how they define their page as unique. Right now, Kraft is using ‘.aspx’ to identify a unique page. Doing this could provide more accurate numbers for their analysis. Another improvement Kraft could make would be the establishing of RSS feeds. The feeds could provide consumers with receive seasonal or new recipes, cooking tutorials, or meal planning ideas.

References: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/web-analytics-technical-implementation-best-practices-javascript-tags/, http://www.kraftrecipes.com/home.aspx.