As the mobile Web grows in popularity, so does the need for mobile measurement. When put to the test, with a basic mobile campaign, we find that mobile measurement has not yet reached the level of maturity that we have come to expect from traditional Web analytics.
It should be noted that the observations presented here are based on recent real-world experience doing mobile analytics. The site we analyzed – although it must remain anonymous – is owned by a major corporation and exists to promote the download and purchase of mobile games. The problems we encountered as we developed a measurement framework will likely cause similar trouble for anyone who follows in our footsteps. Treat this as a cautionary tale, and also as an exposition of the unavoidable shortcomings of mobile analytics as it currently exists in practice.
Limitations of Mobile Data Collection
If we treat mobile measurement like traditional Web measurement, we face challenges right away, starting with data collection.
Many popular Web analytics tools available today – like Omniture and Google Analytics – rely solely on JavaScript tags for data collection. Using this method, site owners place a tag on every page they wish to track; when a visitor accesses a tagged page, event-level information is sent back to the Web analytics tool. That, in a nutshell, is page tagging.
Tracking mobile Web in this manner is problematic, though, because mobile browsers do not reliably support JavaScript. Some tag-based Web analytics tools provide a fallback tracking method when JavaScript is not present – namely, a hard-coded 1x1 pixel image request that collects a subset of the standard event-level data.
An increasing number of mobile-specific tracking solutions are surfacing on the market, and they offer arguably more robust data collection methods than traditional Web analytics tools. However, despite known deficiencies, site owners may still opt to use a traditional Web analytics tool for mobile measurement simply because it’s already an accepted business standard for tracking existing Web content.
In this article, I will outline some of the challenges faced when using a tag-based Web analytics tool adapted by way of an image request to measure mobile.
An Example
Consider two very similar online campaigns aimed at promoting the download of an application. The first campaign goes out as an email blast on traditional Web, and the second campaign goes out as an short message server blast on mobile. Beyond the difference in screen size, these two campaigns look a lot alike: a message, a click, a download. But, when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of each campaign, mobile brings a whole new set of challenges.
Using the pair of simple campaigns as an example, I will illustrate common mobile measurement issues concerning campaign clickthroughs and downloadable files.
How do we Track Campaign Clickthroughs?
In our campaigns, site-side tracking begins the moment someone clicks through from the message he or she receives to the landing page on the site. This tracking process is well-defined on traditional Web but less so on mobile.
Campaign clickthroughs are typically tracked using a code appended to the query string of each URL. When a visitor clicks through to the site, the campaign code gets collected by the JavaScript tag on the landing page and is then passed on to the Web analytics tool. Without the use of JavaScript, a bit more effort is required.
On mobile, and with image requests for data collection, we cannot easily intercept campaign code query parameters on URLs. As a workaround, unique landing pages can be set up to track traffic from each campaign. This approach, although it works, adds a layer of complexity to the campaign creation process beyond what we would normally do to track campaigns on traditional Web sites.
How do we Track Downloads?
