Mobile web analytics studies the behaviour of mobile website users in a similar way to traditional

web analytics Web analytics is the measurement, data collection, collection, analysis, and reporting of web Data (computing), data to understand and optimize web usage. Web analytics is not just a process for measuring web traffic but can be used as a tool for ...

. In a commercial context, mobile web analytics refers to the data collected from the users who access a

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

from a

mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...

. It helps to determine which aspects of the website work best for mobile traffic and which mobile marketing campaigns work best for the business, including

mobile advertising Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via mobile (wireless) phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing, mobile advertising can take place as text ads via SMS, or banner advertisements that appear embedded in a ...

, mobile search marketing, text campaigns, and desktop promotion of mobile sites and services. Data collected as part of mobile analytics typically includes page views, visits, users, and countries, as well as information specific to mobile devices, such as device model, manufacturer, screen resolution, device capabilities,

service provider A service provider (SP) is an organization that provides services, such as consulting, legal, real estate, communications, storage, and processing services, to other organizations. Although a service provider can be a sub-unit of the organization t ...

, and preferred user language. This data is typically compared against

key performance indicators A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. KPIs evaluate the success of an organization or of a particular activity (such as projects, programs, products and other initiatives) in which it e ...

for performance and

return on investment Return on investment (ROI) or return on costs (ROC) is the ratio between net income (over a period) and investment (costs resulting from an investment of some resources at a point in time). A high ROI means the investment's gains compare favorab ...

, and is used to improve a website or mobile marketing campaign's audience response. The majority of modern

smartphones A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as mult ...

are able to browse websites, some with browsing experiences similar to those of desktop computers. The W3C Mobile Web Initiative identifies best practices to help websites support mobile phone browsing. Many companies use these guidelines and mobile-specific code like

Wireless Markup Language Wireless Markup Language (WML), based on XML, is an obsolete markup language intended for devices that implement the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) specification, such as mobile phones. It provides navigational support, data input, hyperlin ...

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

to optimize websites for viewing on mobile devices.

Background

Collecting

mobile web The mobile web comprises mobile browser-based World Wide Web services accessed from handheld mobile devices, such as smartphones or feature phones, through a mobile network, mobile or other wireless network. History and development Traditiona ...

analytics data has proven to be less straightforward than traditional

due to a few factors. Traditional analytics software on a mobile website only provides data for HTTP requests coming from the most advanced mobile browsers; such as those found in the

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

and other

smart phones A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

and PDAs, with no data on other mobile devices browsing the site. Additionally, common web analytics software that use server log parsing to associate different IP addresses with "unique visits" may fail to actually identify unique visitors. This is due to IP addresses from each mobile device originating from a gateway IP address of the network access provider. Several dynamic server-side platforms are used to develop mobile sites. Server-side tracking code is recommended for more accurate analytics reporting.

Platforms

* HTML/JavaScript * WordPress Mobile Pack *

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared towards web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by the PHP Group. ...

.NET The .NET platform (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a free and open-source, managed code, managed computer software framework for Microsoft Windows, Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. The project is mainly developed by Microsoft emplo ...

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

* Python *

ColdFusion Adobe ColdFusion is a commercial rapid web-application development computing platform created by J. J. Allaire in 1995. (The programming language used with that platform is also commonly called ColdFusion, though is more accurately known as CF ...

Ruby on Rails Ruby on Rails (simplified as Rails) is a server-side web application framework written in Ruby under the MIT License. Rails is a model–view–controller (MVC) framework, providing default structures for a database, a web service, and web pa ...

* node.js/Connect * TypePad Pro Different tracking processes or mechanisms are available for each of the above platforms. For unsupported/HTML sites, the JavaScript pixel tracking mechanism is most commonly used. Because mobile websites are typically open to access from any kind of network - fixed, Wi-Fi, cellular wireless, satellite wireless, etc. - a traditional

solution could range from fairly accurate to mostly inaccurate, depending on where the HTTP requests are coming from. In addition, mobile web analytics involve metrics and KPIs associated with mobile device information, such as model, manufacturer, and screen resolution. These data can usually be assembled by combining device identification information taken from special HTTP headers, such as user-agents, with device capabilities stored in a device information registry, such as WURFL. This method is not provided by traditional

solutions because it is

-specific.

Problems with tracking

Visitor identification

Visitor identification is the most important aspect of usable mobile web analytics and one of the hardest technical aspects to accomplish, primarily because

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

and

HTTP cookie HTTP cookie (also called web cookie, Internet cookie, browser cookie, or simply cookie) is a small block of data (computing), data created by a web server while a user (computing), user is browsing a website and placed on the user's computer o ...

s are so unreliable on mobile browsers. As a result, some mobile web analytics solutions only detect or count user visits per day. The best solutions provide reliable, persistent, and unique user identities, allowing accurate measurement of repeat visits and long-term customer loyalty.

JavaScript page tagging

Javascript-based Page tagging notifies a third-party server when a page is rendered by a

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

. This method assumes that the end user browser has JavaScript capabilities and that JavaScript is enabled, though it is possible that neither may be true. At this time, most mobile web browsers do not support JavaScript sufficiently for this to work.

HTTP cookies

HTTP cookies HTTP cookie (also called web cookie, Internet cookie, browser cookie, or simply cookie) is a small block of data created by a web server while a user is browsing a website and placed on the user's computer or other device by the user's web br ...

are commonly used to mark and identify visitors. Cookies are a standard capability for all desktop web browsers. With the prevalence of iPhones and Androids, HTTP cookies are now supported by most smartphones, because by default, iPhones and Android phones will accept browser cookies from web sites. As with desktop browsers, the mobile device user may choose to disable cookies.

HTTP referrer

HTTP referrer In HTTP, "" (a misspelling of "Referrer") is an optional HTTP header field that identifies the address of the web page (i.e., the URI or IRI) from which the resource has been requested. By checking the referrer, the server providing the new web ...

information showing where a visitor navigated from is generally not provided for mobile web browsing. This is either because the device manufacturer has disabled sending such information in the HTTP request to save bandwidth during network usage, or because the mobile network operator's internet gateway removes or alters the original HTTP header due to the gateway software or use of mobile web transcoding software.

Image tags

Handset caching mechanisms impact the use of images for page tagging. In some cases, image caching on handsets is performed regardless of any anti-caching headers output by the remote server.

IP address

For desktop web browsing, the network address of the client machine usually gives some form of user identification and location. For mobile web browsing, the client

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface i ...

refers to the internet gateway machine owned by the network operator. For devices such as the

BlackBerry BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...

or for phones using Opera Mini browser software, the IP address refers to an operator-owned internet gateway machine in Canada or Norway.

Collecting mobile web analytics data

Collection of mobile web analytics data requires a different approach from collecting traditional

data. A number of solutions are available and the best results are obtained through the use of more than one technology.

Packet sniffing

Also known as tagless data capture or passive network capture, this technique uses a tap between the mobile users and the web server to capture the full content of the client-server exchange. Tagless data capture techniques are increasing in popularity for mobile web analytics because they capture all users, work with all devices and do not require JavaScript, cookies, server logs, or plugins.

Image tags or beacons

Images can be forced to work for mobile web analytics, provided that the transmitted image is always unique. The level of information recorded from these transmissions depends on the architecture provided by the supplier, and not all image beacon solutions are the same.

Link redirection

Link redirection is an important method of tracking mobile visitor activities. It is the only reliable way to record clicks from advertising, search, and other marketing activities. It also records visitors clicking on links to leave a site. This method helps address the lack of HTTP referrer information on mobile.

HTTP header analysis

This tells you a number of basic facts about the

and the browser. It can be used in conjunction with a device database such as WURFL.

IP address analysis

An operator database is used to identify operators and their countries based on the IP addresses of their internet gateway devices. IP addresses alone do not identify all operators and countries, as some operators share their mobile networks with virtual network operators (MVNO). Boost Wireless, for example, uses the Sprint network. Because these two operators have very different customer demographics, clear differentiation between operators is critical for good mobile marketing campaigns. Carriers may also share their mobile internet gateways, sometimes across multiple countries, and many change or add gateways on a regular basis.

WAP Gateway Traffic logs

The WAP gateway logs are the mine of information that can be analysed to get relevant information as all the mobile traffic goes through these servers. There are companies like OPENWAVE which have tools that can analyse these logs and provide the information required.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mobile Web Analytics Mobile web Web analytics