Easily keep tab on relevant changes to your data — This year has been my ten-year anniversary with Adobe Analytics. For all those years, there was always one thing I wanted. But I was always too lazy to get it done. It was something rather primitive. “The ‘Search within Category’ feature usage has gone down mightily in the last week…

A look at substitutes for Data Warehouse, Data Feeds, Alerts, User Stitching, Analytics 4 Target, and more — Have you delved into Customer Journey Analytics (CJA) yet? I finally did this year. And I discovered plenty to admire — but also some obstacles that Adobe should tackle before I’d migrate clients from Adobe Analytics (AA) to CJA. Curious about the highlights and challenges? Here’s my personal rundown.

A couple of months ago, Adobe migrated the (hardly useful) Bot Reports to the Analysis Workspace interface. Maybe they also updated some of the Bot Filtering logic since then, because the number of Bots identified seems higher than in the past, maybe it is just another real Bot rush. Still…

How to securely update keys and increment numbers “atomically” — Imagine two people writing a message on the same piece of paper, at the same time, without seeing each other’s message until after they are done. The outcome will likely be an illegible mix. Similar things can happen in Firestore if you don’t handle concurrent document updates properly. …

Plus: Why going against the alphabet makes queries easier — Long before Firestore made it into the toolkit of Google Tag Manager’s Server-Side offering, it was a powerful document database. Working with Firestore for some years now, I want to share simple tips that may help you avoid the same mistakes I made. …

From “Anonymous Tracking Mode” to Session ID (now “Session Hash”), and: Can you actually track with a Session Cookie only? — The original aim: Track users with only one Session Cookie to comply with certain GDPR interpretations. That started an intriguing journey through the various privacy mechanisms of Piwik Pro. What is “anonymous” about the “Anonymous Tracking Mode”? What is the difference between the Session ID and the Session Cookie? …

Part II of “When you need to wait, you better know for how long” — In part I, we looked at examples why it is important to measure the performance of services your Analytics tracking depends on. In part II, we show how to implement that. Do you have my must-have performance metric in your tracking setup? We’ll demonstrate the Tag Management part via Tealium…

Part I of “When you need to wait, you better know for how long” — What do you do when your AB testing tool starts delivering experiments a second later? Nothing. Because you likely won’t notice. Why you need to monitor the services your web analytics depends on. Real examples! In well-functioning societies, people trust each other. Without trust, even money would simply be colorful…

Let’s talk about Feelings — Who came up with the nonsense that we should decide based on data, not emotions?! Not me! …