Chapter 2 Basic Workflow
2.1 Introduction
This is what it looks like to answer a practical question:
Jaden asks Mala, "What is our most important page?" "Important" is imprecise but key, so Mala defines it in terms of page views and sets out to answer "What is the most viewed page on our site?" She breaks this further down into "How many page views were there for every page on our site?" She looks up the number of page views for every page and gets this: 10 views of page 1, 5 views of page 2, and 50 views of page 3. Combining this information, she sees that the most viewed page is page 3, and tells Jaden that page 3 is the most important page.
This is the process of "doing web analytics" that we are going to practice. We take a practical question like "What is our most important page?", turn it into a technical question, break that technical question down into basic questions, and see if we have the building blocks (e.g. page views and pages) to get basic answers. If we do, then we take the basic answers, building them back up into technical questions, and turn them into practical answers.
The scenario above can be broken down like so:
| What is our most important page? | Practical question |
| What is the most viewed page on our site? | Technical question |
| How many page views were there for page 1? | Basic question 1 |
| How many page views were there for page 2? | Basic question 2 |
| How many page views were there for page 3? | Basic question 3 |
| She looks up the number of page views for every page? | Building blocks |
| There were 10 views of page 1. | Basic answer 1 |
| There were 5 views of page 2. | Basic answer 2 |
| There were 50 views of page 3. | Basic answer 3 |
| The most viewed page is page 3. | Technical answer |
| Page 3 is the most important page? | Practical answer |
While our workflow starts with translating practical questions into technical questions, we are actually going to start with basic questions, basic answers, and the building blocks that link them. We do this because technical questions are like instructions for building technical answers, which means that the steps before are like writing those instructions. Instead of trying to write instructions without knowing what there is to build with, we are going to start with by getting to know our building materials. From there we will practice building technical answers with practical questions translated for us, then get to the challenge of translating ourselves - first from practical question to technical question, then from technical answer to practical answer.
2.2 Deconstructing the Process
We break questions and answers down into basic forms because we need to move items from the messy real world into a rigidly defined technical system and then back into the messy world, and we want a process for doing this that does not add to the complications. Getting down to basic questions gives us a consistent mid-way product to aim for from all starting points, and building from basic answers gives us a consistent starting point for closing every loop. These basic forms keep the process simple, structured, and transparent so that as we solve varied challenges, we have a core, explicit skill to improve at.
The basic question form is "How many X happened for Y". The basic answer form is "There were X of Y". How many downloads were for there for this pdf? There were 10 downloads of the pdf. How many views were there for the Contact Us page? There were 100 views of the Contact Us page. How many searches were there for the phrase "Dogs boxing". There were 3 searches of the phrase "Dogs boxing". Repetitive? Yes. But clear.
I chose theses forms for the question and the answer because they emphasize X and Y. We call X a metric, and Y a dimension. Metrics are the counts of things, dimensions are what gets counted. Metrics and dimensions are the building blocks of web analytics. If a practical question boils down to counting something in units that we do not track as metrics, or counting something that we do not track as a dimension, then we can't answer it.
To start building our sense of which practical questions can be answered, and which can't, the next section will tour through the pairs of dimensions and metrics that answer basic questions.