Ask HN: What data about users and how they use your website do you wish you could collect?

Re:Ask HN: What data about users and how they use your websi... by sidsavara on Monday October 27, 2008 @06:50PM (#345717)

One thing that I can't get via Google Analytics (the only one I use) is how long a person stays on one page when they "bounce" immediately. I have often thought there should be an easy way to build a little javascript ajax call that polls every 5 seconds or something, and whenever they leave - it would stop polling and you'd know they were gone.

There are so many details we already have (keywords, page of entry, etc) - but the bounces frustrate me a lot. If they are bouncing after 2 seconds, that's a problem. If they are bouncing from my info page after 60 seconds, that's a totally different problem: it means they liked what they read, but I somehow couldn't entice them to stay.

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Re:Ask HN: What data about users and how they use your websi... by nickb on Monday October 27, 2008 @07:16PM (#345743)

I have often thought there should be an easy way to build a little javascript ajax call that polls every 5 seconds or something, and whenever they leave - it would stop polling and you'd know they were gone.

That would cause a DDoS.

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Re:Ask HN: What data about users and how they use your websi... by ericwaller on Monday October 27, 2008 @07:58PM (#345799)

This could be done with a synchronous ajax request attached to the (nonstandard) onbeforeunload event.

Something else I'd like to see is a measurement of average page load times. In practice the best you could do is time from tracking script load to dom ready and/or body load. So your numbers would be off, but still useful for spotting trends.

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Re:Ask HN: What data about users and how they use your websi... by jcapote on Monday October 27, 2008 @07:12PM (#345739)

I believe analytics shows you average time on site...

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Re:Ask HN: What data about users and how they use your websi... by netcan on Monday October 27, 2008 @07:21PM (#345749)

I think this measure time between pageviews. IE bounces recorded as 0.

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Re:Ask HN: What data about users and how they use your websi... by pedalpete on Monday October 27, 2008 @07:35PM (#345768)

I don't think it is between page views. My site is a one page ajax heavy site, so I can only have analytics on the landing page. The time on page shows around a minute average (changes per day), while the bounces shows nearly 90%. Doesn't fluctuate as much.

Not sure how they do these measurements. But what is really needed is a tool that can measure on ajax sites.

For now i've started counting server side requests, and it really is showing how unreliable Google Analytics is.

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Re:Ask HN: What data about users and how they use your websi... by inerte on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @09:46PM (#347021)

http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...

and

http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer...

Doesn't work to track Ajax? I've never used but was thinking to apply for some of my projects.

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Re:Ask HN: What data about users and how they use your websi... by netcan on Monday October 27, 2008 @07:38PM (#345772)

I think that after X amount of time the page 'reloads.'

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