OWF14 - Big Data Track : Take back control of your web tracking Go further by doing it yourself
1 like782 views
Clément STENAC Tracking the actions of your users on your website is nowadays so fundamental that most people … don’t do it anymore, instead relying on SaaS products and dashboards. However, these services often only provide aggregated high-level views and keep the raw data. In this talk, we’ll first see how using raw tracking data can help you go from "number of page views" to a real understanding of your usage patterns and what kind of data and technologies you need for that. We’ll then have a look at different architectures and challenges for web tracking and highlight the need for a dedicated and open tracking infrastructure. Are Apache logs « web tracking data » ? How to reconstruct user sessions ? Are cookies good for your (web) health ? What are the specific challenges for mobile tracking ? In a last part, we’ll introduce WT1, an Open Source web tracker that solves this challenges and doesn’t hide your data. Anyone can deploy WT1 to take back control on his own web tracking data and build awesome data-driven services.
Ad
More Related Content
Similar to OWF14 - Big Data Track : Take back control of your web tracking Go further by doing it yourself (20)
More from Paris Open Source Summit (20)
Ad
OWF14 - Big Data Track : Take back control of your web tracking Go further by doing it yourself
- 1. www.dataiku.com Take back control of your Web Tracking @ClementStenac CTO, Dataiku
- 2. www.dataiku.com Give me dashboards !
- 3. www.dataiku.com Choose one Raw data Do what you want Your money Access to raw data is a premium feature
- 4. www.dataiku.com Who cares about raw data ? •SAAS analytics are full-featured •Custom variables to link with your backend data •Did you really join all data for your future needs ? •Do you have access / want to push to the JS all necessary data ? •What kinds of analysis will you do later on ?
- 5. www.dataiku.com A real example Segmentation and tracking user-satisfaction Raw tracking data User-level stats User base segmentation Metrics per segments Tracking over time TB GB
- 8. www.dataiku.com Labeling Search for a specific Topic Newcomer from Google News Foreigner Discovering The Site Fan who loves to comment Home Page Wanderer Dark Bot (Competitor?) Here you need your business intelligence
- 9. www.dataiku.com Compute metrics per segment Search for a specific Topic Newcomer from Google News Foreigner Discovering The Site Fan that loves to comment Home Page Wanderer Dark Bot (Competitor?) 0.3€ per session 0.23€ acquisition costs `` ` 13k sessions 1.3€ per session 0.23€ acquisition costs 938k sessions 938k sessions 0.3€ per session 0.23€ acquisition costs 738k sessions 0.83€ per session 0.73€ acquisition costs 68k sessions 0.3€ per session 1.23€ acquisition costs 1k sessions 0€ per session 0€ acquisition costs Here you need to cross with your CRM
- 10. www.dataiku.com Track metrics over time Search for a specific Topic Newcomer from Google News Foreigner Discovering The Site Fan that loves to comment Home Page Wanderer Dark Bot (Competitor?) Using your already-computed segments Damn our latest release has diverging effects on segments
- 11. www.dataiku.com A few other examples •Churn prediction and explanation •Customer lifetime value prediction
- 12. www.dataiku.com OK I WANT TO DO IT
- 13. www.dataiku.com So, I have these Apache logs •First level of web tracking •"Nothing required"
- 14. www.dataiku.com Are backend logs a solution ? Challenge 1 : Identify a visitor •IP ? •NAT / Proxy •Not everyone has a public IP address •IP + user-agent ? •Big companies !
- 15. www.dataiku.com Are backend logs a solution ? Challenge 2 : Re-create sessions •Using expiration times •Advanced SQL / Hive / … makes this easier
- 16. www.dataiku.com Are backend logs a solution ? Challenge 3 : single-page webapps •Track behaviour within each page •Track events, not pages Also: getting logs from IT is sometimes another challenge
- 17. www.dataiku.com Client-side tracking •visitor_id and session_id handled with cookies •Tracking page loads and various events •Historically, "tracking" = fetching a 1x1 image •AJAX www.website.com Browser tracker.com JS tracking code Tracking calls
- 18. www.dataiku.com Are cookies good for your (web) health ? •Each cookie belongs to a domain (and its subdomains) •Who can write a cookie ? –The HTTP server, who becomes owner (via the Set-Cookie HTTP header) –JS code running on the "owner" domain •Who can read a cookie ? –The owner HTTP server (sent by the browser) –JS code running on the "owner" domain
- 19. www.dataiku.com First-party cookies •Set by the originating server (HTTP) or JS code •Belong to the originating domain •Sent by HTTP to the originating domain only •Readable by JS code www.website.com Browser Cookies for www.website.com: None tracker.com GET / Cookies: none Fetch tracking script Tracking JS code: read cookies for www.website.com Tracking JS code: create visitor id and set cookie Contents
- 20. www.dataiku.com First-party cookies •Set by the originating server (HTTP) or JS code •Belong to the originating domain •Sent by HTTP to the originating domain only •Readable by JS code www.website.com Browser tracker.com GET /track?visitor_id=d37ecba Cookies: None JS code: send AJAX request to tracker.com with visitor_id Cookies for www.website.com: visitor_id=d37ecba
- 21. www.dataiku.com Third-party cookies •Set (in HTTP) by the tracker's domain – Belong to the tracker's domain •Not send by HTTP to the originating domain (does not belong) •NOT readable by JS code (does not belong) www.website.com Browser tracker.com GET / Cookies: none Fetch tracking script Contents Cookies for www.website.com: None Cookies for tracker.com: None
- 22. www.dataiku.com www.website.com Browser Cookies for www.website.com: None tracker.com Cookies for tracker.com: None GET /track Cookies: None 200 OK Set-Cookie: visitor_id=33d7 Tracker code: assign visitor_id Third-party cookies •Set (in HTTP) by the tracker's domain – Belong to the tracker's domain •Not send by HTTP to the originating domain (does not belong) •NOT readable by JS code (does not belong)
- 23. www.dataiku.com Third-party cookies •Set (in HTTP) by the tracker's domain – Belong to the tracker's domain •Not send by HTTP to the originating domain (does not belong) •NOT readable by JS code (does not belong) www.website.com Browser tracker.com Cookies for tracker.com: visitor_id=33d7 GET /track Cookies: visitor_id=33d7 200 OK Tracker code: read visitor_id Cookies for www.website.com: None
- 24. www.dataiku.com First party cookie •Tracks on a single website •Requires JS code for tracking •Reduced privacy impact: No exchange of information between sites •Usage: track your user's behaviour Third party cookie •Tracks across all websites using the same tracker •More frowned upon •Usage: generally, ads but also multi-website Why each ? Rarely blocked (used for logins) Blocked by up to 40% visitors
- 25. www.dataiku.com What are your obligations ? With ALL cookies •You should ask user whether he wants cookies •Even non-tracking related cookies •Yes, even login-related ones
- 26. www.dataiku.com What are your obligations ? With third party cookies •Obey the Do-Not-Track header www.website.com Browser tracker.com GET /track Cookies: None DNT: 1 200 OK Tracker code: DO NOTHING
- 27. www.dataiku.com What are your obligations ? With third party cookies •Provide an opt-out URL •Allows the user to /optin , /optout or /status See in action : www.youronlinechoices.com
- 28. www.dataiku.com What are your obligations ? With third party cookies •Provide a P3P policy •Else, older IE blocks you "What are you doing with my data ?" Looks like this: CP="IDC DSP COR ADM DEVi TAIi PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi HIS OUR IND CNT"
- 29. www.dataiku.com Tracking in mobile apps •Preserve battery –Each network call is costly –Do not track everything synchronously •Network access is intermittent –Queue events and wait for network access
- 30. www.dataiku.com So, what are my choices ? •You might really want to be your own web tracker •Most used open source Webtracker : Piwik •Provides both raw data and nice dashboards –MySQL backend –Raw data via API –Slightly less suited for analytics
- 31. www.dataiku.com WT1 YOUR OWN TRACKER IN MINUTES
- 32. www.dataiku.com WT1 An open source (Apache License) server to build your own web tracking https://github.com/dataiku/wt1 •Designed to provide you with raw data, directly usable for analytics •Very high performance and scalability
- 33. www.dataiku.com Features •1st or 3rd party cookies –Handling of DNT and opt-out –Helps handling P3P •Track events or pages with key-value data •Visitor-scope and session-scope variables •"Live view" debugging console
- 34. www.dataiku.com Features •Dashboards: None •Events processing and storage –Filesystem, S3 –Event queues: Flume –Custom processors •JSON API for custom tracking •iOS library
- 35. www.dataiku.com Architecture Client-side JS tracker iOS library •1st or 3rd party cookies •Event-level tracking •Automatic batching •Queuing to deal with network interruptions WT1 Server Raw storage •Filesystem •S3 Event processors: •Real-time aggregations •Custom code Event queues •Flume •Kafka, RabbitMQ, … •Java •> 20K events / second •Handles DNT, P3P, opt-out, … JSON POST
- 36. www.dataiku.com Future work •Android library •More event queues supported OOTB –Kafka –RabbitMQ •Avro storage
- 37. www.dataiku.com Thank you ! Clément Stenac [email protected] @ClementStenac www. .com