Packet Sniffing - Analytics without site changes

We knew that collecting web analytics data with Passive Data Capture (Packet Sniffing) instead of tags does not require any changes to the website or servers, but we did not understand how important this was until one of our clients told us that they had spent over $1M tagging their site! Why? The tag javascript is complex and they have code embedded in the pages as well, but not $1M complex.

The reason is quite simple, tags change the operational site. First, they had to buy and configure a sophisticated test system. Then they had to implement against the test system which of course, was not exactly the same as real visitor traffic. Then there was the nail-biting rollout which immediatley had problems with real traffic. Every tweak and change had the potential to stop a huge e-commerce site, so there was a long test, QA and approval cycle for each change. Add to this the fact that marketing kept coming up with new requirements and the development and support kept ballooning.

With Passive Data Capture (Packet Sniffing), they can now implement and test against the real traffic immediately without fear of breaking the site. Because there are no nasty surprises on rollout and the buesiness risk is far less, the update cycle is massively reduced. Because we can emulate the logs that were coming from the in-house tag server, they can continue to use he existing analytics package. Now there are no tags on the site, no 30K file downloaded each visit to slow down pages and present a security risk and much faster turn-around for marketing changes. Now if they had only done it that way in the first place . . .