I have written previously on this, but for those out there who are not quite sure of what DOE (Design of Experiments) and Fractional Factorial Design mean or how they apply to optimization problems,
have a look at Optimost’s page on Design of Experiments For Website Testing and their case studies.

I have no connection with Optimost and while no doubt aspects of their methodology are proprietary, the general principles of experimental design are well known in the statistical community and I have been preaching this approach for some time now.

If you are trying to get a handle on what “web analytics” actually is, take a look at this post from Immeria The “analytic” in web analytics.

Web analytics relies on a variety of qualitative and quantitative metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of a site at answering user goals, according to the business strategy and objectives. The analysis activity brings a broader and more accurate understanding of the user behavior before, during, and after the visit to the site. This understanding of threats and opportunities ultimately leads to recommendations for improvements in various areas: user experience, content quality and effectiveness, process improvement and technical performance

OK, to paraphrase - if you have a site that sells stuff, collecting data about who visits the website and what they do there (and, importantly, if they buy anything then or later) is a good idea.

It is not so clear what you can do with the data other than count it, and I have expressed some skepticism in my post “Website Optimization and Data Analytics”, but if you are interested the Immeria site gives an insight into what the commercial software Omniture does in this post Instances vs. Visits in Omniture

The table in that post gives some idea of what more sophisticated things might be done with the data .. cluster analysis of the page view event sequence springs to mind.

OK, if you are interested in Web Analytics and commercial tools, then you might like to head over to Jacques Warren’s (of Analytic’s Notes) new site The Big Integration, which he subtitles Putting Web Analytics Together with Enterprise Systems. IHe has an interesting approach, using a forum to build conversations and a blog to summarize them. At the time of writing, the forum is still getting off the ground but the forum topics look interesting eg

• Examines integration of Web data in SAS
• and sections on attitudinal analysis and “How surveys add to the complete portrait of customers behaviors”
• .. hey, it’s just easier if you head over to the forum page to see his plans

For a view of “web analytics” in the wider context of “Multichannel Forensics and Database Marketing”, Kevin Hillstrom at the MineThatData blog has much of interest for business (particularly retail).