Sky may extend tracking to all websites
Satellite broadcaster BSkyB may deploy a US software package to monitor visitor activity across its 57 web sites after a successful trial with the Hitbox web analytics tool from application service provider WebSideStory. The move is part of its plan to increase traffic and improve visitor retention through a more unified approach to design and content.
Sky Online wants to relieve the burden of data - around 2Gb of data generated by some 5 million users a day - on its IT systems. These volumes made it difficult to extract meaningful usage metrics. Sky Online dealt with data from all BSkyB's product sales, from which historical data had to be extracted to compile reports.
"Hitbox is used by the sales and sponsorship team to more accurately predict usage, and the marketing guys use it to see how campaigns are driving site traffic," said Sky Online's operations manager, Sam Fay. "At executive level, we can use the data provided by Hitbox to generate reports pretty much on the fly."
BSkyB uses a template-based design for its web sites for a consistent look and feel, embedding the software into the sites to track and analyse user activity.
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