One of the biggest issues facing the monetization of rich internet applications is the fact that traditional web analytics don’t work when you build an application that is built on a runtime like Silverlight, Flash, or Java. The application packages are pretty much isolated from the rest of the page so trying to determine click-thru rates, demographics, and effectiveness become a very complex task. Developers typically have had to resort to manually coding hooks into the application to be able to link it back to analytics software. The fact is that most devs haven’t bothered to do this and some have tried to use 3rd party platforms that provide an abstraction layer to hook into.
Silverlight Analytics in Silverlight 4 provides an open platform for any vendor to extract valuable intelligence about how the application runs. One of the biggest capabilities with Silverlight is the ability to use applications offline. Before Silverlight Analytics Framework, vendors would pretty much be in the dark. Microsoft now eliminates this constraint. If you are a technologist or businessman, wouldn’t you like to know how your customers are behaving offline when using your app?
Now doing what Microsoft does best, coding software, we knew that providing a great development experience would be key for vendors, but on the web, designers play a crucial role. I would argue that application designers are probably even closer to the functions of the application than the programmers, but even if you don’t buy this argument, wouldn’t it be great quantify your worth as a designer? Microsoft allows designers to realize this as well by integrating Analytics Framework behaviours directly in the design environment in Expression Blend. You can now directly relate the quality of design work down to the bottom line. What designer wouldn’t want this? A bad one. This “who’s who” list of vendors serves as a testament to the openness and excitement of this new functionality!
AT Internet
Comscore
GlanceGuide
Google Analytics
Nedstat
Quantcast
PreEmptive Solutions
Service Oriented Analytics
Design Goals
- Support out-of-browser scenarios
- Support offline scenarios
- Support multiple analytics services simultaneously without impacting performance
- Support for designers in Microsoft Expression Blend to add tracking to applications without coding
- Support A/B Testing
- Support SketchFlow Prototypes
- Support logging of video experiences with the Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework
If you are interested in learning more, watch the breakout session video from MIX 2010.
