I had been planning a series of posts on the evolution of ‘Site Overlays’ but I decided to take a different tack.

Site Overlays are those services, provided by web analytics vendors, that allow us to see page and click data while on the page.

Site Overlays are, at best, primitive.

They present web data - page views, visits, clicks, yada yada yada - while the user (you) are on the web page. Theoretically, this is cool stuff - you can ’see’ the web data as it happens in situ.

In practice, Site Overlays are slow and interfering. It takes too long to load the web data so it kind of feels like you are browsing the site on a 33.3 modem and the link overlays get in the way of your mouse - it’s difficult (if not impossible) to browse the site/page with that link overlay enabled.

So.

Let me (re) introduce you to the concept of a Heads Up Display (HUD). Pioneered in military aircraft, HUDs do what they say. That is, they take all the key indicator data from the cockpit dashboard and put it up in front of the pilot’s face so that she doesn’t have to look down for data.

HUDs take a large, confusing set of data from out of the dashboard and put it into the pilot’s primary field of view in such a fashion that the data is understandable and integrated with that all-important field of focus.

The beauty of a HUD is that it improves the pilot’s ability to fly her plane (among other things) without disimproving her forward view.

That’s why current web analytics offerings in Site Overlay services are primitive. They are an attempt to model a HUD in the web world but they fail because they disimprove the web experience.

I’m not aware of a solution, nor do I have one to offer, but I sure would like site overlays to start evolving towards the Heads Up Display concept.

[end rant]

Avinash Kaushik is blogging - FINALLY!
I doubt you will ever meet anyone as passionate about analytics as Avinash, and even better it’s worth your while to listen to him.

Avinash is at the Vanguard of the analytics space so if you want to push the envelope - he has some ideas on where to start.

When he announced his blog to me he said that he is “going to blog about Web Decision Making…” I don’t want to steal his thunder but this is where ‘What’ and ‘How’ meet up with ‘Why’ and that my friends is where the rubber meets the road.

Welcome Avinash! We expect great things from you!