Are You a Serial Cookie Deleter?

The announcement from comScore on Tuesday stated that 3 out of every 10 Internet users frequently delete cookies on their computer leading to inflated audience sizes of 250%

Wow. Now I know there has been much discussion in the past about the understated data on cookie deletion but 30% of users frequently deleting their cookies are a much bigger number than I would have thought.

Why are cookies being deleted more now?

Cookie detecting programs – Pop-ups and malicious hacker programs have lead to desktop applications that are designed to find spy-ware and ad-ware on your computer. They also find cookies during their search, which are usually labeled as a lower threat. Anything labeled as “a threat” at all will most likely be scheduled for a date with the trash can.

Browser functionality- The growth of competitive browsers to the once dominant Internet Explorer has contributed to the publics’ ability to manage their Internet privacy settings. FireFox most notably because it has not only taken a very large chunk of Microsoft’s surfing public but it does so with easy to use privacy tools that let you quickly clear your cache, browsing history and yes cookies.

Cookies are evil – People’s preconceived notions of cookies (both 1st party and 3rd party) are as a whole bad – which means in the absence of understanding them they will easily delete them from their computer.

The future of web analytics as we know it

All of this news really just leads back to the age old discussion of what is a more valuable metric: Visit or Visitor?

Unique visitors have been the important number for most marketers and advertisers because (in theory) the represent the total number unique number of eyeballs on your website, brand etc. This is a metric that has the better ability to show how wide your audience ranges, not just how large it is. The problem is that unique visitors are tracked by their IP address or 1st or 3rd party cookie placed on their computer – which has had limitations recently. First of all, if regular cookie deletion is as widespread as comScore reports, than the unique visitor number has been inflated for a while now – I don’ know if it was by a factor of 2.5 but inflated none the less. Secondly, unique visitors by IP address has presented problems where IP addresses are shared by a large group of people, like a corporation.

Matt Belkin at Omniture stated these flaws and the benefit of the visit metric more than a year ago on his web analytics blog. His opinions on the matter ring as true today and I have listed them below as a something to consider when you are choosing your own Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your website and Internet marketing campaigns.

1) Visits are more accurate than Unique Visitors
2) Every Visit represents an opportunity to persuade or convert a visitor to a customer
3) Measuring visits is based on fairly established industry standards

Furthermore I wanted to add that each visit represents a person who has come to the site in search of something (whether new or returning) and that means for those returning visitors you have even a better chance at making them make one of your preferred actions. And the best part is your metrics are not hurt whether you are using first party or third party tracking cookies. You are not at the mercy of ad-ware programs, cache clearing-happy surfers and IP blocks reserved for entire groups of people.

Web analytics has come along way from the days of “website hits” and I am sure even better metrics will come forward in the future, but for now make sure you understand what you are tracking and the limitations before you start down a road of inconsistent metrics.

About the Author: dtelepathy

Digital-telepathy is a user experience design studio that is committed to creating better experiences for users through great design. We create websites and design products like SlideDeck, Hello Bar, and Impress. You can find us on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.