Is xAPI designed for common data analytics?

Question

I have been consulted if it is possible to create web site like Google Anallytics using Tin Can API(xAPI). It seems to be designed for e-learning by spec, but I'm not sure it is suitable for data analytics on common web site. Is it recommended to track website visitors by xAPI?

Answer 1

No, I wouldn't consider it very good for that purpose, especially given the large number of tools out there that are very good. I'd look into Google Universal Analytics, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, or if you're up for something very page focused and more than a little new, Heap Analytics.

Any of those will be more appropriate for fine-grained website/webapp analytics than the Experience API, which both isn't designed for the same scenarios and doesn't have anywhere near the tooling around it.

That said, I've got several customers using Wax Learning Record Store (I'm CTO of Saltbox) to track some coarse grained web events, and they're finding it useful. The key is that the Experience API is suitable for tracking coarse learning-related things, and some things that happen on websites fit.

I think a more common model, eventually, will be to channel fine grained web analytic events into an analytics store, then on certain combinations of those to trigger Experience API statements into a Learning Record Store to integrate with the richer data from other sources the Experience API is all about. That also adds a useful level of indirection between the details of actions taken in an interface and the learning-related happenings recorded as Experience API statements.