Patent ID: 7792843

Claim:
A method of using a computer processor in a web analytics system, the method comprising: automatically obtaining, for use in a web analytics system which has a web analytics system user, activity data which represent activity by people other than the web analytics system user who are visitors in a web site, the activity data comprising signals corresponding to physical objects and activities external to the web analytics system including visitor peripheral devices and visitor activities of multiple people directing their respective peripheral devices to take action within the web site, wherein the activity data indicates at least one of the following: a path taken through the web site, web site pages displayed, products and/or services ordered in the web site, or revenue transfers authorized in the web site; automatically identifying at least two data events by analyzing the activity data, wherein each one of the at least two data events indicates at least one of the following: that obtained activity data differs from corresponding historic activity data in at least a specified manner; that obtained activity data is forecast to at least meet a specified target value; that obtained activity data is forecast to miss a specified target value; that obtained activity data includes spikes which differ from neighboring activity data in at least a specified manner; that recent activity data of a specified type was not obtained; or that new activity data which matches a data type specified by the web analytics system user was obtained; automatically ranking at least two of the identified data events relative to each other according to the web analytics system user's expected interest in them; automatically creating summaries of each of at least two ranked data events, the summaries configured for transmission over a low capacity channel; and sending the web analytics system user a summary of a higher ranked data event before sending the user a summary of a lower ranked data event; whereby the web analytics system compensates for the channel's low capacity by presenting the web analytics system user with summaries of more interesting data events before presenting summaries of less interesting data events.