Hi friends ๐๐ป
This week, some provocative questions about website analytics.
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Why do you do website analytics the way that you do?
Specifically:
- Why do you use the website analytics tool that you use?
- What metrics do you pay attention to?
- How do you use your analytics data?
I talk to a lot of website managers, and these are the most common (honest) answers:
- We use Google Analytics because it's free and that's what everyone else uses.
- Well ... the number of metrics is overwhelming. The only metric we really pay attention to is the number of visitors.
- There's a monthly meeting where we report on the number of website visitors, alongside metrics from our other communication channels.
The situation I'm describing here isn't ideal! And I say this without judgment. Having worked in a variety of roles that included responsibility for web analytics for over a decade, I know that there are few incentives to do any of the items on the list above differently.
Being the one org that choses not to use Google Analytics feels like a risky choice, given it's overwhelming dominance of the analytics market. Free is hard to say no to, even when you know that it being free makes you the product.
And the sheer volume of metrics and data GA gives you is overwhelming. On top of that overwhelm, last year's GA4 rollout has made reporting 1000 times harder without an external dashboard tool or some serious GA4 training.
The final point is ultimately the most important. Many website managers aren't being asked to use web analytics to inform strategic decision making. Or they want to, but don't have the time or the training to do so. Google Analytics is a terribly complicated solution if all you really want to track is the number of website visitors per month.
As a counterpoint, I'm working on some custom reporting for a client where we're trying to actually use web analytics to inform a strategic decision!
Within their organization, a team dedicates a significant amount of time each year to updating and improving a resource-heavy section of the website. This involves different document formats, translated content, and coordination with subject-matter experts on the content.
This year, they want to better understand how this part of the website is being used to inform decisions about how to invest time and money on content updates. And this is a place where Google Analytics can excel! We're building a set of custom reports that can be used year-over-year to make sure the team is making smart investments, alongside some planned qualitative measurements too.
How would you like to do website analytics differently?
What's standing in your way?
That's all for this week.
Until next time โจ
โ Ed Harris (your digital strategy guide)
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