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Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

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Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#181

Post by ivanhoe »

heipei wrote: post #3

Here's a crazy idea: Don't use analytics at all but focus on your product. If your success relies solely on "improving conversions" by tracking your users and then changing the position and color of your "Checkout" button then maybe try setting yourself apart such that customers want to buy your product even despite an obnoxious purchasing flow. Only then start optimizing it. More serious thoughts: Google Analytics i…

> Here's a crazy idea: Don't use analytics at all but focus on your product.

Here's even crazier one: Just do analytics on the backend instead?!

You don't need GA, nor 3rd party tracking cookies, just a simple session ID and a proper web-server's log analyzer, and you can get almost all of the same metrics.

You can nowadays even sniff on clients' screen resolutions and other browser details using just img srcset, css and log analyzers.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#182

Post by rambambram »

raspyberr wrote: post #9

It's really tough to read this with any sense of sincerity when it uses Google fonts and "feeds the beast" that is Cloudflare.

For my website system [Hello Website][hw], I built a non-tracking visitor statistics part. I also got rid of Google Fonts in the process. So no cookie-wall, no tracking, and I can honestly say the stats are accurate with 15000 page views a month. I even wrote a [blog post][blogpost] about it; as a webdev you have the responsibility to use Google Analytics or not. It's poison. Hello Website is for end-users who can easily design and fill their site with it, but if you are a developer I suggest using GoatCounter or Simple Analytics. [hw]: https://www.hellowebsite.online [blogpost]: https://www.hellowebsite.online/?module=blog&link=1&post=4

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#183

Post by rsync »

crazygringo wrote: post #69
heipei wrote: post #3

Here's a crazy idea: Don't use analytics at all but focus on your product. If your success relies solely on "improving conversions" by tracking your users and then changing the position and color of your "Checkout" button then maybe try setting yourself apart such that customers want to buy your product even despite an obnoxious purchasing flow. Only then start optimizing it. More serious thoughts: Google Analytics i…

> Don't use analytics at all but focus on your product. Huh? Analytics is how you focus on your product. By instrumenting your product with analytics, you can find out if customers are using your new useful feature or if they can't find it. If they're performing a task quickly because it's easy, or slowly because they're struggling with the UX. And you find out that customers on a certain mobile device are suffering…

"If they're performing a task quickly because it's easy, or slowly because they're struggling with the UX. And you find out that customers on a certain mobile device are suffering huge performance issues, for example."

...

"You don't know these things until you measure them."

If you don't build big, bloated tools using ultra-high-level frameworks and if your product is a simple tool that performs a single, useful task ... then you do know these things and you don't need analytics to tell you.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#184

Post by carapace »

jahewson wrote: post #157
carapace wrote: post #92

On a tangent, but related IMO: the whole WWW seems gross now. The other day on that Mold linker project: > I wanted to use the linker to link a Chromium executable with full debug info (~2 GiB in size) just in 1 second. LLVM's lld, the fastest open-source linker which I originally created a few years ago, takes about 12 seconds to link Chromium on my machine. As much as I like that linker project, I can't help but fe…

Why compare a web browser with a programming language? An equivalently rich OS would be a meaningful comparison, built with full debug symbols.

> Why compare a web browser with a programming language?

Javascript?

- - - -

RED and Factor both provide single binaries of about 1M that have all the capabilities that a browser has, including a built-in programming language.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#185

Post by DebtDeflation »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #143
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a tech company popular with enthusiasts when GDPR was first rolled out. We had a lot of requests from users who wanted us to provide their data per the GDPR allowance. We also had an influx of tech journalists filing GDPR requests in hopes of catching us doing something wrong or tracking too much personal data. When we sent users their "data", many of them were in disbelief at how little data they receiv…

>serving relevant ads Relevant ads are the kind you get on DuckDuckGo: relevant to the content you're looking at. E.g. if you look at a site about origami, you get ads from arts&crafts supply stores. What you've probably meant are called predatory ads: they chase you around the Web wherever you go, like a predator chases its prey.

And continue chasing you around for months after you've made the actual purchase and are no longer interested in the product.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#186

Post by [deleted] »

boffinism wrote: post #24

I really didn't want to use Google Analytics for a personal site (details in bio), but because it's a non-monetised personal site I really didn't want to spend money to know how many visitors I had, but because I'm trying to learn about content I really did want to know how many visitors I had, because that's a good way of discovering what content resonates etc. I tried PanelBear, but because I briefly hit the front…

[deleted]

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#187

Post by D-Coder »

ska wrote: post #114
cgriswald wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rewards programs are opt-in. Stores have even stopped harassing me to sign up. Analytics are the equivalent of a computer following you around the store, watching what you look at, how long you look at it, what you pick up, what you pull out of your cart and put back... I’ve never in my life gotten message from the grocery store saying, “Hey, we saw you were looking at grapefruit. Here are some other citrus fruits we…

> Still, they weren’t doing this a few decades ago and they were fine. This part at least isn't really true. Since grocery stores have been around, there have been people working full time in effectively analytics - observing customer behavior, modifying products/layouts/UX, doing a/b testings etc. Digitizing everything gives new tools and approaches but overall the game hasn't really changed. Every part of your expe…

They weren't watching _every_ customer _all the time_, were they?

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#188

Post by [deleted] »

crazygringo wrote: post #69
heipei wrote: post #3

Here's a crazy idea: Don't use analytics at all but focus on your product. If your success relies solely on "improving conversions" by tracking your users and then changing the position and color of your "Checkout" button then maybe try setting yourself apart such that customers want to buy your product even despite an obnoxious purchasing flow. Only then start optimizing it. More serious thoughts: Google Analytics i…

> Don't use analytics at all but focus on your product. Huh? Analytics is how you focus on your product. By instrumenting your product with analytics, you can find out if customers are using your new useful feature or if they can't find it. If they're performing a task quickly because it's easy, or slowly because they're struggling with the UX. And you find out that customers on a certain mobile device are suffering…

[deleted]

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#190

Post by system16 »

marssaxman wrote: post #151
system16 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Even though I find the Costco in-store experience stressful and the online experience lacklustre, I put them at the top of my list for all of my non-fashion shopping (unless I'm looking for dad clothes). I can always trust their products will be as high or better quality than anywhere else, and at the best or close to best price. And I have no worries about returns. Compare that to Amazon, which I have ze…

It would never occur to me to care, at all , whether something as trivial as a dish scrubber was a genuine name-brand item. What difference does it make? I suppose this is why I have experienced none of the trust issues people have begun talking about with Amazon, recently.

I think you're missing the point. The brand is irrelevant. The point is if they are faking the brand, you can no longer trust the integrity of the product at all.

In this case, it began deteriorating with steel 'hairs' coming undone immediately after first use. Should I be concerned about that? Is it even steel wool or another material? If the latter, is it safe and tested against items that humans will be consuming food from? Is it sterile? Were some other chemicals used to treat it for something as trivial as attempting to match the colour of the brand?

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