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Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

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Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#251

Post by partiallypro »

throw_awy_1 wrote: post #235
partiallypro wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google owns the digital ad market with no real competitors, you would have to move to a subscription model to make money. Good luck with that, unless you feed another beast like Substack.

Would agree Google Adsense is the giant but they still have competition. A quick search on duckduckgo revealed at least some to investigate. Note - many of these are probably just as scummy or moreso than adsense but they, at a minimum, are not part of Google. Media.net PropellerAds Amazon Native Shopping Ads Adversal Sovrn //Commerce (Formerly VigLink) Skimlinks Monumetric InfoLinks ylliX Evadav PopCash PopAds RevCo…

Most of those in your list have very low payouts and have incredibly spammy links

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#252

Post by ThalesX »

pcstl wrote: post #223
musicale wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't focus on the product without analytics This is provably false. You do not need intrusive analytics to develop fantastic products. Have people somehow forgotten about good old-fashioned user testing? It is expensive, time consuming, and amazingly effective. Most importantly you can actually talk to your users because they are people instead of data points. User feedback >>> analytics.

And both > one of them.

But then surely, adding a prayer to St. Isidore of Seville [0] before every release will be better than just the both of them, so three > both > one.

I've recently interacted with a startup where the amount of resources they spend on trying to get them both, is making them blind to the power of one. It's not a pretty sight when all the numbers are tracked, plotted and planned on, yet nothing seems to work.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isidore_of_Seville

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#253

Post by haihaibye »

musicale wrote: post #230
reaperducer wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which makes at least a little sense when I'm on another site. But just this morning, Amazon started "recommending" a product to me that I'd actually bought from Amazon two months ago. How many printers does Amazon think I need?

> How many printers does Amazon think I need? I usually buy a new printer when it runs out of ink because it's cheaper than buying a new ink cartridge.

New printers usually come with less than full sized cartridges.

Also look at third party solutions like external feeds.

Even if it is cheaper, the externalities are not fully priced in, please think of the planet, thanks.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#255

Post by dhimes »

shash7 wrote: post #249
AnotherTechie wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Google has turned much of the internet into a wasteland I think I understand what you mean but would benefit from an explanation of that point

Search results show listicle articles, low value blog spam, etc. Youtube videos are unnecessarily long. Etc, etc.

I really hate the long videos. Facebook tells you that you'll get better results if you make them long (seriously?). So people make these unnaturally long videos with lots of vapid footage, generating needless entropy.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#256

Post by sumedh »

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…

Statcounter is free and its pretty light weight

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#257

Post by crazygringo »

boplicity wrote: post #204
crazygringo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Huh? Analytics is how you focus on your product. For the first decade of my career, I really believed this, and spent a lot of time doing split tests, and studying analytics, and trying to "make things better" by understanding the numbers as they were given to me. This was a mistake. I've since learned that these numbers will rarely help me make meaningful improvements to my product, and my business. Sure, they can…

> but they simply aren't going to show me how to create an ingenious idea that takes things to the next level.

Of course not. There's no substitute for straight-up creativity and deep thinking.

But once you have your ingenious idea, you still have to design it, make sure it's clear to users, that they find it and can use it effectively. Your "ingenious idea" may turn out to be largely sabotaged if a button you thought had an intuitive label is misunderstood by 90% of users, or a link you thought was highly visible is being scrolled past by nearly everyone.

Yes, analytics is all about optimizing things to a local maximum. But you might not be anywhere near your local maximum. It's astonishingly easy for the first version of your ingenious idea to only be achieving 5% or 10% of the actual local maximum potential. We shouldn't downplay the difficulty or achievement involved in getting even close to a local maxima.

And you're correct that in user interviews, if you only ask what features they want, you're drastically limiting the value you might uncover. On the other hand, you'd better not ignore the features users are frequently requesting either. A lot of users are pretty smart and know exactly what they need, at least to get to that local maxima.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#258

Post by RapidFire »

karpierz wrote: post #127
mrtksn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's think about it. Are games doing analytics? Games are essentially UIs that people pay for the privilege to use. Although I am sure that contemporary game makers use analytics to understand user behaviour and optimize for in game spending and engagement, at least in the bigger games probably the core experience comes from creative human processes. The more the analytics the further optimised the game would be tow…

A prime example of analytics driving games is Slay the Spire, where they would record every decision you made and outcomes in the game to better balance the experience and give the player interesting decisions. https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/314975/How_Slay_the_Spir...

Valve did this with Portal!

Or at least I feel like they did after playing through the games XD

The games theme felt like a giant analytics test where everything was noted!!

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#259

Post by m1117 »

spinningslate wrote: post #200
m1117 wrote: post #106

Google analytics is great. It has its issues, but overall 1. They've built a working product that is easy to connect and use 2. It fits to a lot of use cases and barely has issues 3. Easy to start using, no engineering overhead 4. I don't understand what the author trying to say. Should google be a charity? Or should they stop making good product? Or does the author want to cover the cost of all the other product tha…

Just no. Ignore the hyperbole in the article and the crux boils down to this: - Using GA means you're paying for your analytics with your users' privacy. The product is 'good' iff (if and only if) you're willing to accept those economics and ethics. You want analytics; that suggests they has some value to you. You don't want to pay cash money for it. That's your choice. But it's not free. Your users are paying for yo…

Exactly, paying with data for most people is cheaper than paying with money. I'd say that's a great compromise.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#260

Post by m1117 »

hansel_der wrote: post #180
seaman1921 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN brain in a nutshell: big tech == evil

monopoly == evil

There's a lot of alternatives to google analytics that people are free to use, or build their own systems. Corps are a little evil but the consumers are also evil. Everyone is evil.
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