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Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

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Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#291

Post by cercatrova »

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…

Why is analytics only numbers / quantitative data to you? I've used services like HotJar that record the interactions of the user on the site or app which is qualitative analytics at scale, and it helped me identify how the user was actually using the product. I wouldn't not call this analytics simply because it's not numbers driven.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#292

Post by statstutor »

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #27
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…

I'm totally on board with not obsessing over user behavior or tweaking unrelated things in hopes of a revenue boost, but I prefer the scientific approach, which means I still want metrics. I'd like to know when I make a product change whether that improves the number of people who see my product and stick around versus seeing and leaving. I don't have anything live that uses Google Analytics but I've used it once or…

I have a rule that I only collect data:

- if it is immediately and directly useful to my primary goals (the goals come before the data), and,

- if I'm confident in advance that the results will have some statistical power (so, A/B testing colour schemes is out), and,

- if I have planned in advance what the business consequence of the data analysis is.

Having any more numbers than that just creates obsession. Aren't we all posting comments here, looking for validation from the upvote counter?

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#293

Post by MadWombat »

"It’s called surveillance capitalism and it’s certainly not about giving you a great user experience, it’s about making money"

Well... it also happens to create a better (if not great) user experience along the way. I definitely prefer targeted advertisements to random ones. And I have relied on Google's ability to suggest things to me based on a complex context many times.

Simple things, like giving me directions when I ask about a place, letting me see show times around me when I search for a movie, showing me the menu when I search for a restaurant etc.

Do they use all the data they collect about me? Sure as hell they do. But their effort at being more accurate in their predictions also results in me having a more fluid and intuitive experience with their services.

I don't like their monopolistic ambition and I don't like the way they have treated their customers and clients on many occasions. But there is no comparable user experience to switch to and I am not even sure such experience can be created without having another Google.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#294

Post by throwaway3699 »

stiray wrote: post #140
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…

> Analytics isn't just about conversion. Analytics is about the entire product experience. ... which you can entirely do by analyzing web server logs. You dont need google for this, pushing your users (with violation of GDPR consent) into google monstrosity. Dont do that, I block every freaking google domain from cdns, fonts to analytics. But I don't block 1st party analytics. I have no reason to. I have visited your…

FWIW, there are many well known techniques for shipping data to GA regardless if you block it or not. Many integrate server-side for this reason (as you say - server logs are very rich), and client side is used supplementally. Some are using sneaky techniques to move requests through 1P domains. Adblockers make zero difference.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#295

Post by userbinator »

dheera wrote: post #125
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…

PSA: Add this to /etc/hosts if you don't want other sites collecting info from you via Google Analytics/Ads 0.0.0.0 googleanalytics.com 0.0.0.0 googlesyndication.com A more complete list of things worth adding to /etc/hosts here (I'm not affiliated with this): https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

I've always had the ones with the dash, since they are what's mentioned in the official docs ( https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection... ):

    0.0.0.0 google-analytics.com
    0.0.0.0 www.google-analytics.com
    0.0.0.0 ssl.google-analytics.com
I'm not sure what googleanalytics.com is for, however; but I'll add it to my HOSTS, in any case.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#296

Post by near »

dhimes wrote: post #255
shash7 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a magic point on YouTube at 10 minutes that lets creators insert ads in the middle of their videos, so they all stretch out the content for that purpose. It's very obnoxious.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#297

Post by near »

donohoe wrote: post #233

Lets examine these "claims" a bit more closely... It’s a bloated script that affects your site speed Everything affects sites-peed. However its 19KB, thats not awful. It’s overkill for the majority of site owners Yes, agreed. But so what. It’s a privacy liability and requires an extensive privacy policy Would be nice if if it offered specifics on the "liability" but it does not. And for the weight of an "extensive pr…

> Its good to know you got 1M unique visitors last month, but I don't need to know I got 1,214,551 unique visitors. All analytic packages have problems like this.

The numbers vary depending on the technical prowess of your audience. Probably at least half the visitors to my site would be using ad blockers. If one were to use server-side logging (at the HTTP request level), it would not be blockable, and your numbers would be accurate save for any bot spam inflating it.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#298

Post by eideuehehh »

ThalesX wrote: post #252
pcstl wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

If you could predict with certainty that the inclusion of a prayer to St. Isidore would lead to a more overall successful product why would you not do it besides obstinance?

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#299

Post by heyn05tradamu5 »

nickff wrote: post #270
heyn05tradamu5 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree. I used to be a very "analytics focused" product manager until I joined an enterprise software company that hardly uses them and is wildly successful. We're succesful because we talk to our users about everything. I spend most of my time talking to customers and watching them use the software. We occasionally use analytics to help us validate hypotheses or assumptions, but that's always complimented with a…

Enterprise-focused companies are often some of the most user-hostile, opaque organizations in the world. I would rather a company post prices and documentation openly (with analytics) rather than requiring me to sign up for at least an account, and more often, a one-hour sales call to get any information at all.

Sure, there are some bad enterprise software companies. What does this have to do with the original point though?

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#300

Post by tootie »

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…

I've done so many projects that revolved around instrumenting every little click and creating A and B versions of an experience to run tests against and in all that time I can't recall a single useful product decision that was actually informed by the collected data.

I would disagree on user research. It works on certain types of broad questions like messaging and branding. It's probably overused though.

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