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Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

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Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#361

Post by account42 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #71
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…

When I first put my personal website up on Github Pages last summer, I didn't include any analytics. I figured it was unnecessary—why should I care who was looking? I quickly realized the obvious—without any analytics, I had no idea whether or not I was just screaming into the ether. Even for a simple noncommercial site, it's discomforting! I now have Cloudflare Analytics and I'm much more satisfied. I feel as though…

You definitely don't need client-side anaylitics to know if you content is being viewed. I don't know if Cloudflare Analytics is that but a simple view counter on the backend (ie a log analyzer) is enough for that. Or just search for your site to see if people link to it.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#362

Post by account42 »

danaliv wrote: post #303
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…

Analytics revealed to me that a product I'd built (well, a free side project, but that's beside the point) was succeeding in the exact opposite of the market I'd built it for. I used to run an online Japanese-English dictionary. It was geared towards people learning Japanese. I built it when I was studying Japanese and thought it would be useful for other students. Turns out the overwhelming majority of the traffic t…

And? What does this trivia change about how you interact with that project? Is it not possible that there were other ways you could learn about this eventually?

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#363

Post by account42 »

RapidFire wrote: post #258
karpierz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!!

I'm sure Portal was heavily playtested but it hasn't significantly changed after release so there is no reason to believe that they are making changes based on player analytics (even if they are collecting at least some via achievements).

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#364

Post by account42 »

partiallypro wrote: post #213
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…

> Are the insights from Analytics really valuable enough to justify the cost? Yes. It is especially important when you are running ads and want to make sure you are getting the most bang for your buck in ad spend.

Ads also have a huge cost on society so you can stop that too.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#365

Post by niDistinct »

andrewingram wrote: post #107
crummybowley wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but analytics is also used to trick folks into buying a paper back full of shit. A good product, that does what it advertises, does not need analytics. But a bad product, that somebody desperately wants to make successful, or at least successful enough to sell to a PE and exit, needs analytics.

The problem is that when making a product you're often wrong, what you think is a good product is often a bad product, or it's a nearly good product with a couple of fatal flaws that can only be seen in hindsight. S While some people have an uncanny sense of vision, and seem hit on the right ingredients more often than seems fair, but most companies aren't led by this kind of person. You need things that tell you whe…

> the tools that record every click and cursor movement are fascinating, but undeniably creep

That may not be so for a game developer who wants to modify gameplay that is heavy or reliant on things like particular mouse cursor movement and mouse click usage. Especially if a meticulous gameplay goal is the objective.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#366

Post by blacklight »

shenberg wrote: post #353
blacklight wrote: post #346

Firefox+NoScript+PiHole user here. Once the pages on your browser start rendering at twice the speed they normally render on other people's devices because you block all the analytics and ads crap, you never look back. And even though I don't use any analytics on my websites (heck, some of them don't even run a line of JS), I still get plenty of valuable (and privacy-aware) insights about user experience. Web server…

Bots. Spam ruins it for everyone. Cloudflare, for example, provide an analytics platform based off of logs, but it overreports visits by a huge amount for most cases because javascript is a good filter for most bots. Here's Cloudflare's page on why there is a discrepancy between their numbers and GA-type services: https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/36003768411... And here's a blog post by a self-hosted-…

Bot activities in web server logs isn't that hard to spot. They often don't use "regular" user agents, they usually only download a page's HTML without getting all the images and media, they often do a GET on /robots.txt before proceeding, they manifest unrealisticly short times between browsing a page and going to the next one, and they often come from known IP subnets. My simple log parsing heuristic can already remove 90% of the bot traffic from the statistics.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#367

Post by account42 »

shenberg wrote: post #353
blacklight wrote: post #346

Firefox+NoScript+PiHole user here. Once the pages on your browser start rendering at twice the speed they normally render on other people's devices because you block all the analytics and ads crap, you never look back. And even though I don't use any analytics on my websites (heck, some of them don't even run a line of JS), I still get plenty of valuable (and privacy-aware) insights about user experience. Web server…

Bots. Spam ruins it for everyone. Cloudflare, for example, provide an analytics platform based off of logs, but it overreports visits by a huge amount for most cases because javascript is a good filter for most bots. Here's Cloudflare's page on why there is a discrepancy between their numbers and GA-type services: https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/36003768411... And here's a blog post by a self-hosted-…

GA also underreports because people block it. Might not be relevant for most sites but if your audience is tech-related don't expect it to be irrelevant.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#368

Post by healeycodes »

JGM_io wrote: post #345
slavak wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of alternatives to Google Analytics, including open-source software you can self-host so it doesn't share your users' private data with a third party. You don't need to roll your own just to avoid GA.

For example?

I use https://www.goatcounter.com and recommend it.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#369

Post by spinningslate »

m1117 wrote: post #259
spinningslate wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

and that's perfectly fine when you're deciding to pay with your data for value you're getting.

The point with GA is you're paying with other people's data. Without explicitly asking them for permission. (And no, cookie permissions don't count as "asking them for permission").

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#370

Post by marcus_holmes »

cercatrova wrote: post #359
maigret wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a similar problem with things like "user interviews." A common pitfall is to ask people which features they want. Asking what users want is not the right way to do interviews. I advise you read "Just enough research" by Erika Hall. The goal of interviews is to gather enough data points to understand the user needs and struggle, and to know their journey through the product with accuracy, and also understand…

A similar book is The Mom Test. You're not supposed to let the user find how they would've solved the problem (as had they known, they would've solved it themselves), you're supposed to understand their pain points and then design the most effective solution for them.

always upvote The Mom Test. Changed my life
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