Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics • Hacker News Board

Re: Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics

#81

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 9:04 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #36

I don't get it - it is a nice sentiment, but the crux of the argument seems to "go with your gut." The reason web analytics has been so popular is that you can actually improve your product significantly without as much subjectivity. Before web analytics, going with your gut was the only option. It turns out, threading events through a funnel that show you lost 90% of your users because your button doesn't show up on…

"It's very easy to be fooled by a vocal minority of people who complain about your app sucking when the majority are getting value from it."

Does this apply to "feature requests" by a minority whereby the majority then has to accept those "features".

Re: Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics

#82

Post by marcopicentini » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

Agree. I turned off any analytics and all 3rd party tracking. Found this you can avoid cookie banner.

I only track internal product success metrics and occasionally gather feedback from phone support. You get totally better perspective talking to users.

Analyzing data is limited because you don’t the user mind when is looking for something or clicking.

Re: Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics

#83

Post by Ilasky » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 10:12 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #14

I build websites for small business, and since the beginning have used Google Analytics. What used to be a valuable tool that I would eagerly tell my clients to utilize, has now become an overly complex nightmare I loathe to install and rarely recommend to my clients. I recently had a client ask to use StatCounter.com (my reaction: "they're still around?!?") and it was refreshingly simple, much like the original Goog…

I also like goatcounter for simple analytics - just what I need and nothing more. I can also vouch for plausible and really like their product too

Re: Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics

#84

Post by johnnyworker » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 10:41 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #14

I build websites for small business, and since the beginning have used Google Analytics. What used to be a valuable tool that I would eagerly tell my clients to utilize, has now become an overly complex nightmare I loathe to install and rarely recommend to my clients. I recently had a client ask to use StatCounter.com (my reaction: "they're still around?!?") and it was refreshingly simple, much like the original Goog…

I wrote my own little thing that just counts page hits/referrers, but only keeps aggregates for older data (e.g. the hourly data is kept for a week, daily data for a year, weekly data for 10 years, and only yearly data kept forever). It also keeps track of how long the page took to load, and how long it took to generate on the server if the page provides it, and that's it. I can make a new project/page and get a tracking snippet for it in one second, and then I barely ever even look at the stats, which saves even more time. But should something crazy happen, I would like to be able to, and that's all I need really.

Re: Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics

#85

Post by djbusby » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 11:03 PM UTC

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #81

gfodor wrote: post #36

I don't get it - it is a nice sentiment, but the crux of the argument seems to "go with your gut." The reason web analytics has been so popular is that you can actually improve your product significantly without as much subjectivity. Before web analytics, going with your gut was the only option. It turns out, threading events through a funnel that show you lost 90% of your users because your button doesn't show up on…

"It's very easy to be fooled by a vocal minority of people who complain about your app sucking when the majority are getting value from it." Does this apply to "feature requests" by a minority whereby the majority then has to accept those "features".

Yes! Early stage businesses can get bogged down in "next feature folly" - keep adding and adding as each new (bespoke?) client comes on. Then the product has features baked in for narrow cases and turns off the larger part of the bell curve.

My line in the sand is: never build a feature on the first request. Ideate, research, measure others opinion of the same features.

One should have a tight beta group for this.

Re: Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics

#86

Post by boredemployee » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 11:33 PM UTC

barnabee wrote: post #71

julianeon wrote: post #67

If you don't have any analytics, then how do you know your audience size? Is it 10 people per month? 1000 people? 1,000,000 people? No offense but I can't accept "it doesn't matter."

Vanity metric. The only thing you need to know is how many people paid for your product.

While audience alone is vanity metric, "how many people paid for your product" isn't the only metric that matters.

Re: Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics

#87

Post by sakesun » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 12:23 AM UTC

Such a neat website.

Re: Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics

#88

Post by zen928 » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 1:49 AM UTC

mplewis wrote: post #77

didntcheck wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you did need user feedback, which analytics would help with

User analytics would not have provided feedback in the form of "I don't like the scrolling on this site."

you can't interpolate user behavior on something that isn't used, but you can pretty quickly find the most affected groups to further remediate why that'd be the case

it's been pretty disappointing recently reading comments around here and slowly building the understanding that resistance to these types of systems haven't come from old-school "freedom" driven mindsets that spot and call out patterns that obstruct user agency or security to enable a culture of accountability VS a slow crawl to glorifying luddism born from simple apprehension to understanding the use of any additional changes in how development is viewed today

this discussion chain of "stats=bad actually." makes that distinction a little more clear

Re: Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics

#89

Post by xg15 » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 6:03 AM UTC

pcmaffey wrote: post #56

vpaulus wrote: post #3

Whatever it is about, I refused to read because of this silly scrolling/paginating

*Update: I removed the pagination and scrolling effects. The entire post can be read on a single page now. (And I didn't need analytics to understand something wasn't working lol.)

> (And I didn't need analytics to understand something wasn't working lol.)

I mean, you did need feedback though - you read a comment on HN, which gave you the feedback, with upvotes on the comment indicating that it's probably an issue that more people care about.

One significant difference is that the feedback was "active", though: Someone actively decided to write the comment and other people probably actively decided to upvote it. I fully agree that this is a way better way of feedback than effectively putting up hidden cameras everywhere and surveiling every step of your users without them knowing.

Re: Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics

#90

Post by exodust » Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 6:04 AM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #75

mighmi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've personally never been in a situation where analytics drove change. Even mere A/B testing seems like a ghost in (most?) organizations, where management or designers decide to force through their personal preferences. That said, I would love to join such an organization. Any suggestions on where to find data driven jobs?

At my previous job, A/B testing was widely used to check which of the small UX tweaks works better.

The problem there is many uncontrollable factors contributing to the data. If engagement is found to be better with A on the day, does that mean B will never be better? It doesn't.

A/B testing is often conducted unscientifically or with insufficient sample size and timeframe.

Sometimes the cards fall where they fall, and your small UX tweak wasn't involved. It's tempting to conclude A/B testing delivered a valid result. As an experiment, if you deliberately made A and B identical, then A/B test as normal, you will still get a winner. They won't be equal.