Analytics setup, explained without the jargon

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. Here is analytics setup without the vocabulary that usually surrounds it.

Data you do not trust is worse than no data, because it gets quoted anyway. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

The short version

Data you do not trust is worse than none. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

Why people complicate it

Most of the confusion comes from tooling rather than from the idea itself. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions.

Filter internal traffic from day one. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

Turning this into a decision

Decide what you will act on before you track it. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

What this looks like day to day

Measurement is only useful when someone has agreed in advance what they would do differently. Three things worth confirming about analytics setup before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Decide what you will act on before you track it — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.