How to get analytics setup right
The version of this that works is simpler than the version most people imagine. The short answer to analytics setup is that it is mostly a sequence of small decisions, not one big one.
Measurement is only useful when someone has agreed in advance what they would do differently. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.
Why this earns attention
Data you do not trust is worse than none. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.
The steps
- Establish what you have today before changing anything
- Filter internal traffic from day one
- Decide what you will act on before you track it
- Write down the decision so the next person does not re-litigate it
Decide what you will act on before you track it. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.
A reasonable first step
The short version
Data you do not trust is worse than no data, because it gets quoted anyway. 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
Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.