Five mistakes teams make with analytics setup

It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. These are the ones we run into repeatedly when we audit analytics setup.

Measurement is only useful when someone has agreed in advance what they would do differently. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

What to watch for

• Treating it as a launch task rather than an ongoing one
• Assuming someone else already owns it
• Data you do not trust is worse than none
• Filter internal traffic from day one
• Never checking whether the fix actually worked

Decide what you will act on before you track it. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

A reasonable first step

How to tell if yours is fine

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

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.