When analytics setup is worth the effort

This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. Analytics setup is not free, and pretending otherwise leads to bad decisions.

Measurement is only useful when someone has agreed in advance what they would do differently. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

When it is worth it

Data you do not trust is worse than none. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

When it is not

If nothing downstream depends on it and nobody is complaining, it can wait. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions.

How to decide

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.

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
• Filter internal traffic from day one — 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.