While reading a post today about alternatives to Google Analytics which are more privacy-centric (read: user-centric), a bolt of inspiration struck.
GA has dominated the web analytics game for as long as I can remember. Back in the late noughties alternatives such as Mint were viable, but as the great Google machine ploughed on, they continued to add more data points, more verticals, more graphs to just about every area you click.
As with so many new technologies this led to the birth of a whole discipline and specialism of tracking the bejebus outta users. Why? Because it’s quite nice to see people are looking at your content. It’s also handy to learn where they’re spending their time.
But now many companies and, within them, individuals believe that their click through rate and bounce scores actually matter.
Remember this: nobody who pays salaries actually gives a damn how much time 24% of the 35-45 demographic on mobile spent reading that article you wrote last week.
They care about actual business metrics such as cash in the bank.
This explosion of data has spawned countless meetings of people who think they’re looking at real, useful, and insightful data and converting this into Q2 Digital Market Strategies.
What if you turned off web analytics? Or just tracked unique visitors and £/$ spent?
Of course, there are plenty of people who actively work against this, because then their bosses might realise theirs is a bullshit job.