Analytics Matters

Tue, Jun 30, 2009 Posted By:Eric Friedman

Analytics matters today, just like it did yesterday, last year, and 5 years ago. In fact, it has always mattered.

People, projects, companies, and teams tend for forget the importance of analytics from the earliest stages of a product or service. Its free!

If you havn’t done so, go drop in free Google Analytics code to your website today.

It accomplishes a few things well and allows for accountability and facts in a world where it is needed most.

1. It lets possible investors wrap their head around the idea and traction
2. It allows monetization strategies to form based on usage trends
3. It focuses features and solutions to where heavy traffic is vs. what people say they want
4. It allows you to iterate on something that is a current pain point
5. It shows you the ebb and flow of transactions throughout your site
6. It shows bottlenecks and areas that need optimization
7. It shows sales and conversion funnel metrics to tie advertising to ROI
8. It presents users with relevant and actionable data if you choose to surface it back to them
9. It emphasizes what is working and with is not
10. It allows decisions to be made based on facts vs fiction

I started writing details about each, but a short top 10 list accomplishes my thoughts on analytics well.

You may not be “public facing” or feel analytics is not “mission critical” or throw any other cliche out, but I cannot think of a solid reason why you wouldn’t want to be tracking everything from day 0. Keep your stats private if you want, but make sure you are collecting them in the first place.

There is no such thing as back tracking stats you didn’t collect.

Download the New Google Analytics Desktop Wallpapers!! (tipsblogger.com)
Import your Google Analytics Goals into AdWords and use them with Conversion Optimizer (adwords.blogspot.com)

google, Google Analytics, ROI

This post was written by:

Eric Friedman - who has written 671 posts on Eric Friedman – Marketing.fm.

Directof of Client Services at Foursquare - formerly the analyst at Union Square Ventures, blogger at www.marketing.fm You should follow me on twitter @EricFriedman

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View Comments to “Analytics Matters”

dherman76 Says:
June 30th, 2009 at 1:12 pm

Great post Eric. Collecting stats/data from day 1 is extremely important. Different people look can look at the same data set and extrapolate different meanings as illustrated above and you never know when you're going to need to look under the hood at the data sets.

Google Analytics is a good free place to start and there are additional services you can add to dive deeper into certain areas of the data.

EricFriedman Says:
June 30th, 2009 at 1:15 pm

Exactly. It helps present a picture that different people interpret
differently. Looking at the datasets becomes important <24 hours after you
start collecting it, and only grows in importance as you collect data over
time.

GA is one free start, but there are many many more great options.

dherman76 Says:
June 30th, 2009 at 1:19 pm

I think there is opportunity to overlay “models in a box” on top of data sets to help predict. The one issue about data is that it's historical and people don't know how to action it. While I know you can't predict the future accurately, there are ways to look at data and forecast what is going to happen. Is there opportunity there for someone to create a solution?

Spencer Fry Says:
June 30th, 2009 at 9:09 pm

I'm not trying to self promote. This is merely a suggestion to any website owner out there. We allow all of our users to install their own Google Analytics code directly into their portfolio and it's worked out fantastically well. It's one of our most talked about features. I'm really surprised that I don't see more websites allowing that. I'd love to be able to hook in Google Analytics to my Twitter and Facebook accounts, for instance.

EricFriedman Says:
July 1st, 2009 at 9:00 am

I think more folks are starting to get out of the way of analytics providers
and let people bring in their own code. Then again some companies do not
have any tracking themselves so who knows where this will net out. It is
definitely a cool feature that is worth talking about.

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July 16th, 2009 at 5:54 am

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dherman76 Says:
June 30th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Great post Eric. Collecting stats/data from day 1 is extremely important. Different people look can look at the same data set and extrapolate different meanings as illustrated above and you never know when you're going to need to look under the hood at the data sets.

Google Analytics is a good free place to start and there are additional services you can add to dive deeper into certain areas of the data.
EricFriedman Says:
June 30th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Exactly. It helps present a picture that different people interpret
differently. Looking at the datasets becomes important <24 hours after you
start collecting it, and only grows in importance as you collect data over
time.

GA is one free start, but there are many many more great options.
dherman76 Says:
June 30th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I think there is opportunity to overlay “models in a box” on top of data sets to help predict. The one issue about data is that it's historical and people don't know how to action it. While I know you can't predict the future accurately, there are ways to look at data and forecast what is going to happen. Is there opportunity there for someone to create a solution?

D
Spencer Fry Says:
June 30th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
I'm not trying to self promote. This is merely a suggestion to any website owner out there. We allow all of our users to install their own Google Analytics code directly into their portfolio and it's worked out fantastically well. It's one of our most talked about features. I'm really surprised that I don't see more websites allowing that. I'd love to be able to hook in Google Analytics to my Twitter and Facebook accounts, for instance.
EricFriedman Says:
July 1st, 2009 at 9:00 am
I think more folks are starting to get out of the way of analytics providers
and let people bring in their own code. Then again some companies do not
have any tracking themselves so who knows where this will net out. It is
definitely a cool feature that is worth talking about.
huangqin Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 5:54 am
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Eric Friedman – Marketing.fm