Web Analytics & Tracking

Framework for Success

The numbers don’t work anymore

So we’ll have to use the words people use instead. By focusing on the visitor, we can improve results regardless of the stats. They will improve.

What we can’t do is use stats to make decisions.

Crucial to understand

Knowing IF it is working, is different to knowing WHAT is working.

• The first question is whether we are getting revenue
• The better use of stats is when you know WHAT works and how to get more – that’s actionable data.

We no longer trust what we see in analytics software!

Truly actionable data is now obscured and hidden behind meaningless web statistics.

But all is not lost, there is plenty to be done to improve performance.

Web analytics broke

Marketing and Web Analytics have been a fundamental requirement for growth in web marketing projects. But web analytics is increasingly murky water.

Websites are 80% search, and it is search statistics that are most broken.

Our view is that whatever you do, don’t give Google an idea of what clicks are worth to you – it will result in higher click costs.

What’s the problem?

Fundamentally, if you bought a kg of flour, and what you actually got was a different weight every week, then you now understand Google keywords. We get something different every week even though the ‘ticket’ looks the same.

And you don’t know which week was responsible for the revenue.

So why did Google remove the data?

We hazard a few guesses. The majority revolve around them extracting more money for less value.

Anyone who operates on behalf of clients is now in a battle to extract value. Ergo, we can’t rely on their stats. A healthy suspicion is now required.

1. They need us to pay for more clicks,

We followed recent monopoly-oriented court cases against Google in the U.S. and feel vindicated about Google’s ‘black box’ tactics. Our logic is that if knowing the value might prevent us from paying for more clicks, then Google Analytics will no longer show us the value.

Worse click performance is perversely more profitable for the search engines. Capitalism is now eating itself.

2. Marketing 101: competition destroys value.

When everyone begins to know what works, more people join in. However, when there is more competition, the value diminishes. The Tragedy of the Commons is the concept.

the more people who know what works, the less it works.

In the years when search grew exponentially, there was no need to squash the value for each participant. Now, there is less growth around, so by removing the ‘actual’ means of securing more value, it can be spread amongst fewer people.

Dang.

How this is playing out

In so many ways.

• We suffer through GA4, a barely penetrable system of event-based statistics.

• The search term denotes value, and those are increasingly hidden.

• The keyword used to be a consistent unit of measurement, but now tampered with and hidden.

• Conversions are now randomly attributed, and value is ‘shared’ amongst clicks which hides the value.

The best form of web analytics is now “call tracking”, which retains some of the original functionality of showing what converts.

If you don’t measure, then how can you improve?

We still have some controls left. We can shape campaigns in a way that allows you to compare the performance, which is time consuming but can be effective.

We have loads of other ways to improve the visitor experience.

Analyse the words, understand the audiences, and build content to serve them. Our weapon to improve results is to focus squarely on the visitor experience, with conversion in mind.

We have plenty to go at

We have a discovery process, with all our previous knowledge of what worked elsewhere. The most important thing is to know where to start. We furnish you with where that might be and why.