9 ms·

Sorry to say, but without analytics and campaign analytics, you probably don't know what your user want or need. I don't like the analytics auto hate behavior.

by yonixw 6y ago

Sorry to say, but without analytics and campaign analytics, you probably don't know what your user want or need. I don't like the analytics auto hate behavior. Edit: I don't justify google and facebook wrongdoing in the past and present. But to hate on those who are (forced) using them and calling to remove them from the website is not helping without an alternative. It will surly take a toll on your digital presence. Showing better alternatives is the way to go.

iamacyborg 6y ago
Analytics are fine, the problem is analytics without consent.
6nf 6y ago
You can collect analytics yourself, no Google needed.
- yonixw 6y ago
  Not ads insight which are crucial in digital marketing.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    Ad insight can be done on your end by having each ad campaign redirect to your website with a "campaign ID" URL parameter, and you can measure the click/conversion rate by seeing how many people arrive on your site with each campaign ID.
- YetAnotherNick 6y ago
  Why do you think it increases user's privacy? I don't think Google uses analytics data for tracking the user.
  - minerjoe 6y ago
    Think again.
  - pengaru 6y ago
    > Why do you think it increases user's privacy? I don't think Google uses analytics data for tracking the user. You've got to be kidding
  - shawabawa3 6y ago
    It's expected when i got to a website that the owner of the website knows i've visited It's not expected that when I visit a website unrelated to google or facebook that they know about it
  - moooo99 6y ago
    Google uses every datapoint they get their hands on to track their users. No matter if its a share button, google analytics, youtube embed, custom search, gmail or any other Google product. They can and will use it to track the users.
    - throwaways885 6y ago
      Wrong. They do anonymously: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1011397?hl=en https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1011397?hl=en Turn this switch off and there's no tracking. Your data really isn't interesting enough to track.
      - Nextgrid 6y ago
        Why would you trust them though? Their whole business model is based on them knowing as much as possible about everyone so they can better target ads to them. Facebook also tried the promise of "trust us to not use your 2FA phone number for ads" and broke it with no/little ill effects, so there's no reason Google can't do the same. Building & running a service such as Google Analytics is not cheap so they wouldn't be giving it away for free unless they got something out of it.
        YetAnotherNick 6y ago
        Chrome and android has lot more data than analytics, and if you go that extent to assume Google is lying and using our data, it would be least of my issues of Google using analytics data for displaying ads. I also don't think such a sparse and context dependent data like analytics would help that much to Google for displaying ads. They just want time you spent doing what, which is already present with Google.
        Nextgrid 6y ago
        The two aren't mutually exclusive. They can use data both from GA as well as Chrome/Android. Ultimately, their business model relies on violating people's privacy and thus the safest course of action is to treat them as hostile and avoid them.
dakiol 6y ago
This is not true. One can make a product better without relying on analytics. Sure, it takes more time (and probably more skilled people) but it's possible. There are companies out there doing well without GA.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  GA is just one tool, and it’s not even the best one (though the better tools are often worse privacy-wise). But client side analytics will always be able to deliver UX insights that you’ll simply never be able to get any other way. If you had two equivalently skilled and resourced product teams, one would always be at a disadvantage to the other if only one of them was using client-side analytics tooling. That said, product teams that are actually good enough to gather and productively use that sort of data aren’t very common, so switching off client-side analytics probably wouldn’t make much difference to most organisations. Page hits and error stats can be pretty easy to make use of, but you can get that from server logs.
lawn 6y ago
Why is analytics synonymous with Google analytics?
- yonixw 6y ago
  Duopoly (Duo-monopoly) with Facebook Analytics.
  - toomanybeersies 6y ago
    More like duopoly with Adobe Analytics, at least among companies that invest in their analytics instead of just implementing GA or FB Analytics because they're free and never really use them. Adobe Analytics is enterprise grade though, and is usually only used by companies large enough to have their own analytics department or contract out to analytics consultants.
    - yonixw 6y ago
      This is a very limited solution. For instance, how can you track what search keywords showed your clicked ads on Google? The advertiser keep and will keep all the power (=all the context) to themselves exactly because of that reason.
- YetAnotherNick 6y ago
  Is there any difference in privacy from user's perspective if you use Google Analytics or self hosted? If any, the later is more prone to be hacked or misused than former and could not be easily blocked like Google's.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    I'd argue that yes, there is a difference between having lots of small data silos with private data and having one huge database that tracks complete behavior chains. I don't really care whether the bartender at my usual pub knows what I like to drink, but I would care if there were a global database tracking my drinking behavior.
  - 6y ago
orwin 6y ago
The article explain very well he is using Plausible analytics, that works without cookies or stocking strong PIs. https://plausible.io/data-policy https://plausible.io/data-policy
tannhaeuser 6y ago
There's no analytics hate per se; the problem is the centralization of all usage data at Google, and analytics without consent.
onion2k 6y ago
I don't like the analytics auto hate behavior. It's not "auto hate", it's 25 years experience of making web stuff. I used to track users. I can read Apache logs by sight alone. I was an Urchin stats user before Google bought them. I had hit counters. I realised a long time ago that massive data gathering didn't really help me. I had a ton of data and no idea what to do with it. If you launch a site and find the engagement time is 5.54s and users scroll 40% down the page before the bounce when they hit the site from a Google SERP for "my special page" that doesn't tell you why they left. That only tells you that they did. If you want to fix the problem you need to actually reach people and engage with them. To build what users want you need to actually talk to users. Maybe some people can get value out of GAnalytics data, but I reckon for most users it's "metrics theatre". They're randomly poking at their website and seeing if the numbers change. That's stupidly inefficient when you can just talk to some people instead and immediately know where the problems are because people will tell you if you ask. Oh boy, will they tell you. It's hard to make them stop.
- bbarnett 6y ago
  Often I try to help sites with more generic, borked issues. Your comment about "Oh boy, will they tell you" brought one to the fore. I sent the following to a site. Do you think I received a response? A reply? Either they don't actually read emails from customers, or they employ a person which became 'confused', and their eyes glazed over, once they failed to understand the message. (Note that I sent to about 5 email addresses. The one sent after I purchased the pillow, a website info, whois email addresses, and even took 2 minutes to find the CEO email address. Yup. No response from any of them. And more than 18 months later (I just checked), the SPF record remains unchanged.) I wonder. While metrics may be helpful, I wonder how many only pay attention to metrics, and then ignore emails such as mine. -- Hello, I'm terribly sorry, but unfortunately you've sold a pillow to a SysAdmin. And now that you've done something wrong "with computers", I'm going to prattle on whilst your eyes glaze over. :P But in all seriousness, I recently ordered a pillow from you. Yet your confirmation email bounced! Here's why: May 13 07:10:54 XXX postfix/smtpd[32163]: NOQUEUE: milter-reject: RCPT from smtp2.shopify.com[104.198.207.207]: 551 5.7.1 SPF verification failure: sender host 'smtp2.shopify.com'[104.198.207.207] not among explicitly allowed origin hosts for domain 'canadiandownandfeather.com', and misses are forbidden; REJECT; from=<info@canadiandownandfeather.com> to=<xxx> proto=ESMTP helo=<smtp2.shopify.com> What's happening, is your SPF record does not list Shopify email servers, as valid for your domain name canadiandownandfeather.com... You do have outlook.com there: canadiandownandfeather.com. 300 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all" But not Shopify. If fact, the "-all" part at the end means "and nothing else can send mail!". So, as you are telling people that outlook is the only acceptable place to send mail from? Until you fix this: - some mail server servers, like mine, will completely reject your mail from shopify's platform - almost all remaining mail servers, will place this type of mail in SPAM folders I must stress, that due to your 'outlook' line, normal email should work perfectly fine. We're only talking about email, using your domain, but from shopify's platform. If you go here: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/initial-setup/setup-business-settings#customer-email-best-practices https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/initial-... And search for "SPF record", you'll see this: -- To verify your customer email address, you need to add Shopify's SPF record — v=spf1 include:shops.shopify.com ~all — to the TXT record in your custom domain settings. -- Now.. you want to KEEP your outlook domain too. So, just add "include:shops.shopify.com" to your TXT record, so both are there.. something like this: "v=spf1 include:shops.shopify.com include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all" Do this, and your problem should be fixed. You can go here: https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=spf%3acanadiandownandfeather.com&run=toolpage https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=spf%3acanadiando... And check if things are done correctly. --
paulie_a 6y ago
It doesn't seem like even with analytics they know It just gives a false confidence in bullshit. Most internet analytics and the billions spent on data mining is all for naught.

by yonixw 6y ago

iamacyborg 6y ago

Analytics are fine, the problem is analytics without consent.

6nf 6y ago

You can collect analytics yourself, no Google needed.

yonixw 6y ago
Not ads insight which are crucial in digital marketing.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Ad insight can be done on your end by having each ad campaign redirect to your website with a "campaign ID" URL parameter, and you can measure the click/conversion rate by seeing how many people arrive on your site with each campaign ID.
YetAnotherNick 6y ago
Why do you think it increases user's privacy? I don't think Google uses analytics data for tracking the user.
- minerjoe 6y ago
  Think again.
- pengaru 6y ago
  > Why do you think it increases user's privacy? I don't think Google uses analytics data for tracking the user. You've got to be kidding
- shawabawa3 6y ago
  It's expected when i got to a website that the owner of the website knows i've visited It's not expected that when I visit a website unrelated to google or facebook that they know about it
- moooo99 6y ago
  Google uses every datapoint they get their hands on to track their users. No matter if its a share button, google analytics, youtube embed, custom search, gmail or any other Google product. They can and will use it to track the users.
  - throwaways885 6y ago
    Wrong. They do anonymously: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1011397?hl=en https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1011397?hl=en Turn this switch off and there's no tracking. Your data really isn't interesting enough to track.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      Why would you trust them though? Their whole business model is based on them knowing as much as possible about everyone so they can better target ads to them. Facebook also tried the promise of "trust us to not use your 2FA phone number for ads" and broke it with no/little ill effects, so there's no reason Google can't do the same. Building & running a service such as Google Analytics is not cheap so they wouldn't be giving it away for free unless they got something out of it.
      - YetAnotherNick 6y ago
        Chrome and android has lot more data than analytics, and if you go that extent to assume Google is lying and using our data, it would be least of my issues of Google using analytics data for displaying ads. I also don't think such a sparse and context dependent data like analytics would help that much to Google for displaying ads. They just want time you spent doing what, which is already present with Google.
        Nextgrid 6y ago
        The two aren't mutually exclusive. They can use data both from GA as well as Chrome/Android. Ultimately, their business model relies on violating people's privacy and thus the safest course of action is to treat them as hostile and avoid them.

dakiol 6y ago

This is not true. One can make a product better without relying on analytics. Sure, it takes more time (and probably more skilled people) but it's possible. There are companies out there doing well without GA.

AmericanChopper 6y ago
GA is just one tool, and it’s not even the best one (though the better tools are often worse privacy-wise). But client side analytics will always be able to deliver UX insights that you’ll simply never be able to get any other way. If you had two equivalently skilled and resourced product teams, one would always be at a disadvantage to the other if only one of them was using client-side analytics tooling. That said, product teams that are actually good enough to gather and productively use that sort of data aren’t very common, so switching off client-side analytics probably wouldn’t make much difference to most organisations. Page hits and error stats can be pretty easy to make use of, but you can get that from server logs.

lawn 6y ago

Why is analytics synonymous with Google analytics?

yonixw 6y ago
Duopoly (Duo-monopoly) with Facebook Analytics.
- toomanybeersies 6y ago
  More like duopoly with Adobe Analytics, at least among companies that invest in their analytics instead of just implementing GA or FB Analytics because they're free and never really use them. Adobe Analytics is enterprise grade though, and is usually only used by companies large enough to have their own analytics department or contract out to analytics consultants.
  - yonixw 6y ago
    This is a very limited solution. For instance, how can you track what search keywords showed your clicked ads on Google? The advertiser keep and will keep all the power (=all the context) to themselves exactly because of that reason.
YetAnotherNick 6y ago
Is there any difference in privacy from user's perspective if you use Google Analytics or self hosted? If any, the later is more prone to be hacked or misused than former and could not be easily blocked like Google's.
- adrianN 6y ago
  I'd argue that yes, there is a difference between having lots of small data silos with private data and having one huge database that tracks complete behavior chains. I don't really care whether the bartender at my usual pub knows what I like to drink, but I would care if there were a global database tracking my drinking behavior.
- 6y ago

orwin 6y ago

The article explain very well he is using Plausible analytics, that works without cookies or stocking strong PIs. https://plausible.io/data-policy https://plausible.io/data-policy

tannhaeuser 6y ago

There's no analytics hate per se; the problem is the centralization of all usage data at Google, and analytics without consent.

onion2k 6y ago

I don't like the analytics auto hate behavior. It's not "auto hate", it's 25 years experience of making web stuff. I used to track users. I can read Apache logs by sight alone. I was an Urchin stats user before Google bought them. I had hit counters. I realised a long time ago that massive data gathering didn't really help me. I had a ton of data and no idea what to do with it. If you launch a site and find the engagement time is 5.54s and users scroll 40% down the page before the bounce when they hit the site from a Google SERP for "my special page" that doesn't tell you why they left. That only tells you that they did. If you want to fix the problem you need to actually reach people and engage with them. To build what users want you need to actually talk to users. Maybe some people can get value out of GAnalytics data, but I reckon for most users it's "metrics theatre". They're randomly poking at their website and seeing if the numbers change. That's stupidly inefficient when you can just talk to some people instead and immediately know where the problems are because people will tell you if you ask. Oh boy, will they tell you. It's hard to make them stop.

bbarnett 6y ago
Often I try to help sites with more generic, borked issues. Your comment about "Oh boy, will they tell you" brought one to the fore. I sent the following to a site. Do you think I received a response? A reply? Either they don't actually read emails from customers, or they employ a person which became 'confused', and their eyes glazed over, once they failed to understand the message. (Note that I sent to about 5 email addresses. The one sent after I purchased the pillow, a website info, whois email addresses, and even took 2 minutes to find the CEO email address. Yup. No response from any of them. And more than 18 months later (I just checked), the SPF record remains unchanged.) I wonder. While metrics may be helpful, I wonder how many only pay attention to metrics, and then ignore emails such as mine. -- Hello, I'm terribly sorry, but unfortunately you've sold a pillow to a SysAdmin. And now that you've done something wrong "with computers", I'm going to prattle on whilst your eyes glaze over. :P But in all seriousness, I recently ordered a pillow from you. Yet your confirmation email bounced! Here's why: May 13 07:10:54 XXX postfix/smtpd[32163]: NOQUEUE: milter-reject: RCPT from smtp2.shopify.com[104.198.207.207]: 551 5.7.1 SPF verification failure: sender host 'smtp2.shopify.com'[104.198.207.207] not among explicitly allowed origin hosts for domain 'canadiandownandfeather.com', and misses are forbidden; REJECT; from=<info@canadiandownandfeather.com> to=<xxx> proto=ESMTP helo=<smtp2.shopify.com> What's happening, is your SPF record does not list Shopify email servers, as valid for your domain name canadiandownandfeather.com... You do have outlook.com there: canadiandownandfeather.com. 300 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all" But not Shopify. If fact, the "-all" part at the end means "and nothing else can send mail!". So, as you are telling people that outlook is the only acceptable place to send mail from? Until you fix this: - some mail server servers, like mine, will completely reject your mail from shopify's platform - almost all remaining mail servers, will place this type of mail in SPAM folders I must stress, that due to your 'outlook' line, normal email should work perfectly fine. We're only talking about email, using your domain, but from shopify's platform. If you go here: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/initial-setup/setup-business-settings#customer-email-best-practices https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/initial-... And search for "SPF record", you'll see this: -- To verify your customer email address, you need to add Shopify's SPF record — v=spf1 include:shops.shopify.com ~all — to the TXT record in your custom domain settings. -- Now.. you want to KEEP your outlook domain too. So, just add "include:shops.shopify.com" to your TXT record, so both are there.. something like this: "v=spf1 include:shops.shopify.com include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all" Do this, and your problem should be fixed. You can go here: https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=spf%3acanadiandownandfeather.com&run=toolpage https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=spf%3acanadiando... And check if things are done correctly. --

paulie_a 6y ago

It doesn't seem like even with analytics they know It just gives a false confidence in bullshit. Most internet analytics and the billions spent on data mining is all for naught.