14 ms·

Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics

92 points by pcmaffey 3y ago

apolymath 3y ago
Can't scroll or read the article from my phone...
vpaulus 3y ago
Whatever it is about, I refused to read because of this silly scrolling/paginating
- notpushkin 3y ago
  Came to say exactly this. I can read it if I try hard enough to scroll exactly as the author intended, but it feels super weird.
  - floodle 3y ago
    Sometimes it scrolls down, sometimes it pages left. And if you want to go back using the browser you will have to click click click through each page!
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    I thought it was neat, but scrolling broke at page 4 so I had to use the widget along the left edge to get to page 5.
    - notpushkin 3y ago
      To the author: may I suggest you make page order vertical instead, so it is more natural to scroll; and maybe just use CSS scroll snapping to achieve the similar effect? (Also, when I scroll past the final page I don't want to be redirected to homepage automatically :-) The idea is neat, but the implementation is a bit too over-engineered and hard to use. Hope this helps change that! https://css-tricks.com/practical-css-scroll-snapping/ https://css-tricks.com/practical-css-scroll-snapping/
- firecall 3y ago
  What the actual heck is going on there! Maybe they should run some analytics and check the bounce rates!
  - posix86 3y ago
    gottem
- ale42 3y ago
  It was fine using the ← and → keys on my keyboard for page change. But it's a bit counter-intuitive...
- artyom 3y ago
  A case for not holding my scrollbar hostage
- posix86 3y ago
  Yeah idk what to do on mobile, and don't care enough
- pibefision 3y ago
  impossible to read and to follow the narrative
- intrasight 3y ago
  And reader is greyed. Literally and figuratively there nothing there. You didn't miss anything. The irony is not lost.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago
  damn, came to post same aside: what is this weird storybook/scrolling-in-all-directions UI
- ChoHag 3y ago
  [dead]
- isodev 3y ago
  I can’t even figure out how to open the article beyond the intro. There are some things websites can just leave to the browser.
- pcmaffey 3y ago
  *Update: I removed the pagination and scrolling effects. The entire post can be read on a single page now. (And I didn't need analytics to understand something wasn't working lol.)
  - didntcheck 3y ago
    But you did need user feedback, which analytics would help with
    - mplewis 3y ago
      User analytics would not have provided feedback in the form of "I don't like the scrolling on this site."
      - zen928 3y ago
        you can't interpolate user behavior on something that isn't used, but you can pretty quickly find the most affected groups to further remediate why that'd be the case it's been pretty disappointing recently reading comments around here and slowly building the understanding that resistance to these types of systems haven't come from old-school "freedom" driven mindsets that spot and call out patterns that obstruct user agency or security to enable a culture of accountability VS a slow crawl to glorifying luddism born from simple apprehension to understanding the use of any additional changes in how development is viewed today this discussion chain of "stats=bad actually." makes that distinction a little more clear
  - xg15 3y ago
    > (And I didn't need analytics to understand something wasn't working lol.) I mean, you did need feedback though - you read a comment on HN, which gave you the feedback, with upvotes on the comment indicating that it's probably an issue that more people care about. One significant difference is that the feedback was "active", though: Someone actively decided to write the comment and other people probably actively decided to upvote it. I fully agree that this is a way better way of feedback than effectively putting up hidden cameras everywhere and surveiling every step of your users without them knowing.
malfist 3y ago
Perhaps we shouldn't be taking advice on how to build better websites from an absolute garbage of a website from a usability perspective.
Veuxdo 3y ago
For those on mobile: scroll right (that is, swipe left) to read the article.
- giantrobot 3y ago
  Phew, good thing horizontal swipes aren't used for other functionality on mobile. Otherwise it would be an unusable mess of a design that is hard to read.
neovive 3y ago
Interesting thesis. When used as intended, web analytics should be only one input to an overall strategy -- not the sole driver for all decisions. But I can see how an organization with KPI's tied to web analytics will lose objectivity -- especially when someone's job performance is tied to the analytics. It's a slippery slope. I love this quote at the end: "Caring about quality is the heart of craftsmanship. Until you're hooked into those outcomes, micro-optimizing the individual parts is pointless." Perhaps, as we move towards a web dominated by AI agents, quality will supersede metrics.
kqr 3y ago
This sounds more like a case for using analytics intentionally, rather than abandoning it. Which is great! We should do more things intentionally. One of the reasons I wrote a Perl script to analyse my access logs was to find discussions of my content that I can learn from and participate in. Hard to do that without some sort of analytics!
josefresco 3y ago
I build websites for small business, and since the beginning have used Google Analytics. What used to be a valuable tool that I would eagerly tell my clients to utilize, has now become an overly complex nightmare I loathe to install and rarely recommend to my clients. I recently had a client ask to use StatCounter.com (my reaction: "they're still around?!?") and it was refreshingly simple, much like the original Google Analytics. I'm sure the new GA is super powerful, but most people just want to see how many "hits" they got, what content is most popular, and where the visitors came from. Google would do well with a simplified Analytics service just for small business. Once you go down the optimization route, if your Google Analytics isn't super valuable it's an easy bloat to eliminate.
- kybernetyk 3y ago
  I switched to plausible.io for my small business and couldn't be happier. Maybe take a look at them
- posix86 3y ago
  plausible imo is the way it should be. Embed the script, done. Bonus: No cookies & cookie banner. They even have instructions on how to circumvent adblockers.
  - bovermyer 3y ago
    Using a different analytics service misses the entire point of the article. The point is that we shouldn't be using analytics _at all_. I'm not sure if I agree with that or not yet - I have to think about it more. My gut says that's right.
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  Another vote for plausible here. After reading what you described, I thought that’s exactly what you need. It’s cheap, especially if you have a lot of sites. It tells me more than I need to know and is wonderful as far as page weight and performance.
- digitalengineer 3y ago
pphysch 3y ago
Retvrn to grepping access.log
xyzzy4747 3y ago
This is one of the most obnoxious websites I've ever seen. Why did they need to try to reinvent scrolling instead of just making their point?
- jklinger410 3y ago
  I love the groundbreaking UX /s Scrolling goes to the next page unless I want you to scroll to read, then it goes to the next page when you're done scrolling the content. Beautiful. Exactly why most sites don't do this. But it's special!
pcmaffey 3y ago
Thanks for all the constructive criticism on the pagination. It's an experiment I'm playing around with on my personal site (which is what they're for right?). Definitely sounds like I should have tested it on a few more devices, lol. Will work on a more readable view. In the meantime, a few helpers: - Scrolling "past" the end of the page will move to the next page. - Left arrow, Right arrow will nav back and forward. - On mobile, swiping will do the same. - Space and enter key will nav to the next page.
- andrewchilds 3y ago
  I have to hit right arrow anywhere from 2-4 times to nav forward; left arrow 3-5 times to nav back. Seems to be fine if I wait longer than a second or so after the page transition - otherwise I see a blue border around the edge of the tab. Anyway, as somebody that builds things with no trackers, I agree with you and appreciate you posting this! The one thing I want to know is if/when a page or website is picked up somewhere, I'd just like to see where the traffic came from so I can respond or engage with people. I find absolute traffic numbers, and most of the data you get from analytics tools a distraction and a net negative, especially given the privacy and performance issues that come with their JS.
- sebtron 3y ago
  In general, for a webpage that is mostly text I would like to be able to read it with a text-only browser (e.g. Reader View on Firefox). Having all the text on one page, or at least navigation links at the bottom, would really help. I am sure readers with disabilities (motion or vision impaired, for example) would appreciate this too!
- runako 3y ago
  Would also be cool if it worked with e.g. Safari's Reader view.
- jrochkind1 3y ago
  > Scrolling "past" the end of the page will move to the next page. Except when it doesn't, was my experience.
d_j_b 3y ago
I agree with the central point, that web analytics lacks rigor. But I don't think it's wholly true that the problem is that our own motivations cause our analysis to lack objectivity. I think the other reason the author gives is the really key one: analytics data tantalises us with the idea that it may be coherent, complete and realistic; in fact it is wildly diffuse and represents only a tiny slice of the lived experience of users. I wrote a post on a similar topic this week. https://mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/failing-to-visualise-web-analytics https://mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/failing-to-visualise-web...
vinaypai 3y ago
What a godawful page design. Who thought it was a good idea to break and article into pieces you have to swipe horizontally to scroll between and then also scroll vertically to see each page?
- capableweb 3y ago
  Apparently someone who calls themselves a "product engineer", whatever that means. Seems to be a personal website though, so some leeway should be given, although I also found it a bit annoying. Especially the part when you go beyond the article contents and gets sent to the "homepage", but scrolling back doesn't go back to the article contents anymore.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
astura 3y ago
Actual title should be "A case against scroll hijacking."
- eddythompson80 3y ago
  I’ll raise you one better I came across yesterday https://logz.io/learn/how-to-run-opentelemetry-demo-with-logz-io/ https://logz.io/learn/how-to-run-opentelemetry-demo-with-log... If it’s not obvious, try scrolling a bit then try to go back to this page
  - guitarbill 3y ago
    OMG WTF. When parent says "a bit", do a tiny amount of scrolling, or open it in a new tab. That behaviour is downright malicious.
  - astura 3y ago
    Did they erase my browser history?
    - eddythompson80 3y ago
      Just burn your browser and get a new one. I was trying to look up what instrumentation with OTLP looks like and got so much rage yesterday I had to quit and do something else.
CrzyLngPwd 3y ago
When google analytics ended for the version I was using I switched it off from my 21m pageviews per month web site. I now only focus on the metrics that count for me and my business, and I already have that data in my database. Beyond that, Cloudflare gives me some extra data, which I really don't need but is fun to marvel at from time to time.
gfodor 3y ago
I don't get it - it is a nice sentiment, but the crux of the argument seems to "go with your gut." The reason web analytics has been so popular is that you can actually improve your product significantly without as much subjectivity. Before web analytics, going with your gut was the only option. It turns out, threading events through a funnel that show you lost 90% of your users because your button doesn't show up on certain screen sizes is a meaningful capability. The question from there is how far do you go with it, but I don't think it makes any sense to both reject it and go on to propose such a fuzzy, underdefined alternative as "you'll gain intuition about if you're making connections." Having built a number of apps, I don't know how to gain such intution once the userbase becomes too large to interact with directly enough to grok it. It's very easy to be fooled by a vocal minority of people who complain about your app sucking when the majority are getting value from it. Without data and analytics, it's easy to be pushed around by your most vocal users, because your gut is saying you should listen to them. Sometimes you should, sometimes you shouldn't, but the difference between the two can often be determined by looking at the data to get a bigger, less biased picture of what is actually going on with your app.
- awavering 3y ago
  Absolutely, and a good reminder that your web analytics is only one source of data you can use when making decisions. Sites and apps generate so much interesting quantitative and qualitative information that is important to compare and validate assumptions.
- mighmi 3y ago
  I've personally never been in a situation where analytics drove change. Even mere A/B testing seems like a ghost in (most?) organizations, where management or designers decide to force through their personal preferences. That said, I would love to join such an organization. Any suggestions on where to find data driven jobs?
  - dstroot 3y ago
    > Any suggestions where to find data driven jobs? My experiences suggest a large measure of caution. Many organizations describe themselves as data-driven and many actually do try. However humans are humans and many will be “data driven” when it aligns with what they want to do, otherwise it’s off for “more data” or a “new perspective”. In other words sometimes data driven means use data when it supports my already staked out position. I hate to be so cynical but I can’t help it.
LaGrange 3y ago
> I have a theory about why businesses lose their soul as they grow. sighs deeply https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Cap...
awavering 3y ago
Articles like this always seem to miss the ways that the big analytics platforms are used in real life by marketing and product teams. If all you are doing is measuring page hits, then Google Analytics is overkill and you should be using one of the privacy focused alternatives. However, if you care about connecting your marketing tactics to larger strategic goals and measuring the impact of your work, a properly configured analytics stack is still really important. I really like https://www.portent.com/onetrick/ https://www.portent.com/onetrick/ for anyone looking for an intro to how analytics enhances marketing work.
kraig911 3y ago
Uhh it's a messed up site. I think they need some analytics lol. That said I feel like so much of analytics this day and age are measuring what we want instead of accurately measuring. In the mess of data we generating conforms already to an existing belief. Everywhere I've worked a product guy or a ux person has an idea and makes use of analytics to prove their point and for some reason their point is always proven... I think analytics are like damned statistics.
esdott 3y ago
This site needs analytics if not just to see how much trouble (abandonment) the page scrolling issues cause.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
consoomer 3y ago
I'm not even sure what I just read. I thought it was going to explain why they don't use any analytics anymore and all I got as a 10,000 foot answer that could be summarized as, "Well, because!" I don't use analytics on any of my services simply because I don't like analytics and people tracking me, so why would I do it to others? Does it mean I don't track my business metrics? No. I still measure general conversion rates from sign up to payers. I measure things like sign ups per-month. You don't need analytics to track that. Basic metrics combined with a "CHANGELOG" file with dates/releases/fixes is plenty for my solo business. Want to know what I did in January to spike sign ups or more payers? Look at my change log.
- masswerk 3y ago
  As I understood it, the idea is that analytics are the wrong answer, or rather, if they are an answer, at all, you're asking the wrong questions. Which I, in turn, interpret as a signal for more opinionated approaches. (Meaning, if you follow these kind of metrics closely, you may actually miss crucial opportunities, as these will always bind you to the perceived mainstream. Moreover, these analytics are still sparse and there may be hidden variables. E.g, you may have changed something in January, but what happened else in January, elsewhere, which may have had some impact? Finally, these metrics are always about intermediate goals and partial results, but never about the entire product or mission. Metrics for these are found elsewhere.) Disclaimer: I abandoned all analytics for my own projects some years ago, and I do not miss anything. So I may be somewhat sympathetic to this.
julianeon 3y ago
If you don't have any analytics, then how do you know your audience size? Is it 10 people per month? 1000 people? 1,000,000 people? No offense but I can't accept "it doesn't matter."
- barnabee 3y ago
  Vanity metric. The only thing you need to know is how many people paid for your product.
  - boredemployee 3y ago
    While audience alone is vanity metric, "how many people paid for your product" isn't the only metric that matters.
  - julianeon 3y ago
    How many people bounced off your page without buying anything? Was it 90%? 99%? 99.99%? You can't optimize for stuff like that, and improve conversion, without that data.
rambambram 3y ago
For my no-code website package I built a simple non-tracking analytics tool (I'd rather call it 'visitor stats') and I definitely like to see what language my visitors use on their machine (guesswork for where they might come from), what screen size they have (on all my sites it's steadily more mobile than desktop, which is to be expected nowadays but was an eye-opener for me when I got back as a webdev a couple of years ago), what referring sites they come from and which pages are most visited. For me personally, the visitor stats of my own websites are a little bit as 'likes' on social media (nice to have for a general idea about my content being liked), but then without big tech in between.
araes 3y ago
I totally thought this was going to be a different article on phantom clicks or botnet visitors. Been thinking about that case lately, and it makes a much better argument for me in terms of analytics. I realized that from my own perspective as a private citizen, I'm not sure if there's any way to prove that Google and Facebook are not falsifying my clicks. I face such an information disparity in bargaining. I literally depend on the company for the tools to monitor the company. "How many people downloaded my app? Arbitrary." Its a bit like trying to win against the NSA inside America, except they can already listen to every phone line (still finding stuff, yet another NSA leak today). It's just too easily Machiavellian. "We've got so many new user signups, and they all love your videos...post more content like that. All the rest of you are failures, because we can just bury your content and you'll never know."
marcopicentini 3y ago
Agree. I turned off any analytics and all 3rd party tracking. Found this you can avoid cookie banner. I only track internal product success metrics and occasionally gather feedback from phone support. You get totally better perspective talking to users. Analyzing data is limited because you don’t the user mind when is looking for something or clicking.
sakesun 3y ago
Such a neat website.
xg15 3y ago
Yeah, I don't know. I don't like ads and tracking either, but this post just seems to argue to throw them away without any kind of replacement. I can kinda agree with the section describing all the problems with tracking, but there is not really an alternative approach presented. The last paragraphs through in lots of buzzwords and lofty ambitions ("holistic approach") but don't give any indication how to realize those except for "go by your feelings". I consider myself a good developer with useful debugging skills. I often "went by my feelings" when trying to find the root cause of a bug - however, to be able to do that, I need some information about the program and usually some way to interact and test hypotheses. If I've gathered enough information like this, then I can use experience to make educated guesses about what is going wrong. Likewise, in the "real world", we always have a minimum of observable feedback that helps us judge our own actions: How people react to what we do, their body language, etc. This is true both for individuals and for businesses: If you run a small corner store, you'll also be able to get a rough measure of success of your store just by watching how many people make come in and how many it to the counter. In contrast, on the internet, there is, by default, no feedback at all - if you make a website and upload it to a server somewhere, it's more like running a radio station: Talking to the void, not knowing if hapf the city is listening, or only a handful or no one at all So in order to get any information about whether what you are doing makes any sense, you need feedback. I don't think intrusive tracking and surveillance is the only way to get feedback though. I think very basic analytics, such as counting the page hits, referral and "user journey" throughout your site are ok - those aren't very different from counting customers in a physical store. For more detailed information, I think there should be more approaches to gather active feedback - i.e. give users a way to leave a message, point out issues they see themselves, etc. It used to be hard to analyse this kind of written feedback at scale, but maybe LLMs could help with that in the future.

92 points by pcmaffey 3y ago

apolymath 3y ago

Can't scroll or read the article from my phone...

vpaulus 3y ago

Whatever it is about, I refused to read because of this silly scrolling/paginating

notpushkin 3y ago
Came to say exactly this. I can read it if I try hard enough to scroll exactly as the author intended, but it feels super weird.
- floodle 3y ago
  Sometimes it scrolls down, sometimes it pages left. And if you want to go back using the browser you will have to click click click through each page!
- CharlesW 3y ago
  I thought it was neat, but scrolling broke at page 4 so I had to use the widget along the left edge to get to page 5.
  - notpushkin 3y ago
    To the author: may I suggest you make page order vertical instead, so it is more natural to scroll; and maybe just use CSS scroll snapping to achieve the similar effect? (Also, when I scroll past the final page I don't want to be redirected to homepage automatically :-) The idea is neat, but the implementation is a bit too over-engineered and hard to use. Hope this helps change that! https://css-tricks.com/practical-css-scroll-snapping/ https://css-tricks.com/practical-css-scroll-snapping/
firecall 3y ago
What the actual heck is going on there! Maybe they should run some analytics and check the bounce rates!
- posix86 3y ago
  gottem
ale42 3y ago
It was fine using the ← and → keys on my keyboard for page change. But it's a bit counter-intuitive...
artyom 3y ago
A case for not holding my scrollbar hostage
posix86 3y ago
Yeah idk what to do on mobile, and don't care enough
pibefision 3y ago
impossible to read and to follow the narrative
intrasight 3y ago
And reader is greyed. Literally and figuratively there nothing there. You didn't miss anything. The irony is not lost.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
damn, came to post same aside: what is this weird storybook/scrolling-in-all-directions UI
ChoHag 3y ago
[dead]
isodev 3y ago
I can’t even figure out how to open the article beyond the intro. There are some things websites can just leave to the browser.
pcmaffey 3y ago
*Update: I removed the pagination and scrolling effects. The entire post can be read on a single page now. (And I didn't need analytics to understand something wasn't working lol.)
- didntcheck 3y ago
  But you did need user feedback, which analytics would help with
  - mplewis 3y ago
    User analytics would not have provided feedback in the form of "I don't like the scrolling on this site."
    - zen928 3y ago
      you can't interpolate user behavior on something that isn't used, but you can pretty quickly find the most affected groups to further remediate why that'd be the case it's been pretty disappointing recently reading comments around here and slowly building the understanding that resistance to these types of systems haven't come from old-school "freedom" driven mindsets that spot and call out patterns that obstruct user agency or security to enable a culture of accountability VS a slow crawl to glorifying luddism born from simple apprehension to understanding the use of any additional changes in how development is viewed today this discussion chain of "stats=bad actually." makes that distinction a little more clear
- xg15 3y ago
  > (And I didn't need analytics to understand something wasn't working lol.) I mean, you did need feedback though - you read a comment on HN, which gave you the feedback, with upvotes on the comment indicating that it's probably an issue that more people care about. One significant difference is that the feedback was "active", though: Someone actively decided to write the comment and other people probably actively decided to upvote it. I fully agree that this is a way better way of feedback than effectively putting up hidden cameras everywhere and surveiling every step of your users without them knowing.

malfist 3y ago

Perhaps we shouldn't be taking advice on how to build better websites from an absolute garbage of a website from a usability perspective.

Veuxdo 3y ago

For those on mobile: scroll right (that is, swipe left) to read the article.

giantrobot 3y ago
Phew, good thing horizontal swipes aren't used for other functionality on mobile. Otherwise it would be an unusable mess of a design that is hard to read.

neovive 3y ago

Interesting thesis. When used as intended, web analytics should be only one input to an overall strategy -- not the sole driver for all decisions. But I can see how an organization with KPI's tied to web analytics will lose objectivity -- especially when someone's job performance is tied to the analytics. It's a slippery slope. I love this quote at the end: "Caring about quality is the heart of craftsmanship. Until you're hooked into those outcomes, micro-optimizing the individual parts is pointless." Perhaps, as we move towards a web dominated by AI agents, quality will supersede metrics.

kqr 3y ago

This sounds more like a case for using analytics intentionally, rather than abandoning it. Which is great! We should do more things intentionally. One of the reasons I wrote a Perl script to analyse my access logs was to find discussions of my content that I can learn from and participate in. Hard to do that without some sort of analytics!

josefresco 3y ago

I build websites for small business, and since the beginning have used Google Analytics. What used to be a valuable tool that I would eagerly tell my clients to utilize, has now become an overly complex nightmare I loathe to install and rarely recommend to my clients. I recently had a client ask to use StatCounter.com (my reaction: "they're still around?!?") and it was refreshingly simple, much like the original Google Analytics. I'm sure the new GA is super powerful, but most people just want to see how many "hits" they got, what content is most popular, and where the visitors came from. Google would do well with a simplified Analytics service just for small business. Once you go down the optimization route, if your Google Analytics isn't super valuable it's an easy bloat to eliminate.

kybernetyk 3y ago
I switched to plausible.io for my small business and couldn't be happier. Maybe take a look at them
posix86 3y ago
plausible imo is the way it should be. Embed the script, done. Bonus: No cookies & cookie banner. They even have instructions on how to circumvent adblockers.
- bovermyer 3y ago
  Using a different analytics service misses the entire point of the article. The point is that we shouldn't be using analytics _at all_. I'm not sure if I agree with that or not yet - I have to think about it more. My gut says that's right.
steve_adams_86 3y ago
Another vote for plausible here. After reading what you described, I thought that’s exactly what you need. It’s cheap, especially if you have a lot of sites. It tells me more than I need to know and is wonderful as far as page weight and performance.
digitalengineer 3y ago

pphysch 3y ago

Retvrn to grepping access.log

xyzzy4747 3y ago

This is one of the most obnoxious websites I've ever seen. Why did they need to try to reinvent scrolling instead of just making their point?

jklinger410 3y ago
I love the groundbreaking UX /s Scrolling goes to the next page unless I want you to scroll to read, then it goes to the next page when you're done scrolling the content. Beautiful. Exactly why most sites don't do this. But it's special!

pcmaffey 3y ago

Thanks for all the constructive criticism on the pagination. It's an experiment I'm playing around with on my personal site (which is what they're for right?). Definitely sounds like I should have tested it on a few more devices, lol. Will work on a more readable view. In the meantime, a few helpers: - Scrolling "past" the end of the page will move to the next page. - Left arrow, Right arrow will nav back and forward. - On mobile, swiping will do the same. - Space and enter key will nav to the next page.

andrewchilds 3y ago
I have to hit right arrow anywhere from 2-4 times to nav forward; left arrow 3-5 times to nav back. Seems to be fine if I wait longer than a second or so after the page transition - otherwise I see a blue border around the edge of the tab. Anyway, as somebody that builds things with no trackers, I agree with you and appreciate you posting this! The one thing I want to know is if/when a page or website is picked up somewhere, I'd just like to see where the traffic came from so I can respond or engage with people. I find absolute traffic numbers, and most of the data you get from analytics tools a distraction and a net negative, especially given the privacy and performance issues that come with their JS.
sebtron 3y ago
In general, for a webpage that is mostly text I would like to be able to read it with a text-only browser (e.g. Reader View on Firefox). Having all the text on one page, or at least navigation links at the bottom, would really help. I am sure readers with disabilities (motion or vision impaired, for example) would appreciate this too!
runako 3y ago
Would also be cool if it worked with e.g. Safari's Reader view.
jrochkind1 3y ago
> Scrolling "past" the end of the page will move to the next page. Except when it doesn't, was my experience.

d_j_b 3y ago

I agree with the central point, that web analytics lacks rigor. But I don't think it's wholly true that the problem is that our own motivations cause our analysis to lack objectivity. I think the other reason the author gives is the really key one: analytics data tantalises us with the idea that it may be coherent, complete and realistic; in fact it is wildly diffuse and represents only a tiny slice of the lived experience of users. I wrote a post on a similar topic this week. https://mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/failing-to-visualise-web-analytics https://mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/failing-to-visualise-web...

vinaypai 3y ago

What a godawful page design. Who thought it was a good idea to break and article into pieces you have to swipe horizontally to scroll between and then also scroll vertically to see each page?

capableweb 3y ago
Apparently someone who calls themselves a "product engineer", whatever that means. Seems to be a personal website though, so some leeway should be given, although I also found it a bit annoying. Especially the part when you go beyond the article contents and gets sent to the "homepage", but scrolling back doesn't go back to the article contents anymore.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

astura 3y ago

Actual title should be "A case against scroll hijacking."

eddythompson80 3y ago
I’ll raise you one better I came across yesterday https://logz.io/learn/how-to-run-opentelemetry-demo-with-logz-io/ https://logz.io/learn/how-to-run-opentelemetry-demo-with-log... If it’s not obvious, try scrolling a bit then try to go back to this page
- guitarbill 3y ago
  OMG WTF. When parent says "a bit", do a tiny amount of scrolling, or open it in a new tab. That behaviour is downright malicious.
- astura 3y ago
  Did they erase my browser history?
  - eddythompson80 3y ago
    Just burn your browser and get a new one. I was trying to look up what instrumentation with OTLP looks like and got so much rage yesterday I had to quit and do something else.

CrzyLngPwd 3y ago

When google analytics ended for the version I was using I switched it off from my 21m pageviews per month web site. I now only focus on the metrics that count for me and my business, and I already have that data in my database. Beyond that, Cloudflare gives me some extra data, which I really don't need but is fun to marvel at from time to time.

gfodor 3y ago

I don't get it - it is a nice sentiment, but the crux of the argument seems to "go with your gut." The reason web analytics has been so popular is that you can actually improve your product significantly without as much subjectivity. Before web analytics, going with your gut was the only option. It turns out, threading events through a funnel that show you lost 90% of your users because your button doesn't show up on certain screen sizes is a meaningful capability. The question from there is how far do you go with it, but I don't think it makes any sense to both reject it and go on to propose such a fuzzy, underdefined alternative as "you'll gain intuition about if you're making connections." Having built a number of apps, I don't know how to gain such intution once the userbase becomes too large to interact with directly enough to grok it. It's very easy to be fooled by a vocal minority of people who complain about your app sucking when the majority are getting value from it. Without data and analytics, it's easy to be pushed around by your most vocal users, because your gut is saying you should listen to them. Sometimes you should, sometimes you shouldn't, but the difference between the two can often be determined by looking at the data to get a bigger, less biased picture of what is actually going on with your app.

awavering 3y ago
Absolutely, and a good reminder that your web analytics is only one source of data you can use when making decisions. Sites and apps generate so much interesting quantitative and qualitative information that is important to compare and validate assumptions.
mighmi 3y ago
I've personally never been in a situation where analytics drove change. Even mere A/B testing seems like a ghost in (most?) organizations, where management or designers decide to force through their personal preferences. That said, I would love to join such an organization. Any suggestions on where to find data driven jobs?
- dstroot 3y ago
  > Any suggestions where to find data driven jobs? My experiences suggest a large measure of caution. Many organizations describe themselves as data-driven and many actually do try. However humans are humans and many will be “data driven” when it aligns with what they want to do, otherwise it’s off for “more data” or a “new perspective”. In other words sometimes data driven means use data when it supports my already staked out position. I hate to be so cynical but I can’t help it.

LaGrange 3y ago

> I have a theory about why businesses lose their soul as they grow. sighs deeply https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Cap...

awavering 3y ago

Articles like this always seem to miss the ways that the big analytics platforms are used in real life by marketing and product teams. If all you are doing is measuring page hits, then Google Analytics is overkill and you should be using one of the privacy focused alternatives. However, if you care about connecting your marketing tactics to larger strategic goals and measuring the impact of your work, a properly configured analytics stack is still really important. I really like https://www.portent.com/onetrick/ https://www.portent.com/onetrick/ for anyone looking for an intro to how analytics enhances marketing work.

kraig911 3y ago

Uhh it's a messed up site. I think they need some analytics lol. That said I feel like so much of analytics this day and age are measuring what we want instead of accurately measuring. In the mess of data we generating conforms already to an existing belief. Everywhere I've worked a product guy or a ux person has an idea and makes use of analytics to prove their point and for some reason their point is always proven... I think analytics are like damned statistics.

esdott 3y ago

This site needs analytics if not just to see how much trouble (abandonment) the page scrolling issues cause.

deleted 3y ago

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consoomer 3y ago

I'm not even sure what I just read. I thought it was going to explain why they don't use any analytics anymore and all I got as a 10,000 foot answer that could be summarized as, "Well, because!" I don't use analytics on any of my services simply because I don't like analytics and people tracking me, so why would I do it to others? Does it mean I don't track my business metrics? No. I still measure general conversion rates from sign up to payers. I measure things like sign ups per-month. You don't need analytics to track that. Basic metrics combined with a "CHANGELOG" file with dates/releases/fixes is plenty for my solo business. Want to know what I did in January to spike sign ups or more payers? Look at my change log.

masswerk 3y ago
As I understood it, the idea is that analytics are the wrong answer, or rather, if they are an answer, at all, you're asking the wrong questions. Which I, in turn, interpret as a signal for more opinionated approaches. (Meaning, if you follow these kind of metrics closely, you may actually miss crucial opportunities, as these will always bind you to the perceived mainstream. Moreover, these analytics are still sparse and there may be hidden variables. E.g, you may have changed something in January, but what happened else in January, elsewhere, which may have had some impact? Finally, these metrics are always about intermediate goals and partial results, but never about the entire product or mission. Metrics for these are found elsewhere.) Disclaimer: I abandoned all analytics for my own projects some years ago, and I do not miss anything. So I may be somewhat sympathetic to this.

julianeon 3y ago

If you don't have any analytics, then how do you know your audience size? Is it 10 people per month? 1000 people? 1,000,000 people? No offense but I can't accept "it doesn't matter."

barnabee 3y ago
Vanity metric. The only thing you need to know is how many people paid for your product.
- boredemployee 3y ago
  While audience alone is vanity metric, "how many people paid for your product" isn't the only metric that matters.
- julianeon 3y ago
  How many people bounced off your page without buying anything? Was it 90%? 99%? 99.99%? You can't optimize for stuff like that, and improve conversion, without that data.

rambambram 3y ago

For my no-code website package I built a simple non-tracking analytics tool (I'd rather call it 'visitor stats') and I definitely like to see what language my visitors use on their machine (guesswork for where they might come from), what screen size they have (on all my sites it's steadily more mobile than desktop, which is to be expected nowadays but was an eye-opener for me when I got back as a webdev a couple of years ago), what referring sites they come from and which pages are most visited. For me personally, the visitor stats of my own websites are a little bit as 'likes' on social media (nice to have for a general idea about my content being liked), but then without big tech in between.

araes 3y ago

I totally thought this was going to be a different article on phantom clicks or botnet visitors. Been thinking about that case lately, and it makes a much better argument for me in terms of analytics. I realized that from my own perspective as a private citizen, I'm not sure if there's any way to prove that Google and Facebook are not falsifying my clicks. I face such an information disparity in bargaining. I literally depend on the company for the tools to monitor the company. "How many people downloaded my app? Arbitrary." Its a bit like trying to win against the NSA inside America, except they can already listen to every phone line (still finding stuff, yet another NSA leak today). It's just too easily Machiavellian. "We've got so many new user signups, and they all love your videos...post more content like that. All the rest of you are failures, because we can just bury your content and you'll never know."

marcopicentini 3y ago

Agree. I turned off any analytics and all 3rd party tracking. Found this you can avoid cookie banner. I only track internal product success metrics and occasionally gather feedback from phone support. You get totally better perspective talking to users. Analyzing data is limited because you don’t the user mind when is looking for something or clicking.

sakesun 3y ago

Such a neat website.

xg15 3y ago

Yeah, I don't know. I don't like ads and tracking either, but this post just seems to argue to throw them away without any kind of replacement. I can kinda agree with the section describing all the problems with tracking, but there is not really an alternative approach presented. The last paragraphs through in lots of buzzwords and lofty ambitions ("holistic approach") but don't give any indication how to realize those except for "go by your feelings". I consider myself a good developer with useful debugging skills. I often "went by my feelings" when trying to find the root cause of a bug - however, to be able to do that, I need some information about the program and usually some way to interact and test hypotheses. If I've gathered enough information like this, then I can use experience to make educated guesses about what is going wrong. Likewise, in the "real world", we always have a minimum of observable feedback that helps us judge our own actions: How people react to what we do, their body language, etc. This is true both for individuals and for businesses: If you run a small corner store, you'll also be able to get a rough measure of success of your store just by watching how many people make come in and how many it to the counter. In contrast, on the internet, there is, by default, no feedback at all - if you make a website and upload it to a server somewhere, it's more like running a radio station: Talking to the void, not knowing if hapf the city is listening, or only a handful or no one at all So in order to get any information about whether what you are doing makes any sense, you need feedback. I don't think intrusive tracking and surveillance is the only way to get feedback though. I think very basic analytics, such as counting the page hits, referral and "user journey" throughout your site are ok - those aren't very different from counting customers in a physical store. For more detailed information, I think there should be more approaches to gather active feedback - i.e. give users a way to leave a message, point out issues they see themselves, etc. It used to be hard to analyse this kind of written feedback at scale, but maybe LLMs could help with that in the future.