I’m pretty principled. I block as much tracking as I can in my personal use of the web because what I do isn’t anyone’s business but my own. So, the idea that I have to put trackers on my site is pretty noxious to me, and I have thus far refused.
This isn’t an ad and I don’t want my personal account associated with my business, so no URLs, but I would like to know what you all think: is this something worthwhile that people will appreciate, or am I letting my principles guide me off a cliff because nobody cares that much?
Just going to semi-counter argument so this doesn’t feel like a circle jerk.
Analytics are there to help you refine you user flow paths and even refine verbiage to make the whole experience frictionless. With a GDPR style consent banner and a limited and deliberate analytics package you can better fine tune things. Even changing a single word in A/B testing can show results for you and your users. The goal is to make the entire experience as frictionless as possible. Not evil. Just serving the win-win.
Now to step back for a little perspective to counter my counter. Web properties are very mature these days and we all follow the selected patterns that are time tested. It’s not like the early days when we were trying this all out new and “clunky” was the best description. Unless your site is doing something unconventional on purpose with fundamentals like navigation, it’s probably not a big deal.
Edit: most companies drop in extensive premium analytics. Then once they know the newly deployed site is good, everyone forgets except for make work reporting to execs.
So often I write “elements that follow W3 patterns do not require additional explanation” to try and get people away from their bizarre unexplainable widget.
Do you know anybody that does A/B testing using analytics?
I’ve worked on backend stuff for companies large and small and I’ve never seen the analytics used outside of post-hoc rationalizations of changes that were already implemented
Yes. All the major analytics packages have functions specifically for A/B. Not everyone knows how, even fewer bother.
Do you know anybody that uses A/B testing to update their website design or content?
I know the tools can provide analytics to support this, but I’ve never seen anyone actually use the feature, except for
Like I’ve seen a/b used to justify a major website refresh that was going to be done anyway, but I’ve never seen it affect the design or wording.
Yes. The smartest clients I ever worked for would A/B individual words. They matter, a lot.
How much of a difference does company size make, when gauging the impact of individual words? Because it sounds like it’s a problem to spend millions on, when millions are a few percent of sales and fractions matter. Surely individual words aren’t the path from ~$100 monthly revenue to tens of thousands?
I’ve seen more than a few times a single word change A/B sales 1%/10000% of a category. Sure that means more the bigger you are, but you would be surprised how often words turn people on or off. They get confused
Anyone who has spent time doing ad copy levels of wordsmithing would probably understand. Imagine Nike’s creative dept saying Nike–Just do stuff. Words matter. Would the Squatty Potty sell as well if it were the Pooper Stooper?
Edit: most often the offending word was a turn off or confusing to people in a way that only became understood after the fact. Oh! That’s why. The right word usually removed barriers for client understanding. Sorry I can’t remember specifics atm.
Always appreciate the counterpoint - it is, after all, why I asked! I know I’m very particular about the things I’m particular about, and I know that’s not necessarily true of anyone else. You’re absolutely right about the utility, one thing my prior host’s stats showed was that of thousands of people who visited the front page, only a few dozen went anywhere else, and only 1 got to the checkout page.
The thing is though, I did kinda already know that people were bouncing off the front page; the numbers just showed it in concrete terms. I knew the site needed an overhaul and badly; not only was it not converting, I just wasn’t happy with it. On top of that, I’ve got only one product, with everything needed to purchase on a single page, so there’s not even really that much to track. And, as you say: I’m not doing anything unconventional. Another point against needing advanced tracking.
Thank you again for your comment, I really do appreciate you taking the time 🙏
Unless you have a reliable way of filtering out bot traffic, if you just go by raw access rates in the logs to judge the proportion of “people” who are bouncing your perception is going to be skewed because the vast majority of traffic these days is not, in fact, people.
I take an extremely ruthless approach to blocking, filtering, and banning bots from my website (my real one, not my stupid hobby one) and even so easily two thirds of the the traffic I get is still bots.