[HN Gopher] Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics
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Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics
Author : pcmaffey
Score : 73 points
Date : 2023-09-19 14:53 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pcmaffey.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (pcmaffey.com)
| malfist wrote:
| Perhaps we shouldn't be taking advice on how to build better
| websites from an absolute garbage of a website from a usability
| perspective.
| kqr wrote:
| 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!
| neovive wrote:
| 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.
| esdott wrote:
| This site needs analytics if not just to see how much trouble
| (abandonment) the page scrolling issues cause.
| apolymath wrote:
| Can't scroll or read the article from my phone...
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| 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.
| vinaypai wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| consoomer wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| gfodor wrote:
| 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.
| barnabee wrote:
| > improve your product significantly without as much
| subjectivity
|
| It's fake objectivity that often leads to a race to the
| boottom.
|
| Between "engagement" as a terrible proxy for user
| happiness/success and the idea that it's more important and
| better if nobody can fail to use your app's "UX" than it is if
| it to enables a smaller number of people who take the time to
| learn to do really great things, all wrapped up in the VC
| driven dream of hypermegablitzscaling, all a reliance on
| analytics does is guarantee mediocrity.
|
| I want software created by people who care enough not to look
| at the data.
| nine_k wrote:
| Analytics data are like emotions: a valuable source of
| information which should not be used as a direct controlling
| signal. It should be first thought through.
| pcmaffey wrote:
| The pendulum has swung too far. We quantify everything now,
| chasing numbers to the point of losing our sense of quality and
| craftsmanship. There's a huge difference between "going with
| your gut" and the ability to assess, qualify, and reason about
| something. To understand how and why something works or
| doesn't. Whether from first principles or experience.
|
| Numbers provide a happy path for consensus. If the "why" of
| your project is to please as many people as possible, then web
| analytics probably works great. I'm not arguing they're
| categorically useless, only trying to surface the unspoken
| costs I see bear out in our industry from relying on them so
| heavily.
| mighmi wrote:
| 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?
| dustymcp wrote:
| Amazon?
| fmajid wrote:
| The second half of this article explains Amazon's process
| around metrics, well worth a read:
|
| https://commoncog.com/goodharts-law-not-useful/
| dstroot wrote:
| > 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.
| exolymph wrote:
| One might argue that your cynicism is (drum roll please)
| data driven.
| tensor wrote:
| It may be less used in driving website design, but I assure
| you it is very very widely used in marketing to determine
| which campaigns are working.
| nine_k wrote:
| At my previous job, A/B testing was widely used to check
| which of the small UX tweaks works better.
| [deleted]
| hedora wrote:
| You could hire a decent QA department.
|
| Then you'd run the app on all screen sizes before each git push
| and notice that the button doesn't always show up, or isn't
| always clickable.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Before web analytics, going with your gut was the only
| option.
|
| The analytics people insistent denial that usability research
| ever existed seems to have reached a new level.
| gfodor wrote:
| What I wrote wasn't an insistent denial, try steelmanning
| next time. Extrapolating the magnitude of problems from user
| research is hard, since you're still sampling a distribution.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| What you wrote was just denial. The insistent part comes
| from every time those discussions going this same way.
|
| Anyway, and FYI, one of the most robust findings in user
| research is that the magnitude of problems isn't really
| something important to know.
| hedora wrote:
| If the already-released version of your product has so many
| problems that you have to use computational techniques to
| extrapolate their magnitude, then you have already lost.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "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."
|
| Does this apply to "feature requests" by a minority whereby the
| majority then has to accept those "features".
| awavering wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| josefresco wrote:
| 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.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| GA4 is actually the simple version of GA. Lots of stuff is
| hidden. So it looks lol Google did exactly what you wanted
| )'simplified Analytics service'). However, if you want an even
| simpler solution: Matamo is totally free as well.
| josefresco wrote:
| GA4 which I've migrated about 250 clients to (that was a ton
| of fun /s) simplifies some things, but complicates others. I
| know of the alternatives but run into anther issue relating
| to cost: Most of my clients are not willing to pay (more) for
| analytics which is why GA remains the default (free) choice.
| Do I raise prices for everyone and include an analytics
| alternative? Or do I stop using GA and only give
| (alternative) analytics to clients that pay extra? I'm
| leaning towards the latter.
| johnnyworker wrote:
| I wrote my own little thing that just counts page
| hits/referrers, but only keeps aggregates for older data (e.g.
| the hourly data is kept for a week, daily data for a year,
| weekly data for 10 years, and only yearly data kept forever).
| It also keeps track of how long the page took to load, and how
| long it took to generate on the server if the page provides it,
| and that's it. I can make a new project/page and get a tracking
| snippet for it in one second, and then I barely ever even
| _look_ at the stats, which saves even more time. But should
| something crazy happen, I would like to be able to, and that 's
| all I need really.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| I switched to plausible.io for my small business and couldn't
| be happier. Maybe take a look at them
| Ilasky wrote:
| I also like goatcounter for simple analytics - just what I need
| and nothing more. I can also vouch for plausible and really
| like their product too
| posix86 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| araes wrote:
| 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."
| vpaulus wrote:
| Whatever it is about, I refused to read because of this silly
| scrolling/paginating
| ChoHag wrote:
| [dead]
| ale42 wrote:
| It was fine using the - and - keys on my keyboard for page
| change. But it's a bit counter-intuitive...
| pibefision wrote:
| impossible to read and to follow the narrative
| isodev wrote:
| 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.
| artyom wrote:
| A case for not holding my scrollbar hostage
| intrasight wrote:
| And reader is greyed. Literally and figuratively there nothing
| there. You didn't miss anything. The irony is not lost.
| pcmaffey wrote:
| *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 wrote:
| But you did need user feedback, which analytics would help
| with
| mplewis wrote:
| User analytics would not have provided feedback in the form
| of "I don't like the scrolling on this site."
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| damn, came to post same aside: what is this weird
| storybook/scrolling-in-all-directions UI
| notpushkin wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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/
| posix86 wrote:
| Yeah idk what to do on mobile, and don't care enough
| firecall wrote:
| What the actual heck is going on there!
|
| Maybe they should run some analytics and check the bounce
| rates!
| posix86 wrote:
| gottem
| LaGrange wrote:
| > I have a theory about why businesses lose their soul as they
| grow.
|
| _sighs deeply_
|
| https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Cap...
| [deleted]
| awavering wrote:
| 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/ for anyone
| looking for an intro to how analytics enhances marketing work.
| pphysch wrote:
| Retvrn to grepping access.log
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!
| astura wrote:
| Actual title should be "A case against scroll hijacking."
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| I'll raise you one better I came across yesterday
|
| 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
| astura wrote:
| Did they erase my browser history?
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| 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.
| guitarbill wrote:
| 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.
| pcmaffey wrote:
| 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.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > Scrolling "past" the end of the page will move to the next
| page.
|
| Except when it doesn't, was my experience.
| sebtron wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Would also be cool if it worked with e.g. Safari's Reader view.
| andrewchilds wrote:
| 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.
| julianeon wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Vanity metric. The only thing you need to know is how many
| people paid for your product.
| marcopicentini wrote:
| 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.
| rambambram wrote:
| 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.
| Veuxdo wrote:
| For those on mobile: scroll right (that is, swipe left) to read
| the article.
| giantrobot wrote:
| 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.
| kraig911 wrote:
| 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.
| d_j_b wrote:
| 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...
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(page generated 2023-09-19 23:01 UTC)