June 12, 2009

If someone visits your website and they have javascript turned off, do they really exist?

Every few weeks, the conversation here turns to web analytics. Not because anyone but a handful of us are really so deeply interested in the subject, but because there’s a pertinent question about a campaign or site we’re developing, and we can all agree that “the numbers don’t lie.”

I’m a big fan of Google Analytics, not least because the feature-to-price ratio can’t be beat. (“Nothing a month” is a very palatable price point.) Never the less, it has it’s drawbacks. But everyone does.

  • CoreMetrics, SiteCatalyst and their brethren can be difficult to implement, and costly. Their price point puts them out of the reach of most small and medium size businesses.
  • Log File analysis packages like ClickTracks work well, if the logfiles are well formatted and collecting all the data they need to be. Which isn’t always.
  • Google Analytics has a couple of blindspots, most obviously the fact that it relies on Javascript, so if you have visitors to your site with Javascript turned off, you don’t know what you don’t know.

But if you’re worrying about whether or not the data you do have is 100% accurate, let me set your mind at ease.

It is not.

And yet, life will go on.

Instead of trying to nail down which metrics package is absolutely the best of the best, and cheap, and flexible, and always accurate, ask yourself these questions:

  • Can I compare this campaign to the last one? Am I measuring success in the same way?
  • Can I compare performance among my advertising venues based on the quality of traffic they send to my site (especially important when your business is not an eCommerce-driven one, and most sales happen offline.)
  • Over time, can I tell if I’m improving? Are people coming back? Is that even what I want?

Note the common theme among these questions: you’ll have to pick a tool to measure with if you have any hope of getting to specific answers that are reliable over time. And while everyone has blind spots, focusing first on those areas you can see will help you build a better experience over time.

Next up: Tracking activity off-site

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