Why I stopped using website analytics

June 16, 2021

Disclaimer – I am not saying that you should do what I do. In fact, I openly admit, I regularly do “wrong” things. Website analytics might be a critical part of your marketing plan and key to the success of your business. I understand that website analytics provide a lot of value to many website owners. For a web developer to even suggest that website analytics are not a necessity is tantamount to heresy.

That all being said – I am no longer using “traditional” website analytics (e.g. Google Analytics) on my business website. Here is how I came to that conclusion.

To be honest, I never gave website analytics enough thought in the first place. I used it because that is just what you do. If you have/build a website, you add website analytics. This is what I was taught and that was the stance I took for many, many years. Having thought about it, website analytics is a great tool for some but not for everyone. Adding website analytics should not be a knee-jerk reaction. Rather, it should be a carefully considered decision.

I then wondered, am I really using my website analytics for anything? I had tracking scripts on all my websites. The data was dutifully stored. However, I never did anything useful with that data. Occasionally I would look at my analytics, but I never found any valuable insights. Rather, I found bland and generic correlations. I sometimes found things I would classify as “interesting”, but I find all kinds of things interesting. In reality, examining my analytics data was just a distraction and a waste of time.

This realization made me think about the fact that I don’t track my time – at least not in a granular way. I used to diligently track my time. I would analyze how I spent my time in order to make informed decisions. However, tracking time cost more than it was worth. So, one day I gave it up. It was easier and more efficient to look at time management from a very high level. I began to think about how this high-level methodology might apply to my website analytics and my marketing.

I know when my business is busy. I know when I have leads coming in and where those leads come from. This is all pretty obvious and website analytics did not clarify these things. The more I thought about my sales funnel, the more I realized, potential clients most likely engage with my website after discovering me someplace else. My website is not the start of my customer’s journey, it is a second or third stop along the way. How then, could website analytics inform me about my customers in an appreciable way? Indeed, I use a direct and old-fashioned method for learning more about my customers – I talk to them. I ask questions and listen. It is perhaps quaint, but it is highly effective.

The conclusion was hard to repudiate. Website analytics did not give me any value.

At this point, I considered shelving the idea for the time being. This had been my de facto relationship with website analytics. I knew I didn’t get much out of it, but hey, it didn’t cost anything. It was at this point I started to really consider what website analytics cost me.

Website analytics adds to a website’s load time and this is a cost of sorts. It’s a relatively small amount of scripting but it is additional scripting. Particularly as someone who writes code, if I am going to “spend” on scripting, I want to get something for it. I was teetering on the fence, almost afraid to take the plunge into the big bad world of no website analytics. A realization gave me the shot of adrenaline I needed to take that step. Privacy.

In today’s day and age, we all could use a little more anonymity and privacy. We are all tracked in almost unimaginable and incomprehensible ways. There is almost no corner for us to take refuge, in order to escape the incessant tracking. Why not take a stand as an individual and a business owner? Why should I be a part of a system that, frankly, has gone a bit too far and is a progress trap? Why not just yank the tracking scripts from my websites and deal with life, come what may? Well, that is exactly what I did.

You know what? The sky has not fallen. Business has continued on just like normal. It feels really good to have left that baggage behind.

If you have made it this far, I would suggest the following – don’t use or discard website analytics based on blind faith. Take some time to carefully consider whether or not website analytics is a useful tool for you. In fact, do this with every aspect of your business. Don’t hold onto things just because it is what you have always done. Shake it up. Change things around. Carefully consider everything. A little contrarian thought never hurts.