Analytics Matters

by Eric Friedman

Analytics matters today, just like it did yesterday, last year, and 5 years ago. In fact, it has always mattered.

People, projects, companies, and teams tend for forget the importance of analytics from the earliest stages of a product or service. Its free!

If you havn’t done so, go drop in free Google Analytics code to your website today.

It accomplishes a few things well and allows for accountability and facts in a world where it is needed most.

1. It lets possible investors wrap their head around the idea and traction
2. It allows monetization strategies to form based on usage trends
3. It focuses features and solutions to where heavy traffic is vs. what people say they want
4. It allows you to iterate on something that is a current pain point
5. It shows you the ebb and flow of transactions throughout your site
6. It shows bottlenecks and areas that need optimization
7. It shows sales and conversion funnel metrics to tie advertising to ROI
8. It presents users with relevant and actionable data if you choose to surface it back to them
9. It emphasizes what is working and with is not
10. It allows decisions to be made based on facts vs fiction

I started writing details about each, but a short top 10 list accomplishes my thoughts on analytics well.

You may not be “public facing” or feel analytics is not “mission critical” or throw any other cliche out, but I cannot think of a solid reason why you wouldn’t want to be tracking everything from day 0. Keep your stats private if you want, but make sure you are collecting them in the first place.

There is no such thing as back tracking stats you didn’t collect.

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