Analytics Audit: Read Before Opening

by Craig Scribner

Some uninitiated web analysts like to jump straight into the reports, which they expect to tell the story of how people are using their site. Since I’ve been on this pony ride more than once, I’ve learned not to open a single report until I get a lay of the land to see what my reports can tell me, and more importantly, what they can’t.

I don’t even need an analytics login to get started on my audit. Because practically everyone is using javascript for tracking, there’s nothing about a web analytics implementation that’s private. I flip on my web tape recorder (I use Charles Debugging Proxy, but Firebug is a free alternative), and just start clicking.

Neo: You could’ve just asked. Seraph: You do not truly know someone until you fight them.

Say Google rang my bell and asked how their Google Analytics Partners page is performing.  The first thing I’d do is take a screenshot of the page, and then start capturing what data is being sent with each click.

My big gray box on top shows the Partners page name as it will show up in the reports. The little gray boxes show the pathing report’s next page values. So before I even crack open a Google Analytics report, I’ll know what they will and won’t show me:

• I won’t be able to distinguish clicks on the Home button from clicks on the Google Analytics logo.
• I won’t be able to distinguish clicks on the left Nav’s Professional Services link from the Submit button in the lower right.
• The Blog clicks won’t even appear in this GA profile—I’ll have to go somewhere else to collect that data.
• The GAAC Support button in the left Nav has no tracking, and so those clickers are sneaking under my reports’ radar.
• No search terms or language options are being captured, so I can’t tell what people are looking for on this site.
• No Region or Sub-region data is collected, so I don’t know where to market the GAAC program.

I’m not trying to score irony points here—the truth is that there’s no such thing as a perfect analytics implementation. But I like to enter the game knowing what the reports will mean, because every site is tagged differently.