Mostly because your users dederve it (and Google Analytics is losing its power).
Ethics of Digital Marketing
No matter how good and positive our marketing purpose may be, personal data is personal property. The decision on its usage should be made by each individual. However, this is mostly not the case today.
Decision making in digital marketing requires proper sampling
At Kainoto, we first installed and used Google Analytics around 2005. After the first series of cookie-related actions about 10 years later, we noticed that approximately 20% fewer users were detected. This was due to 20% of users becoming more aware and blocking tracking through browser plugins.
With the introduction of the GDPR regulation, websites that fully complied with it saw a decline of about 80% in the number of visitors tracked by Google Analytics compared to the previously recorded numbers.
Of all the actual visitors, only around 15% remained in Google Analytics, those who explicitly allowed tracking. Even then, it's highly probable that some users accidentally pressed the consent button for cookies.
If developers decide to act in violation of the GDPR regulation and still install Google Analytics cookies, at least 30% of users are now protected by browser extension, Google itself has announced the removal of third-party cookies and a shift to analytics using only first-party data.
In the best case, regular analytics tools now only capture a sample of users with very specific characteristics: those who permit the use of personal data.
What does Google Analytics analyze in digital marketing?
Analytical tools mostly offer very interesting graphs and tables, but they're based on an artificial, non-random sample of users. Something no serious marketer should rely on for decision-making.
The future of digital marketing: even smaller sample sizes?
The father of the World Wide Web, Professor Tim Berners-Lee, designed the Solid platform in 2017 to return ownership of personl data to users.
Regardless of whether the platform takes off or not, lawmakers will continue to restrict the use of personal data with laws and regulations.
The availability and use of protection tools (such as browser extensions that completely block tracking) will increase, and user awareness of how to browse anonymously will improve.
Google has decided to systematically block the use of third-party cookies in browsers. Of course, they are looking for a solution to ensure that their system can still collect and process website usage data.
The sample size of data collected about individual users will continue to shrink, leading to poorer data quality.
Complexity of web analytics
Analytical tools have become unnecessarily complicated, diverting the attention of decision-makers from their goals.
Let's take the most innocent example we find in every analytical tool: the average number of page views per session. What does it tell you that the number of pagevews per session increased by 20%?
- Great? Users are viewing more pages, they must like our offering
- Bad? Users can't find what they're looking for right away.
Of course, we combine the data with other insights, The session duration increased by 25 seconds, product A sales rose by 6%, and demand for product B dropped by 3%
We get caught up in analyzing additional parameters as we try to determine which subpages saw the increase in views, which landing pages contributed the most to this? On which page did the bounce rate increase?
After an hour or two of watching graphs and tables, we come to the digital marketing team meeting, where we try to put together a proposal for redesigning the website. The director says he wants the website like the one he saw at a competitor (preferably on a popular WordPress template). Your analysis becomes useless, as most of it is not understood.
Better decision-making with Google Analytics and additional data sources
It's becoming increasingly important to have marketing analysts who know how to use various data sources to support decision-making. Google Analytics remains one of the key sources, as it at least provides us with a pattern of data.
At the same time, for better decision- making, additional data sources need to be integrated and thoughtfully combined. One such tool, which offers excellent insight and analysis, is Google's Data Studio. More on that later.
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