It's about your identity
While Google Analytics is indeed free and includes some great features, I have one giant red flag issue with it: sampled data, AKA Fast Access Mode.
My experences with Google Analytics have led me to become disenchated with the tool for large data sets. When you drill down to the critical intersection of SEO data — which URL drove visits & transactions for which keywords — the data is sampled to such an extent that it is useless to base decisions on.
As appeared in the Presence Pointers column of the December 2008 issue of “Business Watch” magazine.
Is your Web site successful? Was this year more successful than last year; this month more or less successful than last month? These are important questions to try to answer. If you sell online, success might be based on selling more. This may be a start, but it may not be the entire picture. If you don’t sell online, this may seem even more daunting.
The beauty of the Web is that you can gather and measure more information to answer these and many other questions much easier than you can in the offline world. For those who feature both a brick-and-mortar location and an online presence, there are even powerful ways to connect the dots between the two. Continue reading “Web Analytics: Measuring Success By the Click”