10 Mistakes to Avoid in Web Analytics

Understanding how your website performs isn’t just about counting visitors. It’s about diving deep into how each visitor interacts with your site. Web analytics are the compass guiding you through the ocean of online data, helping you to not just survive but thrive in the competitive digital marketplace. However, as with any powerful tool, it’s easy to make a few mistakes that can steer you off course.

Web Analytics offer invaluable insight and direction for any company, but it’s easy to misunderstand the information they provide. With the vast array of metrics available, businesses often find themselves overwhelmed, making critical mistakes in their tracking and analysis. This can lead to sunken costs, misaligned business goals and missed opportunities for growth.

Understanding Web Analytics oversights and pitfalls will help avoid the classic issue of falling into their trap.

These are the 10 most common mistakes marketers make when analyzing Web Analytics.

Measuring the wrong things

Nearly as bad as not measuring anything is placing stock in the wrong metrics. Vanity metrics are analytics that look good but offer no real information to help increase ROI.

For example, a Facebook post with 20,000 likes sounds great but gives no measurable data or actionable insights to help strengthen a campaign.

Instead, it’s important to choose a set of metrics that inform business strategies and choices moving forward and to stick to those same metrics over time. This then accounts for variations and trends over time and ensures campaigns are adjusted to align with overall company goals.

Not Setting Specific Goals for Data Tracking

The Problem:

Many businesses embark on web analytics without clear objectives, leading to aimless data collection. This lack of direction not only consumes resources but also results in data that is difficult to translate into actionable improvements. Without specific goals, it’s challenging to determine the relevance of the data collected or how it can be utilized to enhance website performance and user experience.

The Solution:

Define clear, measurable goals for your analytics initiatives before diving into data collection. This strategic approach ensures that every piece of data gathered has a purpose and directly contributes to your business objectives.

Not relating to business goals

Nearly as bad as not measuring anything is placing stock in the wrong metrics. Vanity metrics are analytics that look good but offer no real information to help increase ROI.

For example, a Facebook post with 20,000 likes sounds great but gives no measurable data or actionable insights to help strengthen a campaign.

Instead, it’s important to choose a set of metrics that inform business strategies and choices moving forward and to stick to those same metrics over time. This then accounts for variations and trends over time and ensures campaigns are adjusted to align with overall company goals.

Not relating to business goals

Understanding how to present results in relation to business goals is key. The ranking for a particular keyword may be improving, but if the senior leadership team is only interested in conversions and revenue, these other measurements become an exercise in futility.

Not checking data accuracy

During a recent analytics webinar, Common Ground found that 47% of attendees don’t trust the accuracy of their data.

That’s because there are multiple factors that can impact data and skew its accuracy; some that can be controlled, some that can’t.

Either way, it’s important to be aware of their impact and take steps to mitigate it. Cookie policies, for example, rely on user consent, limit data collection and can impact tracking from site to site.

There’s very little an individual business can do about this, but they can ensure the accuracy of data tracking from their side and that everything is covered. This, at least, can reduce the impact third-party tracking data has on the overall results.

Ignoring the impact of cookie policies

Did you know that cookie policies mean a business can lose up to 40-50% of its traffic data? This can have a huge impact on the information available and affect choices made by the business as a whole.

Overlooking Mobile User Analytics

The Problem:

In today’s mobile-first world, overlooking the analytics of mobile users means missing out on insights from a significant portion of your audience. If your website analytics are primarily desktop-focused, you may fail to address issues that uniquely impact mobile users, such as unresponsive layouts or slow loading times, which can lead to high bounce rates and low engagement from mobile visitors.

The Solution:

Prioritize mobile analytics to ensure your website delivers an optimal experience across all devices. This includes analyzing mobile-specific data like tap targets, scroll depth, and interaction times. Use this data to drive A/B testing specifically tailored for mobile users to optimize navigation, speed, and overall user engagement.

Not assigning values to conversions

Understanding ROI relates directly to deciding on budget and manhours for various marketing campaigns.

Assigning values to different types of conversions helps understand how important they are for achieving overall business goals. For example, if an email sign-up is worth 10, then a sign-up for a product demo could be worth 100.

That’s because the product demo offers a far higher likelihood of return on investment than an email subscription. As such, the leads need to be nurtured and approached in different ways.

Infrequent analysis

As well as sticking to a set of specific metrics in the web analytics, it’s also important to stay consistent in the frequency or date the metrics are checked. Changing the date each month, or only checking once a quarter, can impact the information received and result in unsuccessful campaign changes.

Quality over quantity

Everyone likes to see big numbers in their web analytics, but this isn’t always the most accurate factor in determining success. High conversions may sound great on paper, but if it’s all in the wrong market group, the overall acquisition strategy needs re-evaluating.

Focusing efforts on quality over quantity can be hugely impactful. Just like how Common Ground helped Thomas International achieve an 89% increase in engaged and relevant traffic through targeted link building and funnel optimization.

By avoiding these common mistakes, businesses can harness the full potential of web analytics to drive growth, improve ROI, and achieve their strategic objectives. Web analytics, when used correctly, can be the powerful tool your business needs to navigate the complex digital landscape and emerge successfully.