Decide what to measure before launch

Most sites get analytics the same way. Someone pastes a tag in on launch day, and six months later there's a dashboard full of numbers that nobody has asked a single question of.

So do it in the other order. Before launch, write down what the site's owner actually needs to know. Then track only what answers it. A number nobody will act on still costs something. It takes setup time, it asks the visitor for data, and it adds noise around the numbers you do care about.

Here's the section for the bakery. Its brief names one action: order bread ahead for pickup. So the owner's questions are about that. How many orders ahead come in each week? How many loaves sell out? How many people still call to ask the hours? Each question gets the step that answers it, and only the first needs analytics. Sold-out loaves come from the daily bread list, which the owner already edits each morning. The calls come from a tally the owner keeps by the phone. And there's a line saying who reads this and when, because a question nobody reads is decoration.

Most analytics tools record page views without being asked. On top of those, count a few milestones on the way to the action. Order started. Order sent, counted only once the order has actually been received, so a form that failed doesn't count as an order. If your tool can record that from the server, use it. Then stop. Twenty events with no question attached is how a dashboard stops being read.

Then the rule that doesn't bend: nothing personal goes in. Google's rules for its own analytics forbid anything that could identify a person, and name email addresses and phone numbers. They also say page addresses and titles are where it leaks most often, so look at what the order confirmation page puts in its address. Most tools let you rewrite or drop an event before it leaves the browser. Use that to strip anything personal first.

Next, take yourself out of the numbers. Before launch you'll load the site a hundred times, and so will the owner. Every analytics tool has a way to leave those visits out, by marking your browsers or by address. Use the one its documents describe, and watch it on a few visits before you rely on it. Some tools never process visits a filter has excluded, so a filter set up wrong loses data you can't get back.

Now check the plan, because it decides what's possible. Some plans count page views and nothing else, so check that custom events are included at all. Check how many events a month the plan allows, and what happens when they run out: some tools simply stop collecting. Check how far back the reports reach. Then write the limits into the file with the date you checked, so nobody designs a measurement the plan can't take.

Last, read what the tool you chose says it stores: whether it sets cookies, how it tells one visitor from another, and how long it keeps that. That's a claim about one tool, from its maker, so the file links to the tool's own privacy page instead of repeating it. Whether the site needs a consent banner is a legal question for someone qualified, and the answer can change the moment you add a second tool.

Write the questions before the tracking. Count only what answers them, nothing personal.