Why Measuring Traffic Can Be A Bad Idea

[peter_d]

Seth Godin on Google Analytics:

Given our desire to be popular combined with Google's desire to give users what they want, it's not surprising that traffic is the key driver of the program.

But traffic is a red herring. At best, it's distracting, a stand-in for something more useful. At worst, though, it's dangerous, because the quest for traffic causes you to make bad decisions.

Why do you have a site? What's your goal? Is it to sell something? To receive email? To spread an idea? Whatever it is, you can probably measure it. And measure it you should. Every other piece of Analytics data is trivial compared to that one number.

Short version: if you don't understand how to do goal tracking and funnel analysis, don't use Analytics until you do.

[IndigoBlack]

I agree with this Peter. When I first hit the internet scene, I was seduced by visions of an ever increasing Pagerank and hundreds of thousands of visitors. I did some pretty stupid things because my focus was all wrong.

Now that I'm a little bit more mature, I realize that it's quality not quantity that is most important. All the traffic in the world will do you are not getting what you need (sales, comments whatever) from it.

[janhvizdak]

Some people don't sell anything.

Let me explain. You have AdSense on your pages. In the AdSense control area you can define URL channels so you exactly know which pages generate money. With Analytics you can track how long people stay at those pages, if those pages are entrance or if people find them as they browse your site, etc, etc.

Some people just don't do goals or sales, but Analytics could be useful for them...

[Hostingpuppy]

I think I fall into the group that doesn't understand "goal tracking and funnel analysis". I have Analytics running but I only look at it a couple of times a month. I just don't get what I'm supposed to do with all the information it gives me.

I'm kind of operating under the assumption that it's geared more towards businesses who's website are their products or businesses who have a larger product range than mine.

It's nice to look at, but not very useful to me. Or at least that's how it appear.

[ToddW]

Originally Posted by janhvizdak

Some people don't sell anything.

Let me explain. You have AdSense on your pages. In the AdSense control area you can define URL channels so you exactly know which pages generate money. With Analytics you can track how long people stay at those pages, if those pages are entrance or if people find them as they browse your site, etc, etc.

Some people just don't do goals or sales, but Analytics could be useful for them...

You are selling your site to visitors Not a tangible product but you are attempting to reach a goal.

[janhvizdak]

Originally Posted by ToddW

You are selling your site to visitors Not a tangible product but you are attempting to reach a goal.

True, I agree that I have goals. But G Analytics doesn't allow to track AdSense clicks directly. I know it can be done through some script and defining goals, but it isn't officially supported by G Analytics. That's why "if you don't understand how to do goal tracking and funnel analysis, don't use Analytics until you do." is not true in my case.

[NothingButNet]

Well, in my opinion, measuring traffic makes no sense as long as you don't understand the value of the traffic: I mean how many of the unique visitors tunr into clients. Then how many are returning visitors? Are there any? If the number of returning visitors is too low, then there must be something wrong with the site. So measuring traffic is good as long as you do something to improve your ROI. To measure traffic just to pamper your ego makes no sense.