Why you might not need (or want) Google Analytics

Almost every new website brief we get from cultural organisations lists 'integration with Google Analytics' as a core requirement. Which makes sense. Having accurate data about how your website is used can be really useful. 

It helps you to measure your strongest and weakest content, prove that your digital marketing campaign was a success, and identify key sources of traffic and revenue. 

But it can seem like that requirement for Google Analytics has been added by default, without thinking about how or why it's going to be used. Or (most importantly) whether Google Analytics will actually benefit your organisation. 

Have you considered that having Google Analytics might actually be getting in the way of what you’re trying to achieve with your website?

The practical bit

At a very basic level, the data you get from Google Analytics just might not be very good. If you use Google Analytics, you need to give people the option to refuse tracking – because the way Google collects data can profile and identify specific individuals. 

More and more people are exercising their right to refuse to be tracked. On some websites, we've seen analytics data drop by as much as 80% when a cookie banner is first introduced.

Less data isn’t automatically bad. As long as the data you have is still representative of your wider audience, it's not a problem. That’s the whole point of statistical sampling. 

But with Google Analytics, because it's either “opt in” or “opt out”, you know literally nothing about those people who opt out. Which means you also know literally nothing about whether those opt-ins are actually representative.

And if they’re not representative, whatever decisions you’re making based on that data could be taking you in entirely the wrong direction.

The audience trust bit

There’s another reason why Google Analytics might take you in the wrong direction. 

We often get asked by clients how to answer questions from their customers wanting to know why they’re being asked to opt in to tracking in the first place. What tracking is actually happening? What is that data being used for? Some privacy-minded audience members might wonder why they need to give up any of their personal data just to find out when you’re open, or what your address is.

In these cases, your use of Google Analytics is actively creating a barrier between you and your audiences – whether those are existing audiences or prospective ones. Either way, ask yourself if the data you get from Google Analytics is worth it for what it might be costing you in audience trust and loyalty.

The ethics bit

As long as you’re asking yourself these deep questions … 

Google is one of the most profitable companies in the world. One of the reasons for that profit is because people have fed them data without really thinking about it. Without necessarily understanding what it is they're giving away.

With that in mind, does using Google Analytics align with your organisation’s mission and principles? 

What are the alternatives?

The most obvious – albeit drastic – alternative is to stop tracking traffic altogether. 

This might sound scary or short-sighted when everyone is always talking about the importance of “data-driven decision making”. On the other hand, simply collecting data doesn’t make your decisions data-driven. If you don’t have someone whose role includes reviewing and analysing your website data and making decisions based on those findings, perhaps you don't need to collect that data at all?

Another alternative is to use an analytics platform that’s been designed 'privacy-first'.  There are lots of businesses and platforms out there – at Supercool we use Plausible on our own website. On my personal website, I use a similar service called Simple Analytics. Essentially, they collect a lot of the same data you might need about your website – most visited pages, where traffic is coming from, what users are doing – but they do it entirely anonymously. Absolutely no identifying data is collected about who those users are.

That’s great for users, who are no longer making Google richer by giving away their personal data. 

And it’s also great for you. With anonymous tracking, you might be able to get rid of your annoying cookie banner altogether. At the very least, because you no longer need to offer users the option to opt out of tracking – because you’re no longer tracking them as individuals – you’ll get more complete, therefore more accurate, data about how your website is being used.

Before you cut the cord …

In reality, it might not be possible for you to get rid of Google Analytics. Sorry if that's now a disappointment!

If you rely on Google Ads for revenue, you probably need to pass conversion data from Analytics through to your ad campaigns, so they can be better optimised. (Though again, if the people who opt in to tracking aren’t representative of your wider audience, that optimisation might be moving in the wrong direction anyway.)

If you use a third-party ticketing or e-commerce system, like Spektrix, Ticketsolve, Tessitura, or Shopify, you might need to rely on their prebuilt integrations with Google Analytics to track things like purchases. While it’s technically possible to track purchases with privacy-first platforms, it requires custom development that might not work with third-party systems, and could get costly to build and then maintain.

Even if you’re stuck with Google Analytics (for now), you might consider installing a privacy-first platform alongside it. 

This way, you’ll at least know how well your Google Analytics data matches up with your website visitors as a whole. If you’re lucky, you might find that most people are opting in to Google Analytics anyway. In which case you don’t need to worry about audience trust, and can be sure your data represents your online audience.

The bottom line

If you’re putting Google Analytics in your website brief – or even if you already have Google Analytics running – ask yourself why. What are you actually doing with that data?

Because if you’re not using it, or you’re only using it for basic aggregate stats, you definitely don’t need Google Analytics. And you might be better off without it.

You’ll never know until you ask the question.

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