Google Analytics – handle with care

I’ve just experienced a problem with Google Analytics that I think a lot of people can learn from. Here’s are some important things to bear in mind:

• Google Analytics is free.
• Google really aren’t so interested in being responsive to Analytics users (understandably, if they were, imagine the potentially enormous workload they’d face)
• You’re on your own when it comes to customising your access

This is why, when setting up a Google Analytics account for a client website, you should avoid the path of least resistance in terms of setting that account up (which would be creating a site under your own account) and do the following:

1. Create a NEW Google account, specific to this site.
2. Note those details somewhere safe, you may need them later but they’re not what you’re going to use much after step 3
3. Log in to Google Analytics with those account details, add admin users for your client’s normal Google login and your own.

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Google Analytics to go Freemium?

That’s the conclusion I jumped to after seeing this story on Marketing Pilgrim about a piece of Forrester forecasting published today.

Assuming a shrinking use of licensed analytics (installing a copy of analytics software on your own servers) is an obvious one – ever since Google Analytics came out and effectively made one of the most expensive solutions, Urchin, free, and did away the headache of running your own analytics software, how many people have paid that much attention to their own web server logs? Sure, Urchin’s still around but have you actually tried to buy it? You have to go through an Urchin Software Authorized Consultant, and most of them don’t even say much about the product on their sites (they’re big web development/UX consultants mostly).

Predicting a 20% compound annual growth in spend on web analytics is a pretty ballsy move. So I started wondering how that might be – Google Analytics is free and all-conquering, it’s incredibly easy to set up and very powerful. Where are these other paid for hosted solutions anyway?

One thing that you’ll need to spend money on, regardless of what analytics platform you’re using, is web analytics consultants. This is by definition a growth area – there just aren’t that many people out there with the necessary skills right now. People who’ve done a bit more than read Avinash Kaushik’s Web Analytics an hour a day book and truly get it.

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