The optimal tracking concept or The sailing trip without a destination


How often have I heard the sentence “Let’s just track everything, we can think about what we actually need later. But of course the tracking concept can already be written!”

Let’s imagine we want to go on a trip with a sailboat and we said “I don’t know where we want to go, let’s just take everything we could need for all eventualities”. Our boat would sink before the trip has begun. We would not know whether we would have to take water and canned food with us for a day or several weeks, whether we would need winter clothes or summer clothes and so on. But to be on the safe side, we just buy the whole sailing supply store empty, we will need some of it. And now we have more than the ship can bear in terms of load.

Likewise, you can’t track everything that may be needed. Or maybe it is, but that would not only be very expensive. It would also make the website virtually unusable for users. More on that later. The bad news for all those who are looking for a simple solution to a difficult question: A tracking concept requires a lot of brainpower. If you don’t, you collect useless data in most cases and burn time and money. Just as we have to think about what we want to take with us on the sailing trip, depending on the destination.

No tracking concept without clear goals

First of all, there is no way around defining goals, SMART goals, i.e. what by when, etc. For example, 100,000 new customers in a quarter or €500,000 in sales in a quarter. That is our destinationKPIstell us where we are on the way to this goal. Similar to a nautical chart, on which we determine our position through navigation instruments and adjust the route if we have strayed from the destination.

If I realize that I probably won’t reach my goal of 100,000 new customers, then I want to know what screws I need to turn so that I can take corrective action. But at least I would like to understand why this is so. Maybe I have to look for another goal because my actual goal doesn’t make sense at the moment. Because if I see that there is a storm in front of my destination port, then there may be another port. Through this we may then be able to reach our actual destination later. If I don’t reach the sales target because the return rate is higher than expected, I want to understand the cause. I won’t identify them with a standard implementation of Google Analytics.

All data and the information to be derived from it have only one meaning. We want to understand what action we can derive from the data. If a piece of information is only interesting, but does not offer any relevance to action, then the data has very likely been collected unnecessarily. At sea, I’m not interested in the weather forecast from two days ago. Nevertheless, such data is written in reports, after all, you have them, they will be good for something, we will notice that later. In the same way, we sail across the sea with our overloaded boat rather badly than right and tell ourselves that we will need the stuff at some point, we just have to get into the situation first.

On the impossibility of being prepared for everything

Space is limited on a boat, and all material has to find its place. This also applies to a tracking tool. For a shop, a connection to a CRM would certainly be interesting, so that the customer lifetime value etc. can be determined. Most likely, you will also want to work with custom dimensions in Google Analytics, so that data from the CRM can be used in Analytics for segmentation.

But how am I supposed to know which custom dimensions need to be defined if I don’t even know if and which ones I will need later? Especially if the number of custom dimensions is also limited? Custom dimensions are a fundamental decision, similar to a change to the boat that cannot be undone. Because a custom dimension can no longer be deleted.

Every event is a small program that creates load

Each piece of material has weight and changes the sailing characteristics of a boat, to the point of overloading. And of course, you can also use a tracking tool to trigger an event in the browser every second to see how long a user has been doing what on a page. But running events is running small programs in the browser, and a lot of load is not good, neither for the browser nor for the user. One of them will give up, the only question is who comes first.

So a tracking concept can really only be written when the goals and KPIs are clear. Unfortunately, the definition of it is an exhausting story. The good thing is that once this task has been completed, an actionable reporting dashboard can also be built. Numbers are no longer reported just because they can be reported, but because they provide added value. However, most dashboards are far from that. And so most sailboats are driven more at will, feeling and visibility. Except that we don’t put our lives at risk in online marketing.

Of course, you can make a stopover later on the route in a harbor and adjust the provisions, equipment and boat, because you realize that it doesn’t work that way. But then I lost not only time, but also a lot of money. The same applies to the tracking concept. If I don’t think about it upfront, then I’ve invested a lot of time and money in an enormously complex implementation without being able to use any of it the way I actually need it.

What is the standard for tracking?

“And if we just do what you do? There will be some standards.” The comparison with the sailing trip also fits here: What is the average sailing trip like? I have hardly seen a tracking concept that is the same as the other, even in the same industry. And so no two sailing trips are the same, because every boat is a little different, the crew is different, etc.

If you want to avoid the definition of the destination, you just want to set off to signal movement, but will notice at sea at the latest that you will not be able to sail through. Or he hopes that no one notices. At some point, however, someone will notice that no one is really interested in the numbers because they are completely irrelevant.

If you don’t know the port you want to sail to, no wind is the right one. (Seneca)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *