A few years in the past, I used to be at a digital analytics convention and I visited a sales space for a brand new advertising vendor that was pitching a “no-tagging” possibility for digital advertising analytics. I used to be intrigued as a result of I had spent a lot of my skilled profession writing about digital analytics resolution structure and tagging. After listening to their pitch, I may see the attract of what they had been providing. Think about having the ability to “auto-track” all the knowledge you may want out of your clients with out having to spend time doing resolution structure, design or begging builders to construct a knowledge layer and set analytics occasions and properties. Who wouldn’t need that?

However as I thought of it, I started to comprehend what a horrible concept this might be! Within the early days of digital analytics, it was commonplace to gather knowledge by “DOM scraping” net pages. DOM scraping allowed you to seize knowledge in HTML tags and stick it into analytics variables. This technique was fast, but in addition extraordinarily fragile. DOM scraping was quickly changed by knowledge layers and tag administration programs. The latter took extra time, however was a lot much less fragile (for historical past of this transition, learn this). Utilizing auto-track approaches to tagging is a step backwards to the DOM scraping days and brings again quite a lot of its fragility.

However each few years, there’s a renewed push to get organizations to rethink auto-track or “no-tagging” options and plenty of who weren’t round to expertise its flaws fall for it and repeat the errors of the previous. Except you’re constructing a digital property that may solely be used for a number of weeks or months, I can not consider any scenario wherein I’d advise a corporation to make use of an auto-track method for digital analytics. Here’s a quick abstract of the explanations to keep away from these options:

Too A lot Knowledge – Auto-track merchandise inherently acquire an excessive amount of knowledge and make it troublesome to seek out the significant knowledge it is advisable achieve success.
Unhealthy Knowledge – Auto-track merchandise make it straightforward to gather knowledge, however quite a lot of that knowledge turns into unhealthy or unusable knowledge with out the necessity for somebody to scrub up their occasion definitions and CSS matching guidelines every time builders make adjustments to web sites or apps. A easy identify change by a developer can throw off a few of your key metrics till the brand new identify is fastened/rationalized. I’ve realized that getting adoption for digital analytics is troublesome even should you do an awesome job of making certain that the information you’re amassing is correct. Think about making an attempt to make it profitable in case your essential knowledge factors are incorrect for durations of time till they’re fastened. In lots of organizations, persons are on the lookout for excuses to “belief their intestine” as a substitute of utilizing knowledge and poor knowledge high quality can provide them an excuse to disregard digital analytics knowledge.
Doesn’t Save Time – As one in every of our co-founders Jeffrey Wang says: “Auto-tracking doesn’t remove work. It shifts work to a much less scalable course of.” Auto-track saves time for many who would in any other case must put forethought into what they wish to observe on web sites/apps, however it makes extra work for analysts, knowledge high quality assets or product managers who must obsess about tagging. So if these at your group are pushing for an auto-track resolution, there’s a risk that the motivation is that it’ll save them time. Or it could be the case that they don’t assume the group is utilizing knowledge to drive higher outcomes anyway, in order that they merely need the trail of least resistance.
Safety/Privateness Points – Auto-track merchandise can unintentionally seize delicate or non-public knowledge that’s not meant to be collected (be happy to Google “autotrack passwords” for more information). That is more and more harmful as new directives like GDPR and CCPA impose fines on organizations for the mistreatment of non-public knowledge.

Many of those considerations had been outlined years in the past by Jeffrey Wang, one in every of our Amplitude co-founders, when he defined why Amplitude purposely didn’t add auto-track to our product. Even organizations that Amplitude competes with have agreed that auto-track is a nasty technique.

The Ranges of Knowledge

I just lately had the pleasure of listening right into a name by my colleague John Cutler about auto-track. On the decision, there was a prospect that was evaluating Amplitude to a competitor and one of many massive variations was auto-track, which the prospect thought may assist them. John defined that there are basically three ranges of knowledge relating to digital analytics:

Stage 0 – These are essentially the most essential knowledge factors on your group. They may by no means change until your group makes an enormous pivot into a brand new space or enterprise mannequin. For instance, a B2B marketing campaign administration product would nearly definitely have a Marketing campaign Created occasion with a set of pretty secure properties.
Stage 1 – These are knowledge factors that can be helpful for the mid-term. They’re probably helpful for the subsequent yr or two, however there’s a probability that they may change as the web site/app adjustments. Persevering with the B2B instance, this may embrace monitoring onboarding video begins and completions. Proper now, the marketing campaign creation move reveals movies to new clients, however a yr from now, movies could also be eliminated in the event that they aren’t confirmed to extend marketing campaign creation charges.
Stage 2 – These are knowledge factors which might be extra transitory and oftentimes very detailed. These could solely be round for a number of weeks or a number of months. An instance of this is perhaps monitoring clicks on a particular hyperlink, a toggle, or button on the shape. Proper now, it’s fascinating to somebody, however it doesn’t add that a lot worth and can probably disappear in a number of weeks, or the tagging of it might probably cease as soon as the training it offered is known and can probably not change dramatically.

For many organizations, there can be comparatively few Stage 0 occasions and properties, many extra Stage 1 gadgets and there could be a whole lot of Stage 2 gadgets. Most of your time needs to be spent on the Stage 0 and Stage 1 gadgets. Stage 2 gadgets ought to occur naturally by having tagging built-in into the event course of. The rationale this idea is so fascinating is that a lot of the case that’s made for auto-track options is predicated upon how a lot work is required to proactively implement analytics tagging. However when you notice that you would be able to reply 80% of your analytics wants by tagging a comparatively small variety of knowledge factors, the time financial savings argument (which is fake anyway) merely evaporates.

In John’s dialogue, he drew this nice diagram evaluating the trouble and worth of auto-track from a extra conventional proactive tagging implementation. As you may see, the auto-track resolution begins with extra worth with much less effort, however quickly turns to incrementally much less worth per quantity of effort. Whereas the normal method takes barely extra effort initially and extra worth per effort as time goes on.

I’ve lengthy advocated for organizations figuring out the enterprise questions they wish to reply and mapping these enterprise inquiries to an answer structure earlier than tagging takes place. I consider that it’s definitely worth the time up-front to establish what knowledge you propose to gather and why as a substitute of monitoring knowledge after which making an attempt to determine how it may be used. Like most issues in life, you get out of it what you place into it. So don’t fall for the lure of auto-track options and acknowledge that success in digital analytics is a marathon, not a dash.

What if I Forgot One thing?

Along with the supposed time financial savings, one other argument I hear made for auto-track is across the omission or forgetting of required knowledge. It normally goes one thing like this: “There isn’t a method I can anticipate all the knowledge I’m going to wish by necessities gathering, so I want an auto-track resolution to gather all of my knowledge in case there may be some enterprise query that arises that I didn’t anticipate up-front…”

In fact there can be circumstances wherein one thing arises and you’re lacking knowledge that you simply want you needed to make a enterprise choice. Regardless of how good you’re at doing enterprise necessities gathering, you can not anticipate each occasion and property that can be wanted. However should you assume again to the Stage 0, Stage 1 and Stage 2 gadgets mentioned above, I’ve discovered it very uncommon that one thing that has been missed can be a Stage 0 merchandise, which represents essentially the most essential knowledge factors on your group. Stage 0 gadgets needs to be fairly apparent to your group. You might have some Stage 1 gadgets that come up that you simply missed, however it’s unlikely that you simply can not add some new Stage 1 gadgets and anticipate a number of weeks to get sufficient knowledge to reply your small business query. If a query had been so essential that it wanted to be answered in 24 hours, it ought to have come up throughout necessities gathering. Stage 2 gadgets needs to be even much less essential within the grand scheme of issues. It’s probably that lots of the gadgets you’re lacking are Stage 2 gadgets as a result of they both aren’t essential or signify new issues that weren’t current throughout necessities gathering. Generally, it’s okay so as to add some new tags and wait a number of days or perhaps weeks to get this lacking knowledge.

Tradition

The very last thing I’d like to say on the subject of auto-track is the world of company tradition. As is usually the case, know-how selections inform you numerous concerning the tradition of a corporation and groups throughout the group. Once I see analytics groups which might be taking a look at auto-track options, listed below are a number of the ideas that swirl in my head:

Why is it so troublesome for them to plan their implementation forward of time? Typically the need for an auto-track resolution is masking the truth that the analytics workforce doesn’t actually know what the enterprise wants. Possibly they should spend extra time with their inside stakeholders as a substitute of on the lookout for a product that may allow them to trace every little thing simply in case.
Why is it so troublesome for them to get implementation assets? If an analytics workforce is doing job, they need to be perceived to be essential and strategic to the group. Analytics finished proper helps organizations make cash or get monetary savings, so why would a corporation not dedicate assets to implementation efforts? Possibly the auto-track resolution makes it simpler for the analytics workforce to keep away from the truth that the group doesn’t worth their work.
Will a brand new analytics product resolve their issues? Typically switching from one analytics resolution to a different looks like an effective way to wipe the slate clear and begin contemporary, but when your group has inherent cultural points which have triggered the present resolution to be unsuccessful, it could be advisable to repair these points earlier than making an attempt a brand new vendor. Failure to take action may end up in having the identical points repeated with a brand new instrument.

Closing Ideas

Whereas I hope that this publish is finally pointless as a result of the truth that organizations have realized their lesson about auto-track merchandise, typically it is very important remind ourselves of issues we now have realized up to now so historical past doesn’t repeat itself. In case your group is being pressured to take a look at an auto-track resolution, I urge you to think about the potential points raised above, the totally different ranges of knowledge, the advantages of up-front planning and the underlying cultural elements that is perhaps driving the choice.