“Rethinking Analytics: Responsibly & Ethically Gathering Useful Data”
Links & resources from our workshop presentation at Communicators for Women Religious Conference, October 2021
Written on October 6, 2021 by Christina Blust
Alternative analytics methods and mindsets
Analytics tools that don’t use cookies
- Plausible Analytics: usable on any site or content management system, has small monthly charge
- Simple Analytics: usable on any site or content management system, has small monthly charge
- Koko Analytics: free plugin for WordPress sites
- Jetpack: Comprehensive WordPress plugin that includes statistics. (There are paid plans, but the free plan is all you’d need to get stats.)
Search engine data
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Respecting privacy
- “Let’s Talk About Digital Marketing & Analytics Ethics” by Stéphane Hamel
- “Stop donating your customers’ data to Google Analytics” by Kemal Ahmed
- “Ethical marketing in the GDPR, CCPA and no third-party cookies world” by Marko Saric
- “Practical privacy tips for your business” by Adriaan Rossum, Simple Analytics
“Oh no, the companies don’t know anything about me, how will they provide me with the relevant ads I truly need?” – Said. Nobody. Ever.
– Simple Analytics (@SimpleAnalytic) on Twitter
Reducing ecological impact
- “How to speed up WordPress for a faster, greener and eco-friendly site” by Marko Saric
- “Calculating the pollution cost of website analytics (Part 3)” by Gerry McGovern
“The most substantial pollution from Google Analytics comes from the processing and analysis of the data.”
Gerry McGovern (@gerrymcgovern) on Twitter
Making analytics more useful
- “Understanding Data Bias” by Prabhakar Krishnamurthy
- “Kill Useless Web Metrics: Apply The “Three Layers Of So What” Test” by Avinash Kaushik. This is an old-school Google Analytics classic from 2010, but Kaushik is a great analytics thinker who has some good general points here.
“Ask every web metric you report the question “so what” three times. … This brutal recommendation is to force you to confront this reality: If you can’t take action, some action (any action!), based on your analysis, why are you reporting data?”
Avinash Kaushik
Thinking outside the box
- “Ethical Web Analytics: Alternatives to Google” by David Papandrew, Mental Pivot
- “Why you should stop using Google Analytics on your website” by Plausible.io
- “Data-Privacy Compliant Campaigns with Hallam & WP Engine” by Anna Murphy
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