A naive approach to data

Where it all went wrong

Around 2010, the phrase “data is the new oil” started appearing in PowerPoint slides at every marketing and tech conference. The idea that “you can never have too much data” created a toxic data culture where companies started putting data collection before user experience and user privacy. And in return, they got information anxiety.

The marketing industry got infected with a growth hacking mindset, which led to an obsession to move the needle at any cost.

Fast forward to 2022. NordVPN reviewed the top 100 sites in 25 countries to find out how many trackers websites use on average.

In Hong Kong, sites use 45,4 trackers on average to collect user information. The US was third on the list, with 23 trackers per website on average.

If you must use +20 trackers to understand what people think about your website, you’re doing something wrong.

For example, if you want to find out whether your website content resonates with people, you don’t need a lot of data. You don’t need a data warehouse.

You only need some relevant data and one metric that fits your purpose.

Knowing personal details about John or Mary – what kind of toilet paper they use or which color their kitchen sink is – doesn’t give you any actionable information on how to build a better user experience.

You’re not looking for personal preferences. The only thing that you should care about is general trends, patterns, and issues.

The ethos behind big data thinking – you can never have too much data – is that your goal is to know everything about everyone. There’s no focus. With Volument, we focus on how your content resonates with people. The tracker, i.e., the data we collect, supports this focus. Everything else is just noise.

More data, more problems

With all the tracking tools available, it’s easy to collect large chunks of data. The hard part is to pick out the signal from the noise. Especially if you don’t have focus.

Humans suck at processing large chunks of information. That’s why we need tools for number crunching and information visualization.

Some of these tools are not cheap; paying a license for nice-to-know information is a waste of money. The costs pile up if you need +20 trackers. But, the bigger cost comes from collecting data at the expense of user experience. There is a direct correlation between page loading time and people leaving your website or converting.

Using too many trackers destroys the purpose of web analytics: learning how to improve your site user experience.

Also, more data means more risks. Building a compliant setup that respects user privacy is easy if you can live without privacy-invasive trackers like Meta’s pixel or Google Analytics.

Again, if your primary purpose for collecting data is to understand how to make your website more relevant for visitors, you only need to find out if they like your content. You can use a simple metric for this: engage rate.

For this purpose, you only need one privacy-friendly tracker.

Be naive and focus

Sturgeon’s law says that ninety percent of everything is crap. With data, it’s probably something like 99,5%.

Noise kills productivity. It’s hard to focus if you’re chasing the wrong thing.

Focus on the 0,5% and ditch all the nice-to-know information. Collect only the data you need and respect user privacy because it’s the right thing to do.

Being naive is okay if it helps you do your job.

With Volument, we realized it makes no sense to try and build a one-size-fits-all analytics solution. Our approach is simple and opinionated, i.e., naive.

We collect a minimal amount of data and try to excel at one thing: understanding how website visitors engage with your content before they take action.

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Next steps? Learn more how Volument measures what people think about your content using content/audience fit.