Building my own web analytics tool - John Mathews
Google Analytics felt like overkill. It has so many data-points that the useful metrics are obscured. I also like this site to load quickly and GA makes it slower.
I’ve also tried CloudFlare Analytics. It’s a lot simpler than GA and better suits my use case, but I don’t think its accurate.
I know from my work visualizing data and building dashboards that the metrics presented will alter the users perception of the underlying reality.
The way that someone thinks about their impact on a business, the value they’ve produced, or the dynamics of the underlying system (a product’s quality, site performance, growth, etc) is influenced by the design decisions I make, such as which metrics are available, how easy they are to access, or which metrics are above the fold.
If I present a particular metric as if its important, it will be difficult for someone who uses the dashboard to resist this implied message. They’ll eventually consider the metric as a Key Indicator of some kind.
