Your analytics data should resemble the way your site is used

Yesterday I wrote about tying your interaction data to navigation, and why it’s a bad idea.

Another reason it’s bad practice is that it doesn’t reflect how your user understands the site.

When you collect analytics data, your data should reflect how a user uses your site.

Examples of data not representing usage:

• Tagging an interaction as a pageview, or part of a pageview.
• Reporting different Interaction Component name or content from what the user perceives it to be.
• Inconsistent reporting of Interaction Component content.
• Not being able to tell which part of the page the interaction took place by looking at the data.

These are all examples I’ve seen first-hand.

Tomorrow, I will write about how this affects your analysis.

– Samy