A funnel is a question, not a report
Funnels built to be admired have seven steps. Funnels that change anything have three, and somebody is waiting on the answer.
Read it A funnel is a question, not a reportBlog
Notes on building and looking after websites, written by the people doing it.
Retention limits that cannot be edited away
A retention policy that lives in a document is a promise. One that runs on a schedule and deletes things is a control.
Read it Retention limits that cannot be edited awayDesigning an admin screen nobody has to learn
The best compliment a reporting screen can get is that somebody found what they wanted without being shown where it was.
Read it Designing an admin screen nobody has to learnWhat we stopped measuring, and why
We removed four reports last year. Nobody has asked for three of them since, which tells you something about the fourth.
Read it What we stopped measuring, and whyServer-side counting on a fully cached site
When every page is served from disk, the only thing that reliably sees a request is the thing serving it.
Read it Server-side counting on a fully cached siteSampling, sketches and the ±1.6%
Counting distinct visitors exactly means keeping a list of them. A sketch answers the same question from a few kilobytes that cannot be interrogated.
Read it Sampling, sketches and the ±1.6%Global Privacy Control, honoured properly
A request that arrives carrying Sec-GPC is not counted and then discarded. It is never counted in the first place.
Read it Global Privacy Control, honoured properlyHow much disk does a year of traffic take?
Less than you would guess, provided the storage grows with the number of distinct things you measure rather than with the number of visits.
Read it How much disk does a year of traffic take?The case against storing referrer URLs
The hostname tells you where traffic comes from. The full URL tells you that, plus a pile of things you did not ask for and cannot safely keep.
Read it The case against storing referrer URLsUnique visitors are a daily number, and that matters
Seven daily unique counts do not add up to a weekly one, and the gap between those two figures is bigger than most people expect.
Read it Unique visitors are a daily number, and that matters