Interactive Arts, LLC ®

The "Set-It-And-Forget-It" rotisserie oven by Ronco

Remember the original “Set-It-And-Forget-It” rotisserie oven advertised on television. You know, the one promoted by Ron Popeil as the “delicious alternative for those people with limited counter space, or simply on a budget.” In the 30 minute infomercial for this product, the tag line “Set-It-And-Forget-It” is repeated over and over again. It becomes a mantra that’s ingrained into our subconscious.

“Set-It-And-Forget-It” Web Metrics
Unfortunately, when it comes to implementing web tracking, many online businesses take the same approach of “setting-it and forgetting-it”. We’re talking about web tracking implementations that provide valuable, executive level reporting in terms of how many people are reaching your web site, where they came from, what they bought, etc..

The downside to the “setting-it and forgetting-it” mentality, at least in the web tracking world, is that tracking codes tend to break or become outdated without anyone knowing about it. There are no server warning errors or anything like that that would alert someone that there is a web tracking issue. The result is inaccurate data that costly business decisions could be based upon.

How Often Does This Really Happen?
We’ve seen this happen more times than we can count. Often it’s the result of a change in the underlying web tracking code that is the culprit. For example, a web developer making an update to a web page that either breaks the tracking code, or changes the logic flow to by-pass the tracking tag. In either case, you’ll end up with inaccurate data.

We recently did a web tracking audit for a client who was using Google Analytics as their web tracking solution. The client was dismayed that their online sales were not higher than they were. A quick audit completed by us showed that the web hosting provider had not updated their tracking tag in over two years. Basically they had “set-it and forgot-it”, but were still collecting hundreds of dollars in site management fees per month.

Our audit showed that the online sales being reported by Google Analytics were 10% of what they actually were, and that the tracking code for this client had been out-of-date for almost 18 months. Again, the reporting had been inaccurate for almost 18 months, and no one knew. No wonder they thought their online sales were on the low side.

The Solution
If you use a web metrics tracking tool to provide executive level reporting to the decision makers, make sure that your web metrics tracking is accurate. We recommend a monthly audit that compares the actual vs. the web reporting. If you don’t know how to do a monthly audit, make sure that you have someone in place that can tell you how this is done.

If you don’t, your executive team may be making expensive business decisions that will have little OR no impact to your bottom line, and could result in a loss in revenues due to inaccurate web reporting. You need accurate metrics to make cost-effective business decisions.