Getting Analytics Right the First Time

Bad data leads to bad decisions. If your analytics setup has issues—and most do—you’re making choices based on fiction. Industry estimates suggest 85-90% of data analytics projects fail due to implementation problems, and 86% of organizations lack confidence in using their data. Most analytics setup mistakes are avoidable when you know what to ask for.

If you’re hiring someone to set up Google Analytics (or any analytics platform), here’s what you need to know.

What your analytics setup should include

A proper analytics setup for your website goes beyond dropping a tracking code on your pages. Here’s what should be part of the package:

Tracking code on all pages. This sounds obvious, but it’s worth confirming. Your tracking code should load on every page of your site, including thank-you pages, error pages, and any subdomains you use.

Internal traffic filtering. When your team browses your site, those visits inflate your numbers. Your analytics should filter out traffic from your office IP address or use other methods to exclude internal visits from reports.

Consent banner integration. If you collect data from visitors in Europe or California, your analytics must wait for user consent before loading. Analytics that fire before consent is granted violate privacy regulations. In 2022, Google was fined a total of 150 million euros by France’s data protection authority for cookie consent issues.

Data retention set correctly. Google Analytics 4 defaults to storing your data for just 2 months. You should ask for this to be changed to 14 months so you can compare year-over-year performance.

Cross-domain tracking (if needed). If your checkout process happens on a different domain—like Shopify or Stripe—you need cross-domain tracking configured. Without it, your analytics treats the checkout as a new session, breaking your conversion tracking.

Common mistakes to watch for

Even experienced developers make these errors. Knowing what to look for helps you catch problems early.

Team visits inflating your numbers. If you see 50 daily visitors but your team checks the site frequently, you might only have 30 real visitors. Always ask whether internal traffic has been excluded.

Analytics loading before users consent. Test this yourself: visit your site, decline cookies, and check if analytics still loads. If it does, you have a compliance problem. A 2020 audit by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission found that 26% of websites used illegal pre-checked consent boxes.

Sessions breaking at checkout. If you use a third-party payment processor, watch for a drop-off between cart and purchase. This often signals missing cross-domain tracking, not actual abandoned carts.

No documentation of what was configured. You should receive a setup checklist showing what was implemented, what settings were changed, and how to verify everything works. Without documentation, you can’t troubleshoot problems or onboard new team members.

How to verify your setup works

Don’t just trust that everything was configured correctly. Here’s how to confirm:

Ask to see real-time reports. Have your developer pull up Google Analytics, then visit your site yourself. Your visit should appear in real-time reports within seconds. If it doesn’t, something’s wrong.

Request settings documentation. Ask for screenshots or a written record of key settings: data retention period, IP filters, and consent integration method.

Test with consent denied. Visit your site in an incognito window, decline cookies, and check whether analytics fired. It shouldn’t.

Check cross-domain tracking. If applicable, complete a test purchase and verify the entire journey appears as one session in analytics.

Get analytics setup right

Proper analytics setup isn’t complicated, but it requires attention to detail. When you know what to ask for and how to verify the work, you avoid the data quality problems that plague most businesses.

If you’re setting up analytics for a new site or fixing an existing setup, we can help. Talk to us about getting your analytics right the first time.