benefits of web analytics tool in 2025

[kamlesh-maddheshiya]

Dear Friends,

I would like know that what would be the advantages of using a Web Analytics tool in 2025?

We know that
1) the consent Rates are decreasing and are often below 50%, and
2) cookie lifetimes get shorter and shorter
3) Retargeting possibilities offer diminishing returns at best.

Why should we even use a Web Analytics tool and pay for the license in 2025 when we are faced with all these issues?”

Basically I want you to list all the positive impacts about using Web Analytics in the next few years.

[VaniBhemarasetty]

@kamlesh-maddheshiya I think this is a very generic question to which there is no definitive answer, because each tool handles your user cases in a very different way. I would request community members to pitch in here to add to your questions why web analytics needs to be used

[yuhuisg · Accepted solution]

One argument for web and app analytics to continue to be used is to take a lesson from surveys. Yes, those pen-and-paper or phone surveys that are still conducted regularly these days.

I remember filling out a survey at a museum when a staffer asked me if I could help out. Two things stood out in that experience:

1. I could have said "no", but I didn't, because my answers would be used to improve the museum's activities.
2. Most of my responses were in line with what the staffer expected to see, though some of my responses surprised him.

Add in some statistical calculations, and all of the responses to that survey, including mine, could be extrapolated to be the responses of the general public.

So we already have a tested-and-proven, reliable method of measuring users' behaviours and attitudes that has been around for years, much much longer than when the first website was created.

Do you see where I'm going? I think web/app analytics will move beyond counting exact numbers to becoming more survey-like, with statistics (where machine learning is a glorified form of statistics) playing an important role to help us get a sense of how the general population behaves/thinks.

That's my zen-like $0.02 of the road ahead for web/app analytics. 

[kamlesh-maddheshiya]

thank you for the information @yuhuisg @VaniBhemarasetty 

[thelearningproject]

Adding to what Yuhui mentioned, I think any Analytics tool should be looked at as more of a directional tool rather than an exact replica of the internal systems. Once you approach the tool with this kind of a mindset you will realize that websites will always need analytics because we need to understand the visitors and their activity.

Web Analytics tools have come a long way from extracting server logs to understand pages and page views to what it is today - predictive, omnichannel, highly advanced, algorithm based etc. But all of it is to help marketers and businesses understand the visitor better and target in the micro-moment when the visitor is ready to convert. As long that needs exist, web analytics will always have a seat at the table. That's my understanding.