The problems with data integrity (implementation blues)

Do you ever have that moment than when your analyst turns to you and says, “sorry, I don’t have that stat, it wasn’t tagged… someone forgot to check the code.”  With the need to put up more and more web pages, this seems to be the number one issue today.  Data integrity:  how to get it right and how to maintain it.

This is more often a simple oversight than a serious budget or staff issue.  Before things get worse, you need to put in place the checks and balances or verification process to help your traffic reporting learn the most about your marketing efforts.  What’s the point of doing anything on the web if you don’t measure it?

Andrew Edwards  from WAA summed it up when he said:

“The problem is almost never with the tool itself, but with the way it was implemented and the way it is integrated into your business.”

Now if your like me, you hear these kind of things – You get no value from your tool if:’

• Someone upstairs says “I don’t trust the data”
• A tagging change will make it seem like you have fewer page views
• You are unable to tell whether a visitor in May converted in August
• Certain parties believe their site is the most important, but they’re unwilling to submit to a company-wide tagging audit and ROI test
• You are only using simple tags without any customization for your business purposes
• Your users complain that “what we really need is some training”
• Your most popular page is “page not found”  (just kidding)

If you can’t afford and on-going code checker, it is highly worth the cost to perform tracking code audits once or twice per month.

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