The main goal of digital analytics is to collect, measure, and analyze data from digital channels to:
Understand user behavior:
Know what people are doing online — how they find your site, what they click, where they drop off, etc.
Improve performance:
Optimize marketing campaigns, website usability, and conversion rates based on data-driven insights.
Make informed decisions:
Support business and marketing strategies with real evidence instead of guesses or assumptions.
Factors to Note
It's important to note that the data in the Feathr dashboard can never exactly match other analytics tools. Technical discrepancies can cause a 25-40% difference between Feathr and other analytics data.
Some factors on the user side that can impact your analytics data:
1. Adblockers and other privacy-related browser extensions
Consequences: missing transactions (and other data) in Feathr.
Browser extensions such as Ghostery or Adblock with strict configuration can block first-party trackers like Google Tag Manager (what we use to host our code).
2. Browsers with strict privacy settings
Consequences: missing transactions (and other data) in Feathr.
Some visitors could prefer to configure their browsers to block trackers (including Google Tag Manager) strictly or may have switched to Brave, a browser focused on privacy and blocking various tracking tools by default.
3. JavaScript is disabled in a browser
Consequences: missing transactions (and other data) in Feathr.
4. A visitor did not opt in to analytics tracking
Consequences: missing transactions (and other data) in Feathr
If your business has implemented a consent popup asking for consent to track a visitor, there is a significant chance of getting rejected.
Other factors that can account for analytics discrepancies on Feathr's end include:
1. Not every click is associated with a view.
2. A click can happen too soon after another click. There is a one-hour "burn down" period where additional clicks are not counted in Feathr, but may be counted in other places where you track analytics.
3. If debug mode is on, activity is not tracked on Feathr reports.
4. The do_not_collect cookie is set via privacy.feathr.co.
5. A click is identified as a test user with a test ID 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 from our third-party partner.
6. Activity is a known preview.
7. The account is not in good standing.
8. The activity is from the AWS IP range (bot clickers), AdNexus IPs (testing), or from another list of "bad" IPs identified by Feathr.
Here is an article that details more about how Feathr filters clicks.
The best way to approach this situation is not to consider Feathr an accounting system with 100% precision. Instead, think of it as a platform that shows you data trends so that you can make data-informed decisions. The data that Feathr captures helps to understand user behavior, improve marketing performance and make informed choices.