#156 – Derek Ashauer on Analytics Options and Privacy Challenges
Transcript [00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, analytics options and privacy challenges for WordPress site owners. If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast, player of choice. Or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players. If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the podcast, I’m keen to hear from you, and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox and use the form there. So on the podcast today we have Derek Ashauer. Having spent over 15 years in the WordPress arena, Derek has transitioned from building client sites to creating specialized WordPress plugins. Today we get to hear about his journey creating Conversion Bridge, a tools specifically designed to streamline the process of implementing analytics platforms and conversion tracking on WordPress websites. We start with an overview of analytics, tracing its evolution from the simple server logs of the early internet days, to the sophisticated data gathering mechanisms provided by Google Analytics and others. We explore how the introduction of European privacy laws has significantly impacted the data landscape, challenging marketers and businesses to adapt to a new era where data privacy is regarded differently in different locales. Derek offers his perspectives on this rapidly changing field, discussing the rise of modern privacy focused analytics platforms like Fathom, Plausible and others. He explains how these technologies employ cookieless tracking techniques to respect user privacy, while still providing valuable insights for website owners. We also address the problem of data accessibility and user privacy. Derek, sharing his personal views as a marketer, acknowledges the complexity of balancing effective marketing strategies with ethical data use. He explains his thoughts on why modern solutions might strike a better balance, ensuring that user data remains private, while allowing businesses to glean just the insights they need. Whether you are managing a WooCommerce store, or building sites for clients, Derek’s insights into conversion tracking will be of interest. He talks about some of the hurdles site builders face with traditional systems and how Conversion Bridge simplifies conversion tracking across various platforms and plugins without the need for extensive coding. If you’re an agency, developer, or digital marketer, this discussion will help equip you with the knowledge and strategies to navigate the ever evolving landscape of web analytics. If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast. Where you’ll find all the other episodes as well. And so without further delay, I bring you Derek Ashauer. I am joined on the podcast by Derek Ashauer. How you doing, Derek? [00:03:40] Derek Ashauer: I am doing well, thank you so much. [00:03:41] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you very much for joining me. We’ve had various chats over the years, but this is going to be a chat that we’ve never had before. This is going to be all about analytics. We’ll talk about all of the different bits and pieces, perhaps get into the future of analytics, the past of analytics, who knows? But stay with us, dear listener. It’s going to be a really interesting conversation. I feel like things are at a bit of an inflection point, and people definitely have strong opinions on this, and I think that can often lie on geographical grounds, where you live in the world and things like that. So before we get into that conversation, Derek, do you just want to give us a little potted bio? Tell us who you are. [00:04:15] Derek Ashauer: Yeah, my name’s Derek Ashauer, I’m in Colorado US. I’ve been in the WordPress community for, well, I guess I’ve been working with WordPress for about 15 years, I think. Doing client sites and things like that. So I’ve done the independent freelancer agency, but now I’ve moved to making WordPress plugins. So I have one for photographers called Sunshine Photo Cart. But my big one that I’m working on lately is called Conversion Bridge, which really makes it easy to add analytics platforms to your WordPress website, and also make it really easy to do conversion tracking, which is something that a lot of agencies and people are building sites for clients just neglect to do. And one reason why is because it’s kind of a pain in the butt. So the goal is to make it a lot easier so that I can do it for myself, and my client sites that I’ve worked on, but also then to make it easier for everyone else. So that’s how I got the idea for that. [00:05:02] Nathan Wrigley: Prior to hitting the record button, Derek and I were saying that, you are on a journey with this, you know, you’re not putting yourself up here as the definitive authority. I think you were basically saying that a little while ago your knowledge was not that deep in this arena and you’ve really had to educate yourself. And I think it’s fair to say that you were trying to summarise it as you’re still learning. So let’s have a conversation about this and see where we end up. The thought occurs to me that if we were to go back, oh gosh, I mean the internet, every time I say this sentence the internet does obviously get a little bit older, but let’s go for 20 years, something like that. I feel that if you went to a website, there wasn’t even the thought that there was any kind of analytics. Maybe there was some server log somewhere that was recording that, okay, we served up a page, but that was about it. And then
