What actually matters can’t be measured with numbers

This website’s backend offers me cookie-free analytics which I try not to look at for a couple of reasons.

No matter how much information I have about numbers or superficial data about how people wander around my website, these analytics do not reflect give me information related to the goals I have. They don’t tell me if a reader learned something, if a new visitor found inspiration, if it really resonated with someone, or if it made someone’s day just a little better.

And since my goals go beyond numbers and can’t be tracked (which is good too), I don’t want to look at analytics that shift the focus from quality to quantity.

To illustrate with an example. Imagine a post is viewed by 10 people and another is viewed by just 1. The post with the most viewers might seem more successful, but what if none of those 10 people read the piece? Or what if they read it and didn’t really get anything out of it? Maybe the other was just viewed once, but it could be that that person really got something out of it. And that matters more to me.

So not only are these analytics not meaningful, they can also be misleading. At least, they can be for me, my website and my garden’s goals.

There are tools and plugins to have even more analytics and track more about what my visitors do, but they don't really add value for me. And what's worse: They make the experience of visiting my website worse, with the first thing you'll do on my website being dismissing an annoying cookie banner.

No amount of numbers can beat creating for expression, connection and resonance, so that's what I want to focus on.