Garri at Holiday Pad commented on my recent post about creating appropriate signage on your website:

Yep, and how many times have I visited holiday rental sites in the past few years to be told, quite emphatically, that my IP is logged and I’d better watch out, or else!

It made me think about the power we have as web masters. Web stats give us information about IP addresses, repeat visitors, etc. to the point that if I actually have spoken to someone, I can see who they are and if they come back.

This proliferates when using e-mail marketing. Using Campaign Monitor, which I do, you can actually see if someone has read your e-mail, which links they looked at and who unsubscribes, etc. (if they open your mail as HTML that is).

I actually demonstrated this once to a client, explaining the ethical issues and the need to allow people to unsubscribe. He actually said that they would call the people who unsubscribe to find out why and see if they could change their mind. This misses the point.

What you do with the information you can get, only pays dividends if you look at the bigger picture. Stats are great for finding generic patterns that can help you make changes to the way you do things. Singling out individuals gets you nowhere.

It also scares your customers if they know how much you can see. I know one client who unsubscribed from our company newsletter when she found out we could see what we could.

Sometimes, it’s best to keep these things from your customers. Make them feel like friends, not like enemies!