A client recently had some major redesign work completed on their website.  All went according to plan with efficient designers and developers.  The website appeared to be working fine and the client was happy.  It was not for some six weeks until the client logged in to check their Google Analytics until they noticed that their visitor numbers had flatlined.  They asked their developer to check and the Google Analytics code had not been checked when the redesign was completed.  Luckily the developer had some stats they could provide for the lost period of time but because they were from a different package they were not consistent with Google Analytics.

The client now has a big hole in their measurements which will cause problems when they want to see yearly data for assessing things like the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, or whether to continue paying certain directories.  It was a simple case of oversight but offers a valuable lesson: whenever redesigning, changing or shifting a website, check your webstats a week after completion just to be sure they are still capturing data correctly.  In this way you should have no interruption to your website statistics and should be able to see accurate and consistent data for the whole year.