From Inflated Metrics to Trusted Data: How a Premium Retail Brand Restored Analytics Integrity

Industry: Premium fashion & lifestyle e-commerce
Challenge: Bot-inflated analytics degrading marketing insights and business intelligence
Previous solution: Competitor bot management vendor in active protection mode

The challenge

A leading premium retail brand was struggling with a critical problem: they couldn’t trust their own data.

Despite having an existing bot management vendor in place, the company’s Google Analytics painted an unreliable picture of customer behavior. The brand’s analytics team noticed that some days looked brilliant in GA4 (sessions were up, traffic soared), yet the outcomes did not match what their campaigns should realistically deliver. Other days, engagement dropped for no apparent reason.

Session counts were inflated 30-65% above expected legitimate traffic levels, engagement metrics fluctuated wildly, and session key event rates varied dramatically, from as low as 11% to as high as 28%.

During crucial high-traffic periods like Black Friday and Thanksgiving, when accurate data matters most, the inconsistencies became even more pronounced. Marketing and analytics teams found themselves second-guessing campaign performance, questioning conversion funnels, and making budget allocation decisions based on data they didn’t trust.

The root cause? Bot traffic was slipping through their existing defenses and contaminating their analytics, making it impossible to distinguish genuine customer engagement from automated noise.

The solution

To solve their data integrity crisis, the brand established clear success criteria for any bot protection solution:

• Session key event rate: ≥15% (measuring quality engagement)
• Daily session count: 15-20k range (expected legitimate traffic baseline)
• Average engagement time: ≥12 seconds per session
• Consistency: Stable metrics across all traffic conditions

They conducted a rigorous head-to-head evaluation:

• 30 days with their existing competitor solution 
• 10 days with DataDome in active protection

Both solutions were tested in production under identical traffic patterns and seasonal conditions, including the critical Black Friday and holiday shopping periods.

The results: DataDome delivered superior data quality

Four key breakthroughs for the customer 

1. Eliminated bot inflation
   DataDome reduced average daily sessions from 21,500 to 19,140 by blocking bot traffic the competitor was missing. This brought analytics into the expected legitimate traffic range 80% of the time—a 40% improvement over the competitor’s 57% success rate.
2. Delivered consistent protection
   DataDome achieved zero engagement time failures across all monitored days, compared to a 13% failure rate with the competitor. Extreme session spikes that had plagued their analytics (30k-35k session days) were eliminated, replaced by controlled, predictable variance.
3. Maintained performance during peak traffic
   While the competitor showed significant instability during critical high-traffic periods—including a Black Friday week with 35k sessions and only 11% key event rate—DataDome maintained consistent performance with no degradation during peak shopping days.
4. Restored marketing attribution accuracy
   With cleaner session data and consistent event rates, the marketing team gained:
   • Accurate campaign performance measurement
   • Reliable A/B testing results
   • Trustworthy conversion funnel analytics
   • Confident budget allocation decisions
     

Business impact

Quantified value

• 40% improvement in hitting target session count range (data reliability)
• 100% consistency in engagement time metrics
• Eliminated 2,000+ daily bot sessions that were skewing analytics
• Reduced variance in key metrics, enabling predictable forecasting

By removing more than 2,000 invalid sessions per day, marketing analytics were no longer distorted by empty volume and started describing how real customers behaved. 

Operational benefits

The impact extended far beyond the numbers. With DataDome in place, the company’s teams experienced operational improvements:

• Marketing teams could trust campaign performance data without second-guessing results
• Accurate attribution enabled confident customer acquisition spend decisions
• Reliable seasonal trend analysis for better inventory and promotional planning
• Clean data sets for training AI/ML models and advanced analytics

Why DataDome made the difference

This premium retail brand’s experience highlights a critical truth: not all bot management solutions are created equal. While basic bot protection might stop obvious threats, sophisticated bots designed to evade detection require advanced protection.

DataDome’s real-time bot detection doesn’t just block attacks—it ensures the data flowing into your analytics systems represents genuine customer behavior. The result is trusted insights, confident decision-making, and marketing investments that drive real results.

Ready to restore trust in your analytics? Contact us to learn how DataDome can clean up your analytics and stop malicious bots and agents from distorting your data.