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Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

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Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#41

Post by traskjd »

conductr wrote: post #21
traskjd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always struggle with this type of response on UX issues. They always seem to think the 'how' is important, and that the length of time that takes is also important. It's not. You don't need to explain how to do it, you don't need to make an argument on time to implement - unless the time to implement is insanely high. Use the language of business: You are losing prospects by creating work for them. Resolving this w…

I've found in most (all?) aspects of my life, trying to tell other people how to deliver feedback is usually the wrong approach. The better thing is to take the feedback regardless of how it's delivered and learn to interpret. Things are implied. Feedback on A, may actually be point at a problem with Z. Sometimes the correct way to interpret is to discard. The source of feedback is not going to connect those dots for…

Apologies it was directed, I did mean it more as a generalization and it didn't come across that way sorry. Off for the morning coffee now :)

Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#42

Post by johnwheeler »

yoran wrote: post #2

For people looking for similar options, there's also Matomo[1] (previously Piwik) that you can self-host for free. [1] https://matomo.org/

I wouldn't really call Matomo a 'similar option'. I think the reason Fathom is getting upvotes is because it is dead simple. You immediately understand what's going on when you log into the demo.

Matomo looks like a GA clone that'd take some getting acclimated to.

Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#43

Post by Karunamon »

reaperducer wrote: post #33
Karunamon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your data is used for profit, you and your data is what the company sells to other people. By definition you are the product. The reason this is naive and oversimplified is that, say, Google, does not sell your data . Your data is their competitive advantage and they have every reason to not sell it. There is no service Google provides where someone can go in and request your data or access it. Advertisers are g…

does not sell your data Depends on how you define sell . Advertisers pay to use the Google's collected data about people in order to better target their ads. This happens through Google's advertising channels (Doubleclick, AdWords, etc...) Money changes hands. Personal data is involved. Sounds like selling to me. Perhaps you should say "Google does not directly sell copies of your data," instead. But there is indeed…

It's still a dishonest and reductive thought-terminating cliche, because it intentionally misrepresents the nature of the transaction.

Your data never leaves Google, nor can third parties acces it. Google is not selling your data. QED.

Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#44

Post by jessaustin »

stevekemp wrote: post #34
Theodores wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't touched awstats for the best part of a decade. What is the new shiny on these server log tools? Why is it that not one SEO organisation/company/snake-oil salesperson ever thinks to look at the server logs? One problem that Progressive Web App/server worker solves is catching those messages that don't get sent to Google Analytics and making sure they are sent. You would think that server stats offer a level of…

> Why is it that not one SEO organisation/company/snake-oil salesperson ever thinks to look at the server logs? When you're hosted on S3, etc, you don't get access to the logs. For larger sites which are hosted across a number of webservers, behind a load-balancer, getting a unified access-log is also a little fiddly. But I guess the honest answer is that it's not trendy enough these days. With Javascript submission…

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/ServerLogs.h...

Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#45

Post by conductr »

traskjd wrote: post #41
conductr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found in most (all?) aspects of my life, trying to tell other people how to deliver feedback is usually the wrong approach. The better thing is to take the feedback regardless of how it's delivered and learn to interpret. Things are implied. Feedback on A, may actually be point at a problem with Z. Sometimes the correct way to interpret is to discard. The source of feedback is not going to connect those dots for…

Apologies it was directed, I did mean it more as a generalization and it didn't come across that way sorry. Off for the morning coffee now :)

No worries, feedback is such a highly subjective topic

Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#46

Post by jessaustin »

Karunamon wrote: post #18
Illniyar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's naive or oversimplified. If you don't pay for the product, then someone is paying for the product - either it's taking a loss (venture capital burn, self hosting), another person is paying for it (donations, freemiums) or your data is being used for profit. If your data is used for profit, you and your data is what the company sells to other people. By definition you are the product. Whether that's…

> If your data is used for profit, you and your data is what the company sells to other people. By definition you are the product. The reason this is naive and oversimplified is that, say, Google, does not sell your data . Your data is their competitive advantage and they have every reason to not sell it. There is no service Google provides where someone can go in and request your data or access it. Advertisers are g…

If my attention is the product, let's just simplify that to "I am the product".

Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#47

Post by spdustin »

Uw7yTcf36gTc wrote: post #22

This doesn't come even close to the type of data you can get from Google Analytics. It's nice as a free/open source service, but the power just isn't there. Even piwik/matomo is vastly inferior to what kind of data you can track and visualize in Google Analytics.

Can you expand on how much Matomo is missing compared to GA?

Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#48

Post by omarchowdhury »

_4leaf_ wrote: post #35
Uw7yTcf36gTc wrote: post #22

This doesn't come even close to the type of data you can get from Google Analytics. It's nice as a free/open source service, but the power just isn't there. Even piwik/matomo is vastly inferior to what kind of data you can track and visualize in Google Analytics.

This is the issue I've found with every open source product. I'm perfectly happy to pay for an analytics product, so the best I've been able to find is adobe Omniture. Unfortunately that's a 30 - 100k price tag. There is definitely a market for a powerful analytics platform at a reasonable price.

What did you find that Adobe Omniture could do that that GA couldn't?

Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#49

Post by fmajid »

vanderZwan wrote: post #26

Out of curiosity, and as someone who has never used website analytics: why do we need a third party for this? Couldn't a bit of client side code + server side code do all the work these days?

You can self-host Fathom, I do.

It's very basic compared to Piwik, but it runs on PostgreSQL, my DB of choice, and it's written in Go, not PHP, which means it has higher performance and is more secure.

Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#50

Post by blattimwind »

reaperducer wrote: post #23
conductr wrote: post #14

> Want to see a demo of Fathom? View our live stats here (user: demo@demo.com, password: demo) This is UX feedback from a lazy user. Why make me type in a login and password? Especially one that I have to remember from the previous screen? It's trivial effort to just setup an auto login based on some query string parameter right? As in, url?demo=true results in either populating the login/password fields so all I hav…

As a counterpoint, having to log in makes it feel more like a real live demo, and not some mockup from the marketing department.

I think auto-fill would strike a good balance here.

After all, I want login screens to look nice and come up fast, too.

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