Looks nice. I’m somewhat surprised we haven’t seen an obvious alternative to Google Analytics yet. It’s got a wide and deep surface area. But feels like for the majority of eg B2B SaaS apps there’s a much simpler solution to be built. Something that conves mainline scenarios like: - what channels / sites / campaigns is my traffic coming from? - what pages are people landing on? - what pages are driving conversions? -…
GoatCounter – Simple web statistics, with no tracking of personal data
21–30 of 139 posts
Re: GoatCounter – Simple web statistics, with no tracking of personal data
#22How do you know it doesn't need a consent notice? Anything that tracks people uniquely, via a personal identifier, is in-scope and counts as personal data. Is the assumption here that it counts as 'legitimate interest'?
There is no "unique personal identifier"; I have some ideas on how to track recurring visits without such an ID, but that's something for the future.
Perhaps I should clarify the README on this a little bit.
Re: GoatCounter – Simple web statistics, with no tracking of personal data
#23Looks nice. I’m somewhat surprised we haven’t seen an obvious alternative to Google Analytics yet. It’s got a wide and deep surface area. But feels like for the majority of eg B2B SaaS apps there’s a much simpler solution to be built. Something that conves mainline scenarios like: - what channels / sites / campaigns is my traffic coming from? - what pages are people landing on? - what pages are driving conversions? -…
For enterprises Adobe Analytics is actually the industry leader, and there are a few other options as well.
For startups there's plenty of options, mixpanel is probably my favorite.
Google Analytics probably has more users because of ease of use for small business but I wouldn't say it's a space without competition.
Re: GoatCounter – Simple web statistics, with no tracking of personal data
#24Looks nice. I’m somewhat surprised we haven’t seen an obvious alternative to Google Analytics yet. It’s got a wide and deep surface area. But feels like for the majority of eg B2B SaaS apps there’s a much simpler solution to be built. Something that conves mainline scenarios like: - what channels / sites / campaigns is my traffic coming from? - what pages are people landing on? - what pages are driving conversions? -…
GoatCounter doesn't do a lot of these things ... yet, but it's definitely planned.
I'm a little bit hesitant to look too much at GA, since I don't to just make an "open source GA". In a lot of jobs I worked at we were essentially just "making a shit copy of a shit product", to put it crudely. I really want to avoid doing that.
So the way may be quite different, but the goal of providing meaningful business insights is definitely there.
Re: GoatCounter – Simple web statistics, with no tracking of personal data
#25Looks nice. I’m somewhat surprised we haven’t seen an obvious alternative to Google Analytics yet. It’s got a wide and deep surface area. But feels like for the majority of eg B2B SaaS apps there’s a much simpler solution to be built. Something that conves mainline scenarios like: - what channels / sites / campaigns is my traffic coming from? - what pages are people landing on? - what pages are driving conversions? -…
What about Matomo[0]? [0] https://matomo.org/
I used it for a while, and found the UX really hard. YMMV, but I wasn't happy with it.
Also, the hosted version isn't free, and self-hosting is also comparative expensive (vs. free) and time-consuming. IMHO any serious GA alternative should have a free hosted option. I wrote about that a bit more in-depth yesterday over here: https://lobste.rs/s/ooag4u/goatcounter_1_0_release#c_o76csv
Re: GoatCounter – Simple web statistics, with no tracking of personal data
#26Looks nice. I’m somewhat surprised we haven’t seen an obvious alternative to Google Analytics yet. It’s got a wide and deep surface area. But feels like for the majority of eg B2B SaaS apps there’s a much simpler solution to be built. Something that conves mainline scenarios like: - what channels / sites / campaigns is my traffic coming from? - what pages are people landing on? - what pages are driving conversions? -…
For enterprises Adobe Analytics is actually the industry leader, and there are a few other options as well. For startups there's plenty of options, mixpanel is probably my favorite. Google Analytics probably has more users because of ease of use for small business but I wouldn't say it's a space without competition.
Mixpanel's more product usage. The most valuable part of GA is imho the marketing piece. Eg:
- "Show me where my visitors are coming from"
- "Show me what landing pages are most popular... at driving conversion... by channel"
etc
Re: GoatCounter – Simple web statistics, with no tracking of personal data
#27Looks nice. I’m somewhat surprised we haven’t seen an obvious alternative to Google Analytics yet. It’s got a wide and deep surface area. But feels like for the majority of eg B2B SaaS apps there’s a much simpler solution to be built. Something that conves mainline scenarios like: - what channels / sites / campaigns is my traffic coming from? - what pages are people landing on? - what pages are driving conversions? -…
It's not that surprising that someone hasn't come up with a product as comprehensive, and most importantly "free". That's a lot of infrastructure.
No need for it to be free. I'd be willing to pay to not blow my brains out every time I have to touch GA.
Re: GoatCounter – Simple web statistics, with no tracking of personal data
#28Looks nice. I’m somewhat surprised we haven’t seen an obvious alternative to Google Analytics yet. It’s got a wide and deep surface area. But feels like for the majority of eg B2B SaaS apps there’s a much simpler solution to be built. Something that conves mainline scenarios like: - what channels / sites / campaigns is my traffic coming from? - what pages are people landing on? - what pages are driving conversions? -…
How badly do you want to avoid tracking your users?
It's hard to get statistics on conversion when you don't even track users across pages on your own site. It looks like GoatCounter can't show you unique visitors or how they move around on your site because it doesn't track them. There are no cookies on the main page! This seriously limits the kinds of features that can be implemented.
On the other hand, they're collecting referrer data. Maybe that could be analyzed and cross-referenced on the server side to reconstruct a user's movement around your site without having to rely on cookies. But then somebody will point out that it's actually a type of tracking. And if you're going to track users anyway, why not just use cookies?
Re: GoatCounter – Simple web statistics, with no tracking of personal data
#29Looks nice. I’m somewhat surprised we haven’t seen an obvious alternative to Google Analytics yet. It’s got a wide and deep surface area. But feels like for the majority of eg B2B SaaS apps there’s a much simpler solution to be built. Something that conves mainline scenarios like: - what channels / sites / campaigns is my traffic coming from? - what pages are people landing on? - what pages are driving conversions? -…
GoatCounter doesn't do a lot of these things ... yet, but it's definitely planned. I'm a little bit hesitant to look too much at GA, since I don't to just make an "open source GA". In a lot of jobs I worked at we were essentially just "making a shit copy of a shit product", to put it crudely. I really want to avoid doing that. So the way may be quite different, but the goal of providing meaningful business insights i…
I wouldn't look at how GA implements things. But I'd look at what people are using GA to learn.
The four scenarios I listed above are important to understand when running the marketing side of a B2B SaaS company.
I don't care about the implementation details (other than they're straightforward). But I need to understand that info. And today there's no obvious choice other than GA. This surprises me.
Re: GoatCounter – Simple web statistics, with no tracking of personal data
#30Looks nice. I’m somewhat surprised we haven’t seen an obvious alternative to Google Analytics yet. It’s got a wide and deep surface area. But feels like for the majority of eg B2B SaaS apps there’s a much simpler solution to be built. Something that conves mainline scenarios like: - what channels / sites / campaigns is my traffic coming from? - what pages are people landing on? - what pages are driving conversions? -…
How badly do you want to avoid tracking your users? It's hard to get statistics on conversion when you don't even track users across pages on your own site. It looks like GoatCounter can't show you unique visitors or how they move around on your site because it doesn't track them. There are no cookies on the main page! This seriously limits the kinds of features that can be implemented. On the other hand, they're col…
I don't care that much about not tracking my users tbh. I'm only using it to optimize conversion on my site. I'm not selling it or doing anything untoward, and wouldn't ever.