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Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

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Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#51

Post by TomGullen »

mrweasel wrote: post #43
jwr wrote: post #28

I turned off Google Analytics, because I realized that it doesn't actually report any useful or actionable data, just vanity metrics, and many of them of dubious quality. I run a SaaS and what matters for me is paid subscriptions. "Visits" (even if by humans, which is hard to tell) really do not matter much. Yes, I do want to increase conversion rates, and run bandit experiments, but I'm better off doing that myself.…

> I realized that it doesn't actually report any useful or actionable data The actionable part never occurred to me, but makes so much sense. What action could anyone really take, based on the data presented by Google Analytics? On top of my head I can actually think of anything you could easily get from server logs.

I find time spent on page is a great way to measure performance of redesigns on page. There are numerous actionable points.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#52

Post by Fileformat »

I have been using GA for my side projects but have been unhappy with the Google's direction on privacy, so started researching others. There are just so many: I think a lot of developers (including myself) think it is easy to do & start rolling their own & then try to productize it.

Here is my research: https://til.marcuse.info/webmaster/alt-analytics.html

I ended up going with GoatCounter.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#53

Post by jwr »

TomGullen wrote: post #51
mrweasel wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I realized that it doesn't actually report any useful or actionable data The actionable part never occurred to me, but makes so much sense. What action could anyone really take, based on the data presented by Google Analytics? On top of my head I can actually think of anything you could easily get from server logs.

I find time spent on page is a great way to measure performance of redesigns on page. There are numerous actionable points.

It might be, assuming two things:

1) That you actually care about this metric. I don't, I do not get paid by the number of minutes spent on pages, I get paid by the number of signed-up subscribers who use my software to make their workflow easier. I can (and prefer to) use bandit testing to measure the performance of redesigns.

2) that it can be reliably measured, which I don't think it can.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#54

Post by yagodragon »

I'd like to ditch google analytics for a new small side project I'm building. I live in a small country in Europe and for me the most important feature of these alternatives is the cookieless tracking and the lightweight scripts. However, the pricing is too steep for a project that won't gain more than thousands users.

Fathom analytics and simple analytics cost ~100$/year.

Plausible costs ~50$

I really liked and almost settled with plausible but I just saw goatcounter right now. It's free for personal / open source projects. That's so nice for small projects like many people here are building.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#55

Post by neilsimp1 »

Off topic, but I used to run a website that had Google Analytics. This site and domain are now 100% down and have been for over a year.

I still get monthly emails from Google about the analytics for this website. Apparently it's getting 200-300 visitors per month still. I have replied back to Google vie email about this several times but never heard any reply. I wonder what site they are tracking?

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#56

Post by sc11 »

contravariant wrote: post #34
swyx wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how can it be both copyleft and non viral? isn't vitality a definitive feature of copy left?

> it has no "viral effect" in case of linking

Neither does the GPL or any other licence under European laws.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#57

Post by icebraining »

swyx wrote: post #31
srg0 wrote: post #22

TIL about European Union Public License: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/introduction-eup... OSI-certified, copyleft, non-viral, GPL-compatible, SaaS-aware, multilingual

how can it be both copyleft and non viral? isn't vitality a definitive feature of copy left?

No, see LGPL and MPL for example.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#58

Post by huhtenberg »

bttrfl wrote: post #20
huhtenberg wrote: post #9

If you decide to migrate off GA, there's very little reason to not use self-hosted analytics. The only case when you'd get better analytics from a _service_ is exactly a GA-like setup that can track people as they go from one website to another. That is, the real value of an analytics service is derived directly from its ability to invade people privacy, at scale. Granted, migrating to another service is usually simp…

Server logs only tell you about things that happen on your server. If you are using JavaScript it's likely there are plenty of events that might be valuable to you that never leave a trace in your logs. For example, if you validate forms with JS you might want to track form submissions and validation errors.

... and in-page pingbacks

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#59

Post by TomGullen »

jwr wrote: post #53
TomGullen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find time spent on page is a great way to measure performance of redesigns on page. There are numerous actionable points.

It might be, assuming two things: 1) That you actually care about this metric. I don't, I do not get paid by the number of minutes spent on pages, I get paid by the number of signed-up subscribers who use my software to make their workflow easier. I can (and prefer to) use bandit testing to measure the performance of redesigns. 2) that it can be reliably measured, which I don't think it can.

We are a SaaS company also, and time spent reading manual/tutorial pages is important to us.

With regards to point two, being reliably measured sounds to me like perfection is the enemy of adequate. Perhaps in low volumes you can't measure certain stats like this reliabily but in large volumes I think it's useful.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#60

Post by icebraining »

sc11 wrote: post #56
contravariant wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it has no "viral effect" in case of linking

Neither does the GPL or any other licence under European laws.

That's surprising, considering the virality is part of the license text, not the law; does the law prohibit that clause?
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