Practical guides to help you make better decisions with your website data.
Free, open source and privacy-first alternatives to Google Analytics, compared on what actually matters: data ownership, cookie banners, script weight and how much of your traffic you lose to ad blockers.
A feature-by-feature comparison of Plausible and Google Analytics 4, and how to decide which one fits your site: cookies, data location, script size, sampling and what you give up.
What European data protection authorities have actually said about Google Analytics, what changed with the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, and the practical options if you need certainty.
Ad blockers, browser protections and DNS filtering remove a significant share of your traffic from Google Analytics. Why it happens, how to estimate your own blocked rate, and what to do about it.
The decision tree: which cookies require consent, which are exempt, when a banner is legally necessary and when it is just cargo cult. Plus the mistakes that make a banner worse than useless.
Cookieless does not automatically mean consent-free. What the ePrivacy rules actually cover, why local storage counts, and the checks that tell you whether you can drop the banner.
US privacy law works on notice and opt-out rather than prior consent. What that means in practice, which states matter, and why many US sites still show an EU-style banner.
The ePrivacy rules cover storing and accessing information on a device, not cookies specifically. Which localStorage uses need consent, which are exempt, and how to tell the difference.
What analytics cookies store, why they are classified as non-essential, how first-party and third-party analytics cookies differ, and what changes if you remove them.
How analytics counts visitors without storing anything on the device, what a rotating salt is for, and which metrics survive the transition intact.
Definitions that actually distinguish the categories, why third-party data is disappearing, and what a first-party measurement strategy looks like in practice.
Every free option for measuring traffic — server logs, CDN analytics, Search Console, self-hosted tools and free tiers — with what each one can and cannot tell you.
What analytics can legitimately tell you about visitors, what visitor identification tools claim, and where the legal and ethical line sits.
Define the conversion, choose between event and destination tracking, avoid double counting, and reconcile analytics with the only number that is definitely true.
UTM parameters, the referrer data you lose in apps, why social always looks worse than it is, and how to measure it without pixels.
Running your own analytics is free as in software. Here is what it actually costs in servers, time, database growth and the responsibility that comes with holding the data.
Five numbers, one monthly review, and permission to ignore everything else. A realistic analytics setup for a site with a few thousand visitors a month.
Three ways to add a cookieless tracking script to WordPress, how to avoid double counting, and how to exclude your own visits so the numbers mean something.
What Shopify measures by default, where a privacy-first analytics tool fits alongside it, and how to keep the checkout attribution you actually need.
Where to put the script in the App Router, how to handle client-side navigation so page views are not lost, and what to check before shipping.
Different session definitions, blocked scripts, consent declines, bots and timezones. Why the totals differ, which tool to believe, and how to work with the gap instead of against it.
Learn why more businesses are switching to privacy-first analytics tools and how it impacts user trust, GDPR compliance, and website performance.
Discover how combining revenue tracking with web analytics helps you understand which pages, campaigns, and traffic sources actually drive sales.
Learn how UTM parameters work, how to create them, and how to use them to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
Understand the real impact of analytics scripts on page speed, LCP, FID, and CLS — and why a lightweight tracking script matters for SEO.
A practical guide to GDPR compliance for website analytics. Learn what's required, what's optional, and how to avoid common mistakes.
The key analytics metrics every SaaS startup should track from day one. Focus on what matters and skip the vanity metrics.
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