For the longest time, I didn’t have any analytics on my websites. I didn’t know where visitors came from. In fact, I didn’t know if there were visitors at all.
Google Analytics has given web analytics a bad rep, for many reasons, but there are solutions out there now that respect privacy, don’t slow down your website, and are pleasant to use. From my research, Fathom, Plausible, and Simple Analytics are the most modern and popular as of today. There are similar products that have been around for a long time. They’re probably just as good, just not as sleek.
At the time of writing, Fathom seems to be the original privacy-friendly analytics that is cheapest per traffic and has the sleekest UI, Plausible is a clone that has more features and a less elegant UI, and I’m not sure about Simple Analytics since I didn’t want to spend time trying a third one. The formula for these are standard and there’s not too much new after the second one.
I’m excited to see what blog posts are the most popular, and to see what content doesn’t really matter.