Hi friends 👋🏻

I can't remember the last time I met with a website manager who feels confident navigating Google Analytics. Over the past year I've been testing different analytics tools, and there's one that I've landed on that I love. I'll give you some details here and perhaps you'll want to try it out too.

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Does anyone like Google Analytics 4?

No, I don't think so.

At least in the world I operate in — small to mid-size nonprofits, without the budget for a dedicated data analyst — almost everyone struggles with the complexity of Google Analytics, and has a hard time extracting the data they need.

Despite disliking the tool, almost every org I talk with has it installed on their website (unless they don't have any analytics running at all).

Why?

• It's free
• It's been the standard for years
• Because it's the dominant tool, it's the analytics platform other tools build integrations with

Of course we all know that when a powerful platform like Google Analytics is free, that means our data is the product. GA is free because it gives Google access to vast amounts of data.

In a world that is increasingly concerned about online privacy, putting GA on your website is another reason you need a cookie consent banner.

And when you set up cookie consent (correctly), you'll suddenly lose 30-50% of your Google Analytics data, because users reject non-essential cookies, making your precious website analytics data even less useful.

Alternatives? Privacy-first analytics

Over the past five years, a bunch of alternative website analytics platforms have been gaining in popularity. The transition from Universal Analytics to GA4 in 2022/23 gave them a boost as users struggled with that change.

Most come with a fee, although they're typically very inexpensive compared to some of the other marketing tool subscriptions you're probably paying for.

The privacy-focused tools don't require cookies. And if you're not doing targeted paid advertising, this is probably fine for you.

My favorite so far:

Fathom Analytics

My favorite of these GA competitors is Fathom Analytics. It's simple, affordable, and is so easy to browse and get quick insights about what's happening on a website.

After a few months of testing last year (and waiting for some key additional features to be added), I've started including Fathom Analytics as an optional add-on for my clients with WordPress sites, with the Fathom interactive report built right into the WordPress dashboard.

In my experience talking with my nonprofit clients, the simplicity of the dashboard is the best part. Take a look:

I know the image is small, so here's a quick list of the data you can access:

• Key metrics in the graph at the top: realtime visitors, site visitors, pageviews, average time on site, bounce rate, and event completions
• Page views, entry pages, and exit pages
• Referring websites and traffic sources
• Devices and operating systems
• Geographic sources (Country, region, city)
• Browsers
• Events (if you have them set up)
• Traffic by campaigns (if you are using UTM parameters to set up different source/medium/campaign values)
• A date range filter that updates all of the fields on the report
• Data export to a spreadsheet

Recently, Fathom even added a Google Search Console integration, so you can see query, position, and click-through rate data from organic search right inside this report.

Installing Fathom is easy – it just requires placing a single code snippet on your site. The documentation covers all major wesbite platforms, and because it's cookieless, it doesn't require an update to your cookie consent manager.

Fathom offers a free 7-day trial, and after that pricing starts at $15/month. Using this link provides a $10 credit on your first invoice.

If you want to learn more about alternatives to Google Analytics, hit reply and let me know. I'm considering sharing more deep dives into setting up Fathom Analytics and sharing how I'm using the tool to help clients access insights, quickly and easily!

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