Plausible Analytics ~ The Best Open Source Alternative To Google Analytics
First and foremost, there are many marketing and SEO experts who will promise you wildly successful numbers if you employ their services. Some of them go so far as to say they will put your website at the top of Google’s pages.
Others will give average website statistics that are way over stated, like saying the average site gets over 10,000 visitors a month.
When you create averages that include banks, Amazon, hotels, and various other high traffic websites, it will drive the averages up. But it does not accurately reflect the average traffic to small business websites. In fact, all those inflated numbers can be quite discouraging for the new small business web developers.
It stands to reason the size of an organization, the resources, and above all, the content of the website, will be key factors driving the amount of traffic to a website. Also, as with all things, it takes time to become established. It also depends on how much paid advertising you do, to drive traffic to your website.
To be honest and open, I have not used any paid advertisement at all, and rely solely on content creation.
In actual fact most SME’s are very low on the statistical ladder, compared to sites like Amazon, or any high traffic site used on a daily basis for banking, groceries, general household items, computers, etc. The following online information provides a more realistic viewpoint:
“Average Number of Visitors Per Month. On the lower end of the spectrum – 13% of local businesses receive fewer than 100 visitors to their sites each month, while 55% receive fewer than 500. On the higher end, 20% of businesses receive more than 1500 monthly visitors to their site, and 15% receive over 2500 visitors.”
Google analytics does the crawling and tracking of all websites, and for awhile I used G/A to track visitors. However given that a website requires time and attention in addition to analytics, I found the many layers and complexities of G/A to be a bit much.
From there I tried a couple of condensed G/A plug-ins that gave a minimal amount of information, such as number of unique visitors, organic visitors, and bounce rates. In each case those plug-ins did not last long and failed, so I had to delete them.
After that I started looking for alternatives, and found there are quite a few in the open source arena.
After quite a few years adapting to the learning curve in web development, I know I probably do not view things the same way many others do. But I have learned to be wary, or rather cautious when it comes to plug-ins.
That is why you do not see pop-up ads all over my website. When I visit websites, I find those to be annoying and intrusive, so I don’t use them.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when people add plug-ins with graphics that jump up and down to get your attention. I won’t stay on a website for five seconds if there are jumping and moving parts. In my opinion, it is like a sales clerk who will not allow you to walk around the store just to browse.
I know countless marketing people would tell me otherwise, but the beauty of doing your own thing – can’t be downplayed either.
In fact I started to think of plug-ins as being like prescription drugs. They might offer a quick or simple solution, but some of them have severe side effects. Some are heavy, and cumbersome. Others have bad code. Some of them can crash your entire site. They have a systemic influence. They can interact with each other, and usually it is not in a good way. Some are not kept up to date, and so on.
In my opinion, the worst plug-ins are the ones that take over your admin panel with ads, and attempts to get you to add more, or get the pro version. Some of them even have those annoying jumping emoticons, making it impossible to ignore them. Those kinds of plug-ins, in my opinion, are intolerable.
In addition, similar to prescription drugs, there can be unintended interactions between plug-ins that create problems on your website. My philosophy is to use plug-ins sparingly, and delete them as soon as you see any issues.
The reason for this is that if you do have issues like internal server errors, you must go through a lot of layers of trouble shooting. This includes the server, the theme, the fonts, and every single plug-in.
As I started to look for a lightweight open source analytics option, I came across Plausible Analytics, which is an open source plug-in developed in the UK. It is by far the best analytics plug-in I have ever come across.
To add to the benefits, if you have any issues at all, the creators of this plug-in will respond, and help you out promptly. In my books, that is a huge plus, because you can interact directly with the people who built it from the ground up.
It enables you to put the numbers of visitors on the dashboard in the back end, or admin panel of your store. The dashboard analytics are lightweight, with clean code, and easy to figure out. It gives you just what you want to see, and not a plethora of complicated information that you can’t be bothered with.
The Plausible Analytics plug-in is one of the best plug-ins, and among the top three of all the plug-ins I have chosen to keep thus far, making it invaluable.
After using it for almost a year, it has not failed. It allows you to quickly see the number of visitors, make comparisons, view the countries and cities that are visiting your site, and look at what happens on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. The link below shows the comparison mode from one month to the next:
Knowing there are multiple different time zones when you have a global audience, it also lets you view what happened the previous day when you get up in the morning. The following link shows what happened yesterday March 6, 2024:
It shows you a long list of all the top pages being viewed. I have provided just the sample of what is at the top of the page as it is quite long:
In addition to showing you the top pages, it shows the countries, which can be broken down into cities and regions. It also shows the devices used, and the sources:
There is a simple drop down menu on the right hand side that allows you to choose what you want to look at or compare:
And finally at the bottom of the page, you can set up and view Custom Properties, which I have not done yet. The following link gives information about custom properties, and also lets you see the documentation available on this plug-in:
I would definitely give this plug-in a five star review. As far as I know, it does not have the free version, and a pro version, but rather charges a little over $100 a year up front. I find this to be much more palatable than having a constant advertisement to upgrade to the pro version.
The Plausible Analytics dashboard is something I use on a daily basis because it is akin to keeping a finger on the pulse of what is going on with your website.
A website is interactive, and the vibrancy comes from the visitors. Therefore, in addition to respecting their privacy, we can also get an overview or snapshot of the interest generated.
Therefore to all the visitors, and to Plausible Analytics, I owe a debt of gratitude. I would like to thank all those who have an interest in the culture and creativity of our past, and how it blends with the current times.
There are many things with universal interest and appeal. It is a pleasure to share a collection that represents the artistic endeavours, combined with the technical expertise, from a wide variety of people and regions throughout the world.
Copyright Valerie J. Hayes and Quiet West (2024). Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author/owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Valerie J. Hayes and Quiet West with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.