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User experience begins from the first moment that someone interacts with your organization. For many businesses, that experience starts with your website.
The majority of the websites you regularly visit are collecting data about your usage and behavior on those sites. Business owners and marketers then use this data to track trends, pinpoint website issues, and analyze the effectiveness of marketing efforts.
For many years, Google Analytics has been the marketing industry standard for website behavior tracking. It is used to track website traffic on roughly 85% of all websites that use web analytics tools. Google’s incentive is to collect as much information as possible from people visiting as many sites as possible. Google Analytics helps Google do just that.
In my experience, Google Analytics is overkill for many small business website owners — it collects a ton of data points, and many website owners find its applicable use for only a fraction of the data it measures. It also requires a significant amount of training to fully understand the platform.
Google Analytics is free because Google’s business model is to collect and analyze large amounts of personal information from web users and use these personal and behavioral insights to sell advertisements. As the old saying goes, “if a service is free, you are the product.”
In recent years, privacy-friendly alternatives to Google Analytics have emerged. One such alternative is Plausible Analytics — a paid analytics tool that is independent, open source, and transparent. Plausible provides website owners with valuable website traffic insights while respecting the privacy of website visitors, being compliant with privacy regulations, all without compromising user experience. Plausible is easy for busy small business owners to use and understand their website’s analytics with no training or prior experience necessary.
Redhead Marketing Group is a strong supporter of, and primarily works with, small businesses. I believe Plausible is a solid choice for small businesses seeking simplicity and clarity in their analytics.
That being said, I am happy to share that Redhead Marketing Group has stopped using Google Analytics, in favor of the open source and privacy-focused Plausible Analytics.
- Jimmy
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