As a small to medium-sized business in the UK, you need an analytics platform that provides insights into your website’s performance. While Google Analytics is the most popular solution available, it may not be the best fit for your business. This is where Plausible Analytics comes in as a simple and reliable alternative.
I’ve been using Plausible Analytics for a while now, and—aside from an initial hitch in getting me signed up—I’m impressed. It boasts a beautifully simple and easy-to-use UI, and presents data in a digestible and clear format.
What is Plausible Analytics?
Plausible Analytics is a web analytics platform that provides simple, privacy-focused metrics for website owners. The privacy-focused aspect of this tool is what attracted me to it in the first place. Aside from GDPR compliance, more and more web users—especially the tech-savvy—are using cookie blockers that prevent Google Analytics from reading their visits.
Plausible offers insights such as page views, unique visitors, referral sources, bounce rate, and location metrics. Unlike Google Analytics, Plausible doesn’t use cookies or track personal data, making it a more ethical, transparent, and—you guessed it—GDPR compliant—option for businesses.
By analysing the data provided by Plausible Analytics, you can identify popular pages on your website, track visitor behaviour, and optimise your marketing strategies accordingly. For example, you can identify which marketing campaigns (emails, social media, ads) are driving the most traffic to your website and adjust your budget to support more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
You can also see which pages are causing visitors to exit the site quickly and take steps to improve those pages.
Benefits of Plausible Analytics
Simplicity
Plausible Analytics is straightforward and easy to use. It provides you with all the essential metrics you need, such as page views, unique visitors, bounce rates, and referral sources in a clear and digestible format, without overwhelming the senses.
Google Analytics is a powerful but very complex tool with a huge learning curve. It’s a little bit like heading to TGI Fridays and ordering everything off the menu, only to stick to the sesame chicken strips starter dish instead. While Google collects and stores this massive amount of data, most website-owners are only likely to use a fraction of it.
GDPR Compliance
Plausible Analytics is GDPR compliant out of the box, which means it respects user privacy by collecting only essential data and protecting it accordingly. All the data that Plausible collects and processes is encrypted and stored on servers in the EU, and are therefore covered by European privacy laws.
If you’re only using Plausible, you will no longer need an annoying cookie consent pop-up box on your website—because you won’t be collecting or storing anyone’s data or personally identifiable information, but you’ll still get all of the important insights and metrics you need to help you improve your website and marketing campaigns…
…without compromising your user’s privacy.
Performance
Many analytics tools use a script that can impact websites’ performance and loading speed. The smaller the script, the less of a negative impact it’ll likely have on the website’s overall performance.
The Plausible Analytics installation script is 45 times smaller in weight than the script for Google Analytics, meaning it is less likely to negatively impact loading speeds.
Pros and Cons of Using Plausible versus Google Analytics
Pros of using Plausible:
- No cookie tracking or user identification.
- GDPR compliance.
- Faster load times.
- A self-hosted option is available.
Cons of using Plausible:
- Limited features compared to Google Analytics.
- Fewer integrations are available.
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking for a simple yet effective alternative to Google Analytics that respects user privacy and improves website performance, then Plausible analytics could be an excellent choice for your business. Its intuitive interface and GDPR compliance make it easy for anyone to use effectively with minimal technical expertise required.
But hey, don’t take my word for it: Plausible offer a generous 30-day free trial. What’s there to lose?