Google Analytics (ga) is with the aid of far the maximum popular analytics tool in the marketplace and allows you to investigate internet site traffic and collect treasured information about user behavior. However, accumulating analytics data requires compliance with statistics protection rules consisting of GDPR. for purchasers and agencies who cost the privateness of their data, this is alarming. The query as a consequence arises: “is google analytics GDPR-compliant?” maybe now not. But a simple sure or no is difficult to present ...
Not all website analytics software are created equal.
Most of the tools track personally identifiable information (like IP Address, geolocation, or attribute demographic information like age and gender to visits). Website analytics tools like that assume our personal information is useful for making a website and take actions!
But for most website owners and businesses, it’s not. And, while it’s creepy, it also creates some legal ramifications if privacy policies and terms aren’t very specifically laid out, worded and displayed on websites.
Some website analytics tools now focus on website visitor privacy. They still track website usage for our customers, but they do this without collecting creepy amounts of data about visitors on websites with their tracking codes. And it is incredibly important because it very specifically relates to privacy laws that are so important to consider in 2021.
Can Google Analytics work without cookies?
Fundamentally, Google Analytics is primarily based on the usage of cookies. they set a couple of cookies to perceive internet site site visitors across distinctive browsing classes so that facts can be used to consider what site visitors have executed in previous sessions at the internet site.
however, despite the fact that Google Analytics switched from cookies to some thing specific, like localstorage, they would still war to conform with privacy laws without explicit consent notices, because they’d still be the use of something (cookies or in any other case) to track private information from site visitors.
Further to privateness notices relating to legal guidelines and regulations, web sites and agencies that use Google Analytics have numerous requirements they should legally adhere to for his or her website.
For instance, they ought to have a privacy policy that makes observations of the cookies or identifiers used to gather information, which then needs to be furnished to all internet site visitors in a clear and comprehensive way. Further, if google analytics users also allow things like demographic or re-advertising facts, their notices and privacy guidelines ought to be even extra in-intensity and complete.
Privacy-oriented alternatives to Google Analytics for 2021
Plausible : https://plausible.io/
We discovered Plausible just recently, but they deserve to be on pinnacle of this listing for us. Their platform is completely Open Source on github beneath the mit license.
Their most inexpensive plan starts at a month (just if paid every year) and for 2 a month you get 100k pageviews across limitless websites. in addition they submit a roadmap to hold you up-to-date with what’s coming. So If you needed a javascript-primarily based analytics nowadays, attainable would be a nice choice!
Pros :
- It’s the cheapest open source solution
- Custom events
- Fully open source software
Cons :
- Not enough data for webmarketers
Matomo : https://matomo.org/ (formerly Piwik)
Matomo is a precious web-analytics platform, and has a huge deal of capability that maximum direct marketers could need to investigate web site visitors, campaigns, and consumer behavior on their websites for the ones companies that need to hold strict manipulate over their personal information, Matomo, especially as an installation, has a few blessings over its major competitor Google Analytics.
Being open supply gives a bargain extra flexibility in modifying Matomo for one’s desires, but as is likewise common with such publishing fashions, this variation would require a vast quantity of human capital.
Matomo is mainly robust in the place of actual-time analytics, making it feasible to music live pastime on a website all through a advertising and marketing campaign. However, the satisfactory cost that Matomo appears to provide calls for the usage of their cloud hosting or purchasing the plugins that cope with this capability.
The conversion optimization functions, which include heatmaps, shape analytics, and funnels can be precious for many direct advertising groups who want to get a clean imaginative, and prescient of the way nicely person campaigns are operating while the consumer gets to the actual point of sale.
As part of privacy legislation worldwide including GDPR, CCPA, PECR, and ePrivacy, it is required to display a cookie banner informing users about cookies, or consent must be obtained before tracking visitors’ data. However there is a solution available: you can use Matomo tool without needing consent and without a cookie banner, by following all these steps.
Pros :
- A lot of exclusive features for a privacy-friendly analytic software
- Google Analytics data import
- Heatmaps and session recording like Hotjar
- AB testing, funnels, and forms Analytics
- A lot of ready-to-use-integrations
- Tag manager included to replace Google Tag Manager
Cons :
- 29$ can be too expensive for many startups and SMB
- Free version is not available in the cloud (On-Premise only, so you'll certainly need a developer to install it in your source code
Fathom : https://usefathom.com
Fathom analytics is a powerful yet simple analytics platform. The simplicity is what got us enthusiastic about it. We clearly get to see all informations when touring my dashboard. We can even see all goals at a glance.
If you run multiple websites or apps, you don’t need to create an account for each website. Switching between sites is very easy, and you'll gonna live it, for sure ! Easier than Google’s Accounts => Properties => Views. Don't you think ?
Pros :
- A single screen dashboard
- Easy set up
- Bootstrapped and independent
- Very easy to create goals (like events in GA)
Cons :
- No free plan
- 14$ can be too expensive for small companies
- Not enough data, metrics and features for webmarketers
- 1 admin only
AT INTERNET : https://www.atinternet.com/
How does AT Internet comply with GDPR, CCPA and other legal guidelines?
First of all, they store all collected analytics data within the EU. A few examples of personal data collected and the length of storage:
- IP address data: 6 months maximum
- GPS location data: 6 months maximum.
- Their cookies are active during a fixed period of 13 months, after which they disappear from a user’s computer. (AT Internet’s cookie only contains a unique alphanumeric ID – no other data is stored in the cookie)
Pros :
- Dashboards, reports & data mining
- Navigation & UX analysis
- E-commerce analysis
- French company (like Axeptio 💛🤘🇫🇷)
Cons :
- Too expensive for small startups and SMB (355€/month)