Google Analytics, the best alternatives to monitor real-time traffic

There are at least two very good reasons to choose an alternative to Google Analytics when it comes to monitor the performance of your website.

The first reason is that Google’s proprietary platform (as all professionals who work everyday with GA know) has often several bugs and problems that prevent you from having a concrete picture of the situation, especially when it comes to the number of visitors in real time. The second reason is even more important: in Italy, Google Analytics will soon be just a vague memory, since, according to a very recent ruling by the Garante della Privacy, the platform violates the GDPR, the legislation protecting user data.

At this point, finding another tool will be more of an obligation than a possibility for you. Here is some advice on the best alternatives to Google Analytics at your disposal.

Visitor Analytics

The German platform is a cookie-free web analytics service that will allow you to accurately track all actions completed on your site by users via useful heat maps. With this tool you will even be able to know how each individual user scrolls through your page or moves the mouse cursor to navigate within it.

This platform also offers you the possibility of proposing simple surveys and research to your users: this is might be a good way to receive useful feedbacks to improve the user-experience of your site.

Fusedeck

This service provides you with particularly precise and detailed user activity tracking. Fusedeck can be very useful if you, for instance, want to monitor how long a user has been active on your site and how much time they have spent in a specific area. This service can be used with or without cookies.

Plausible

This analytical tool is cookie-free and particularly ‘light’ in the sense that it does not overburden and slow down your site.

It is open source software that also provides a ‘self-hosted’ option, and can therefore be used in a totally private form.

Matomo

Founded by a New Zealand company, Matomo is the most popular alternative to Google Analytics. Compared to GA, this tool provides you with greater security with regard to data protection, as data can (if necessary) be saved on your own servers.

In general, Matomo is very similar to Google Analytics and can therefore be a simple and intuitive substitute for it. However, differently from Google Analytics, on Matomo you are not able to import your own reports.

econda

If your site is an e-commerce, this may be the right option for you. The tool offers ad-hoc analysis for all the online shops that aim to monitor both traffic and conversions.

To date, according to Digital Guide IONOS (and as stated by the company’s founder), econda is the most widely used and popular solution for the top 100 online retailers.

Looking for more tips or functional ideas to keep an eye on your results? Are you looking to develop an effective and integrated content strategy for your company? Contents.com is the platform for you.

Thanks to Contents.com’s one-stop shop platform, you will be able to create and transform all the content you need on an ad-hoc basis, integrating the use of artificial intelligence with human creativity. Learn more about the one-stop platform by activating your 7-day free trial!