Website analytics for creators

• Google Analytics is complicated and takes too much time
• Google Analytics requires legal work, cookie notices, and user consent
• Google Analytics is bulky and can slow down your website
• Google Analytics doesn’t load for most web users
• Give Fathom a try

Google Analytics is complicated and takes too much time

While Google Analytics is installed on a whopping 85% of websites, it’s overkill in so many ways.

Google Analytics is complex and includes hundreds of pages of reports and even more individual metrics. As creators and small businesses, we rarely need that much level of detail to run our business. Most normal businesses don’t want to spend time learning how to use analytics, taking courses on Google Analytics (or even getting certifications for their software).

That’s why Fathom was built with simplicity in mind. We don’t want you to get caught up in reports or learning our software because you have your own company to run. With Fathom, we want you to use our software less. That’s why we provide a single page of analytics and even deliver analytics to you in your inbox (weekly or monthly).

Most people take a few minutes to learn how Fathom works and then a few more minutes each week to check in on what matters to them on their analytics dashboards.

Here’s a complete walk-through of how Fathom works, and it’s only about 10 minutes long. That's how short it takes to show you the whole thing.

Google Analytics requires legal work, cookie notices, and user consent

Did you know that due to how data is collected and what information is collected by Google Analytics about your website visitors, that it requires you to write (or have your lawyer write) a privacy policy to detail usage? Well, it’s true.

Because Google Analytics places multiple cookies and identifiers on your site to track visitors, you need to ensure your website is not doing anything illegal - which requires work on your part.

First, you need to have a privacy policy in place to document how data is collected and processed. And then, because personal data is collected and processed, you need to have a cookie notice on your site and ask for consent from each user before they can view your site. Writing legal documentation is a lot of work for creators and can cost a lot of money to hire lawyers.

That’s why we created a privacy-first way to handle website analytics anonymously. We did this because we feel it’s the right thing to do to protect the digital privacy of everyone who uses the internet, but we also did it to make your life as a business owner easier:

• Because Fathom collects data about visitors in a practically anonymous way, there are no detailed updates to privacy policies necessary. If you want, you can add a note to your privacy policy humble-bragging that you don’t collect any personal data about your visitors (and you can use this one, already written for you).
• Since we don’t use cookies or similar tracking technology, you do not have to put annoying and ugly cookie notices on your website. That means if someone visits your site… they see your site, not a cookie notice blocking your site (and taking valuable time to load).
• Being that all data collected with Fathom is anonymized and no cookie notices are required, there’s nothing for users to be forced to consent to. They simply see your site as nature intended: without any forced consents or notices blocking their view.

We created Fathom to be compliant with privacy laws out of the box. That means no work from you to get up and running instantly. Fathom is perfect for creators who want to keep their site optimized for their visitors while not breaking any laws in the process.

Google Analytics is bulky and can slow down your website

In order for Google Analytics to provide hundreds of reports and data points, it requires a pretty large script to load for your visitors. This can lead to your website loading much slower than it needs to (which punishes your hard-earned SEO).

On the other hand, Fathom is a fraction of the size and has more than doubled the site speed load time for many of our customers. But, you may be wondering, won’t using Google Analytics help with SEO, since Google’s search engine is the most popular search engine and surely they prioritize websites that use their analytics tracking product too?

The answer is most definitely no (straight from Google's mouth). There is no punishment or penalization for not using Google Analytics. And since Fathom loads much faster, it’s actually better for SEO to use Fathom and not Google Analytics. Plus, you’ve also got to consider the scripts and code needed to load a cookie consent notice on websites with Google Analytics, also adding to page load (not required with Fathom).

Google Analytics doesn’t load for most web users

How could you possibly get the full story in your analytics if it only collected data about half the folks who visited your site? Well, because Google Analytics is the most used analytics on the internet, it’s also the biggest target.

Browsers like Firefox and Brave can block Google Analytics on any/all sites that use it, and there are a ton of browser extensions that also block Google Analytics by default. We’ve heard from some creator customers that they’ve seen a 50% increase in the number of page views and uniques in their stats when they switched to Fathom.

Not to mention that Google Analytics is targeted to be blocked because we just don’t know where all the gobs of data they collect about all of us go and how it’s used. Google is one of the largest advertising companies in the world, after all. And they generate revenue from targeted advertising to fund their free products—whereas Fathom generates revenue by selling software at a reasonable and sustainable price. Meaning, first, we don’t need to touch or consider selling data, and second, our software is fundamentally built in a way that means we don’t store any personal data (outside of for security reasons, and then only briefly). To us, it’s the most honest and respectable way to run a business.

So using Fathom instead of Google Analytics means, with minimal setup, you can collect and see stats about your entire audience, not just the select few who don’t block Google Analytics yet. That means your analytics with Fathom will be higher and, more importantly, much more accurate too.

Give Fathom a try

We believe Fathom is the best solution for website analytics on creator websites for all the above reasons and much more. We’re creators, too, so we understand what it takes to run a profitable and sustainable company without outside investments.

That said, we don’t discriminate against VC-backed customers either. Many of our customers chose the external investment route with their business, and we’re happy for them (but that’s for another article, ha).

So, if you’re a proudly creator and bootstrapped company, register today for your free trial of Fathom Analytics. You’ll be able to explore and figure out how well our software can suit your needs and get you the information required to run your company quickly.

PS: You can keep your historical Google Analytics data forever by importing it into Fathom.