Fair enough, nothing here is really private after all, so I appreciate even that much. I’ve got a general plan to stand up a Matrix server soon; I’ll DM you my handle when I’ve got it up and running if you’d like to contact me there.

To answer your question in a long-winded but hopefully entertaining read: I don’t have an academic background, myself. I dropped out of college and got my certificates like the A+ and CCNA, MCP too back when that was a thing (dating myself a bit). My favorite story is passing the Linux course without the textbook, on the logic that all the information I could need to pass was available on the internet. I was right 😂 Went straight into working in IT after that.

I’m a sysadmin by career, and an indefatigable entrepreneur by nature. My latest venture is a food brand here in the US; I built it with the intent to automate as much as possible so I can run it alongside my day job, from anywhere. Self-funded, which is kind of scary and rather limiting, but this structure gives me endurance to carry on as long as I have gainful employment (or until my other projects bear profit).

I also named my company in such a way that I can expand into other industries naturally, without having to rebrand. That’s because I don’t have any great passion for food specifically - more of a general desire to produce high quality output that other people can use, or enjoy, or otherwise benefit from, and a lot of different personal interests.

How much of a difference does company size make, when gauging the impact of individual words? Because it sounds like it’s a problem to spend millions on, when millions are a few percent of sales and fractions matter. Surely individual words aren’t the path from ~$100 monthly revenue to tens of thousands?

Well, it does indicate which parts of your site are intuitive vs in need of improvement if you can see where people click and how long they spend looking at a given portion of the page.

But, like others have said, it’s of questionable utility in the age of smartphones on websites that don’t break the established design patterns, so I pretty much agree entirely that it’s unnecessarily invasive. At least, for my site!

Portfolio of…? If you’re for hire I’d be interested in perusing, regardless. I’m always grateful to find skilled contacts to work with.

Thanks for the response! The food analogy is more apt than you might realise 😅 What if the restaurant kept a log of where you (and other patrons of course) sat and how many times you used the washroom, with the intent of optimising the table layout for navigability and speed of service?

This is more a curiosity question, analogising to heat maps and such; I don’t plan to do any of that as I don’t see the utility for me, but I do wonder where that practice falls in your estimation.

Oooh. Analytics without cookies or JS is very attractive, and UTM links might be useful. I’ll check out Shynet too, cheers!

All fair points, confirming some of my suspicions. This kind of direct practical experience is exactly what I was hoping read when I posted this question. Really appreciate you taking the time to respond and expand on that, thank you!

“Meh” as in that’s how it worked out for you, or…?

How I’ve been running to this point and it’s scary, but honestly seems to be working out fine. Other than sales in the toilet, but I did just start a few months back.

Also, I like your handle. Nostalgia for a MUD I used to play back in the day. It’s still online I think. Dunno if any of the descriptions I wrote are still in the game though, it’s been over twenty years!

A valuable contribution to the thread nonetheless! The more names provided, the less research I or anyone else reading here will have to do to find them, and of all the gifts I could receive saved time is amongst the greatest (👉 ﾟヮﾟ)👉

Always appreciate the counterpoint - it is, after all, why I asked! I know I’m very particular about the things I’m particular about, and I know that’s not necessarily true of anyone else. You’re absolutely right about the utility, one thing my prior host’s stats showed was that of thousands of people who visited the front page, only a few dozen went anywhere else, and only 1 got to the checkout page.

The thing is though, I did kinda already know that people were bouncing off the front page; the numbers just showed it in concrete terms. I knew the site needed an overhaul and badly; not only was it not converting, I just wasn’t happy with it. On top of that, I’ve got only one product, with everything needed to purchase on a single page, so there’s not even really that much to track. And, as you say: I’m not doing anything unconventional. Another point against needing advanced tracking.

Thank you again for your comment, I really do appreciate you taking the time 🙏

Just on the subject of investors right quick: I’ve done the Silicon Valley thing, didn’t like the feeling of being a dancing monkey at all, and my investors gave me some awful advice that I felt obliged to take. Since I don’t want to take the money of strangers and I don’t want to expose my friends and family to risk by taking their money, I’m self-funding this one. It’s so much more relaxed! And I get to take risks like launching with no analytics 😅

Self-hosted, you say…? Yet another point in favour of Umami, if I’m going with analytics. But you also said:

i just wouldn’t put more analytics on your website than you’d personally be ok with as an end user

Exactly this, three times over. I haven’t checked Umami yet but one big friction point for putting analytics on is that my pihole won’t even let me visit the root URLs of most of analytics provider sites, so I’d have to disable blocking just to check the stats, and I don’t like lowering that drawbridge. “A fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded”, sort of sentiment. I really don’t feel comfy putting trackers on that I myself would avoid.

Hahaha oh I like that plugin. I might do it. It conflicts with my “no popups” ethos, but it might be worth it for the comedy 😂 Thanks for sharing!

Behavior flow indicators will only tell you what you already know, which is that your users insist on using incorrect search terms and don’t read

This, amongst other accuracies in your comment, convince me you know what you’re talking about (my career is in IT so it rings particularly true 😂). Thank you, it’s reassuring to hear that I’m not totally off-base!

I really appreciate this suggestion as a starting point - I did some looking but I didn’t come across Umami yet. Will read up on that and use it to find other FOSS alternatives. Thank you!

It’s definitely going in my privacy policy, at least! 😅

Yeah, there seems to be different tolerance for different “kinds” of analytics amongst the people who care. The consensus so far seems to be that as long as I’m only using the data for myself, delete it after a while, and don’t sell it, it’s fine? Which does make sense, to me anyway.

the one time someone did ask for it, they never once logged into it or asked for trends

That’s the other thing, I’m not going to have the time to be babysitting numbers haha 😅 I might check it out every few months or if there’s a specific reason. Other users have suggested gathering insights from the logs too, I think that’s the way I’m going to go. Valuable insight, thank you!

Thanks for responding! Yeah, it’s e-commerce. It’s only one product though, which is maybe a point in favour of no tracking. I have a newsletter too, but it’s not “marketing” e.g. “on sale now, don’t miss it!” - part of my brand is recipes, and the newsletter only goes out when I post a new recipe to the site. I don’t plan to use the email list for anything else, for similar reasons to not wanting trackers 😅 About the trackiest thing I’m willing to do is coupon codes, which feels okay for tracking social post success.

Can I ask, would it sway your decision to check it out if you saw there were no trackers? If you saw that in an ad, vs people talking about it online? (I have a theory that some “selling points” only work by word of mouth, and in an ad they have the opposite effect)