Web analytics is a crucial tool for organizations to monitor their online presence and the performance of their websites. Understanding how users find and interact with a website is key to expanding your audience and getting your existing audience more involved.
But web analytics can be challenging for non-profits. Software such as Google Analytics might be powerful, but is also difficult to learn- to the point that smaller organizations without the needed know-how may struggle to leverage its full potential.
Also, using privacy-invasive analytics tools also can alienate an increasingly privacy-concerned public.
For non-profit organizations aiming to balance their operational needs with ethical practices, adopting a simple, privacy-focused tool such as Simple Analytics aligns better!
Here is why!
- Privacy matters
- No tracking, no surprises
- No cookie banners
- Build trust with your audience
- Transparent and flexible pricing
- Compliance made easy
- Migration from Google Analytics
- Simple and straightforward analytics
- Final Thoughts
Privacy matters
Everyone should be free to engage in the political and humanitarian causes they believe in. But it should be their decision whether or not this should be known. This vital space of privacy is undermined when you share the personal data of your visitors, as is the case with Google Analytics and other surveillance-based web analytics tools.
Put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Would you be happy if someone found out that you support a divisive cause- maybe one that could make you a target in certain countries? Would you trust an organization that cannot ensure this will not happen?
This might look like a catastrophic scenario, but it is daily business in the ad tech industry. No need to take our word for it: countless privacy advocates have made this point over and over again. This recent report from the Irish Council of Civil Liberties can give you an idea of how privacy-invasive the ad tech sector is.
The fundamental issue is that the ad tech ecosystem is a global data free-for-all that can be exploited by all sorts of actors, from foreign governments to criminal groups. There is no such thing as privacy once personal data enter this ecosystem- no matter what Google and other ad tech players tell you.
If you want to engage and mobilize people for a good cause, then you have a duty to keep their personal data away from advertising companies and data brokers. It is as simple as that.
No tracking, no surprises
Several companies market their web analytics tools as privacy-friendly, but not all of them are. Granted, most of them are more privacy friendly than Google Analytics, but that is a very low bar.
For instance, some supposedly privacy-friendly tools still rely on the cookie-based tracking model with some variations such as short expiration times or ID hashing. While these things are a step in the right direction, visitors are still being tracked and monitored. Other services use IP tracking or fingerprinting, which raises legal issues and makes these services potentially more invasive than cookie-based solutions.
We don’t do any of those things. When we say that Simple Analytics is privacy friendly, we mean it. We do not place cookies, we do not track IP, and we do not fingerprint devices. Web analytics doesn’t get any more privacy-friendly than Simple Analytics, period.
No cookie banners
No one likes cookie banners. They annoy the users and deteriorate user experience at the most crucial time: the very first visit to your website.
It gets even worse for non-profits. Knowing that a non-profit shares your personal data with third parties leaves visitors with a sour taste in their mouth and may very well alienate some of them.
Luckily, web analytics can be done without cookie banners. And it is perfectly legal- as long as you don’t track users or collect their personal data.
This is the approach we took with Simple Analytics. Our metrics are entirely built on events which do not constitute personal data. We do not use cookies or other tracking techniques such as fingerprinting. This allows our customers to get all the insights they need to better understand their traffic, without invading their privacy and cluttering the user experience with pop-ups.
Build trust with your audience
Processing data in a transparent and privacy-friendly way is not only a legal obligation, but also an ethical one. From the public’s point of view, it is difficult to trust an organization that shares personal data with Google and other ad tech players with terrible privacy records.
It is not hard to see why. Sharing your visitor’s data impacts their privacy, whether you like it or not. It does not matter whether you provide the data to Google in order to gain insights, or in order to serve targeted advertising- the privacy impact of data sharing is the same regardless of the purpose.
With Simple Analytics personal data does not leave your website. We say that we are privacy-friendly, and we mean it. We do not use cookies, fingerprint devices, or track users in any way. We do not store a single bit of personal data. Our code is open to review.
Transparent and flexible pricing
Simple Analytics offers transparent pricing based on three subscription tiers, starting at €9 per month. Our Enterprise-tier subscriptions offer the full range of Simple Analytics’ features at a negotiable price. We are always happy to talk to potential customers and affordable, scalable pricing solutions to help them grow their reach in the long run.
Compliance made easy
Cookie-based web analytics tools collect personal data and process them to give you insights. The downside is that you are responsible for processing these data in compliance with the law.
This is not the case with Simple Analytics as no personal data are ever collected or stored. This makes it trivial to comply with most legislation. And if an issue ever arises, you can contact our legal support to find a solution- no need to have in-house expertise.
Regulators around the world are taking data protection laws such as the GDPR and the CCPA more and more seriously with each year. Compliance is key to sustainable web analytics in the long run and no tool makes it easier than Simple Analytics.
Migration from Google Analytics
As you can probably tell, we are not the biggest fans of Google Analytics. Tracking-based analytics is invasive, unethical, and not sustainable in the long run.
We take pride in the fact that a significant portion of our customer base migrated to Simple Analytics from Google Analytics. We do all we can to make this migration seamless. Our Google Analytics importer allows customers to import all their data to Simple Analytics and retain crucial metrics to analyze long-term trends.
We also offer plug-ins for Google Tag Manager and Google Looker Studio as well as other commonly used software, so that our clients can keep using the tools they like and are familiar with.
Simple and straightforward analytics
We are proud to make valuable insights accessible to a broad range of organizations. With Simple Analytics you don’t need a specialist on board to make your organization and audience grow.
Cookie-based services like Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics are powerful tools, but are also difficult to use. Many of their features can only be leveraged by marketeers or digital analysts, and this can be a problem for smaller organizations lacking this know-how.
Simple Analytics is a powerful but more user-friendly tool. Our intuitive and clean UI is easy to navigate for new client.
This accessibility makes Simple Analytics perfect for customers who are not familiar with web analytics software. With extensive technical documentation explaining every feature, the insights you need are** just a click away**.
Final Thoughts
We are passionate about privacy. It is a human right, and one that is becoming more important with each day as the world becomes more and more interconnected.
This is why we created Simple Analytics. Our privacy-first tool allows our customers to get all the insights they need in an ethical, privacy-friendly way. Simple Analytics delivers accurate insights without cookies, without trackers, and without collecting a single bit of personal data!
If this sounds good to you, feel free to give us a try!