Website Visitor Tracking: What to Track and How
Website visitor tracking means counting who visits your site, where they came from, what they viewed and whether they did the thing you wanted, like signing up. For many small apps, five numbers cover it: visitors, pageviews, top pages, referrers and signups. A lightweight script can collect them, and some tools do it without cookies or stored IP addresses.
This guide covers what to track, how tracking tools count people, the privacy side, and a short setup. A note on bias: we make Indiehacker Studio, a tool that does this for small apps; the method below works with any tool or a spreadsheet. Nothing here is legal advice.
What is website visitor tracking?
It is the collection of data about visits to your site. A small script on each page sends a record to an analytics service whenever someone loads a page: the URL, the referrer, the browser, the screen size, the time. The service turns those records into reports.
There are two broad kinds:
- Aggregate tracking: counts and trends. How many visitors today, which pages, which sources. This is where many founders start.
- Individual tracking: one person’s path through the site, sometimes tied to their account. Useful for support and product decisions, but it raises privacy questions, so do it only for signed-in users and say so in your privacy policy.
Which numbers should a small app track?
Keep it short. Each extra metric is one more thing to read.
| Metric | What it tells you | When to look |
|---|---|---|
| Live visitors | Is the launch or post working right now? | Launch day |
| Visitors and pageviews | Is traffic growing week over week? | Weekly |
| Top pages | Which pages bring people in | Weekly |
| Referrers and UTM campaigns | Which channels are worth your time | After each campaign |
| Countries and devices | Who your audience is, what to test on | Monthly |
| Signups (a custom event) | Does traffic turn into users? | Weekly |
Revenue is the next step. Visitors who sign up and then pay are the real goal, and that data lives in Stripe. How to calculate MRR from Stripe shows how to read it, and SaaS metrics covers the rest of the funnel.
How do tracking tools count visitors?
Counting pageviews is easy. Counting people is the hard part, because the web has no built-in visitor id. Tools use one of these methods:
- Cookies. A long-lived cookie with a random id. Accurate for returning visitors on the same browser. Usually needs consent in the EU and UK. Google Analytics 4 uses first-party cookies.
- Daily hashes. A hash of IP address, user agent and a salt that rotates every day. No cookie, but returning visitors on a new day count as new.
- Local storage ids. A random id in the browser’s local storage, sent with each pageview. No cookie and no IP needed. Indiehacker Studio uses this method.
- Server logs. Your web server already logs every request. Free and not affected by browser ad blockers, but full of bots and hard to read.
- Fingerprinting. Combining many browser traits into an id. Avoid it: EU guidance treats reading device information this way like cookies under ePrivacy rules, and visitors don’t expect it.
Each method miscounts in some way, and none is a legal shortcut on its own. Pick one and compare trends over time, not exact numbers across tools. What is cookieless tracking? compares the cookieless methods in depth.
Is website visitor tracking legal?
Yes, with conditions that depend on where your visitors are and what you store.
- Cookies and similar storage in the EU and UK fall under ePrivacy rules, which often require consent unless an exemption applies.
- Personal data such as IP addresses, emails and account ids falls under GDPR and similar laws. Collect less, keep it shorter, and say what you collect.
- Individual tracking of signed-in users should be in your privacy policy and limited to what you need.
A tool that sets no cookies and stores no IP reduces what you have to cover, though local storage still counts as device storage under ePrivacy. It does not remove your duty to describe what you collect. The EDPB’s Guidelines 2/2023 (final version adopted October 2024) on the technical scope of Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive cover storage and fingerprinting in detail. Read our Google Analytics and GDPR guide for the common cases, and treat it as a starting point, not legal advice.
Which website visitor tracking tools should you consider?
For a small product, a cookieless hosted tool is the usual pick. The Google Analytics alternative comparison covers Plausible, Fathom, Umami, Matomo, Clicky and Indiehacker Studio. If you only need a public hit counter, see website visitor counter. If budget is zero, start with free website analytics.
How do you set up visitor tracking?
With Indiehacker Studio:
- Create a free account and add a project with your domain.
- Paste one line before
</body>on every page:
<script src="https://indiehacker.studio/s.js" defer></script>
- Verify the domain from the dashboard (a link, a meta tag or a DNS record).
- Optional: count signups as a custom event with
window.ihs?.track("signup"), and tie visits to your users withwindow.ihs?.identify({ id: "user_123" }).
The same script also tracks single-page app route changes, so React, Vue and Svelte apps work without extra code. It sets no cookies and stores no IP address. It has no heatmaps or uptime monitoring. A chat bubble for support, feedback and bug reports comes with it, which is handy when the numbers show people stuck on a page. See add live chat to a SaaS with one script.
Frequently asked questions
Can I see who visited my website?
Aggregate tools show counts, sources and countries, not names. You can see a specific person only when they sign in and your app identifies them, or when they start a chat and leave their email.
Can I track visitors without cookies?
Yes. Daily hashes and local storage ids are the two common cookieless methods. They count unique visitors less precisely across days, and where no banner is needed, no visits are lost to declines. Ad blockers can still block some scripts.
Do ad blockers stop visitor tracking?
Some block well-known analytics domains. Server logs and first-party proxies avoid that. Expect some undercounting with any client-side script.
Is visitor tracking free?
Several tools have free tiers. Indiehacker Studio Free covers 1 project and 10,000 pageviews a month. Google Analytics 4 is free with its own trade-offs; see is Google Analytics free?
Try Indiehacker Studio
Track visitors on each app you run from one dashboard, with no cookies and no IP stored. Free covers one project; Pro is $12 a month for up to 50 projects, with a 14-day trial. See pricing.
Your next step: create a free project, paste the script on one site, and open the dashboard. Pageviews show up as they arrive, and you can add your other apps later.