Web Analytics: What It Is and What to Measure
Web analytics is the practice of collecting and reading data about how people reach and use a website. It tells you how many came, where they came from, which pages they read and what they did next. For a small product, it answers one question that matters every week: is anything I’m doing bringing in the right people?
A solo founder can run it with a script on every page, a dashboard opened once a week and five numbers they trust. This guide covers what web analytics measures, how the data gets collected, which metrics matter for a small site and how to choose a tool.
What does web analytics measure?
Most tools record the same core events and build reports on top of them.
| Metric | What it tells you | When it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Pageviews | How many pages were loaded | Content and docs sites |
| Visitors | How many distinct browsers came | Growth over time |
| Sources (referrers) | Which site or search engine sent them | Deciding where to post |
| UTM campaigns | Which link you shared brought them | Launches, newsletters, ads |
| Top pages | What people read | Pricing, docs, landing pages |
| Countries and devices | Where they are and what they use | Translations, mobile layout |
| Custom events | Actions like signup or checkout | Your funnel |
The first six come for free once a script is installed. Custom events take one line of code each, and they’re where analytics starts paying for itself, because they turn “people visited” into “people signed up”.
How does web analytics collect data?
There are two broad ways.
Page tagging. A small JavaScript file runs in the visitor’s browser and sends a request to the analytics server on every page load. This is how Google Analytics, Plausible, Matomo and Indiehacker Studio work. It captures the page, the referrer, the screen size and anything your code passes in.
Server logs. Your web server already writes a line for every request. Tools that read those logs need no script at all, but they also count bots, can’t see single-page app navigation, and know nothing about what happens in the browser.
Most small sites use page tagging because it works on any host and sees what real browsers do.
The next question is how a tool tells one visitor from another. Classic tools store a long-lived cookie with an identifier. Privacy-friendly tools avoid that: some hash the IP and user agent with a salt that changes every day, others keep a random id in the browser that is never tied to a person. We compare these in what is cookieless tracking.
Which web analytics metrics matter for a small site?
A dashboard with forty charts is a dashboard you stop opening. For a product run by one or two people, five things cover nearly every decision:
- Visitors over 30 days. Daily numbers are noise. A month shows a trend.
- Top sources. If one forum sends more signups than all your tweets, spend your time there.
- Top pages. A pricing page that gets traffic and no signups is a pricing problem, not a traffic problem.
- One conversion event. Signup, trial started or checkout opened. Pick one and track it.
- Live visitors on launch day. Watching people arrive while a post is on the front page tells you whether the page holds them.
If you sell subscriptions, add revenue next to traffic. We explain the math behind that in how to calculate MRR from Stripe, and the wider set of numbers in our guide to SaaS metrics.
Web analytics vs product analytics: what’s the difference?
Web analytics looks at visits to pages: traffic, sources, content. Product analytics looks at what signed-in users do inside your app: which features they use, which steps of onboarding they skip, which cohort keeps coming back.
Early on, web analytics plus a couple of custom events covers both. You can send signup or export_created from your app the same way you track a page. Dedicated product analytics suites earn their price later, when you have enough users for cohorts to mean something.
How do you choose a web analytics tool?
Ask four questions before you install anything:
- Does it need a cookie banner? Tools that store long-lived identifiers or share data with ad platforms usually do in the EU and UK. Tools that store no personal data often don’t, though the rules depend on your jurisdiction.
- How heavy is the script? A tag that loads several files slows every page. Check the size on a real page.
- Does it handle single-page apps? If your app uses a client-side router, the script must count route changes, or every session looks like one pageview.
- Can you see all your sites in one place? If you run several projects, switching between accounts is how analytics stops getting checked.
For a list of options with free plans, see our roundup of free website analytics. If you’re replacing Google’s tool specifically, start with is Google Analytics free and the Google Analytics alternative guide.
How do you set up web analytics in ten minutes?
- Install one script tag on every page, usually in the shared layout.
- Open the site yourself and confirm the visit shows up.
- Add UTM parameters to every link you post:
?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=launch. - Add one custom event for your main conversion.
- Put a weekly reminder to look at the 30-day view and write down one change.
With Indiehacker Studio, step one is a single line that also brings a support chat, feedback and bug reports, and step four is window.ihs?.track("signup"). The script sets no cookies and never stores IP addresses. See how it works on the home page.
FAQ
Is web analytics the same as Google Analytics?
No. Google Analytics is one web analytics tool among many. The practice is the same everywhere: collect visits and events, then report on them.
Do I need web analytics before I have users?
Yes, install it on day one. The first traffic you get from a launch is the data you’ll want to compare against later, and you can’t collect it after the fact.
Does web analytics slow down my site?
It can. A large tag manager setup adds noticeable weight. A single small script that loads with defer has no visible effect on page speed.
Is web analytics legal under GDPR?
It can be, depending on what data the tool collects and where it goes. Tools that avoid personal data are the simpler path. Read our Google Analytics and GDPR guide for the specific case of Google’s product.
Start measuring
Indiehacker Studio gives you cookieless web analytics for every project you run, plus live chat and Stripe revenue in the same dashboard. The free plan covers one project and 10,000 pageviews a month. Create your free account.