Lately I’ve been spending a lot more time contemplating the use of Fathom Analytics as a replacement of Google Analytics.

It was originally brought to my attention about a year ago by a client who is incredibly thoughtful about privacy and data protection. He’s always challenging me to be a better citizen as it relates to this aspect of the user experience.

At the time, I couldn’t really imagine living in a post-google world.

After setting it up on a couple websites over the past few months, I’m incredibly amazed at how easy it is to use, and how much clients appreciate the simplicity of the tool (and they actually use it)!

Fathom Analytics offers creators access to the essential data that Google Analytics provides with much more ease.

The data feels a lot cleaner, and easier to glean insights from at the click of a button.

If you aren’t familiar with fathom analytics, it is a new kind of analytics service whose business model is privacy by design.

Contrast that with Google Analytics, where digital privacy has always been a secondary concern to data collection. With Fathom, you don’t even need to have an annoying cookie notice or banner on your site, because the team has taken great care to comply with privacy laws around the world.

4 of my favorite things you can track on your website using Fathom to grow your business:

Your Most Popular Articles and Content

Fathom makes it very easy to see which pages in your website content are receiving the most views. You can filter this  information by month, week, or day to see if there is a pattern to the traffic coming in on a particular page.

For example, I noticed that my newsletter post  “Finding Balance in 2022” has far higher views than any others so far this year. This tells me that people are interested in this topic and could benefit from more related content.

This is also a data-driven way of generating ideas for new blog posts since I know that my readers are interested in this topic.

It’s also helpful when tailoring your content since it can help you determine which topics resonate with your audience.

Understanding Where Your Visitors are Coming From

It’s easy to see how your visitors are finding their way to your site, whether it be via Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, or perhaps another creator who has linked to you in their newsletter.

Your ability to see referring URL’s helps you to understand what’s working to drive more traffic to your site and where it may make sense to focus more of your efforts.

Simple Goal Tracking

This is a feature makes Fathom Analytics a great option for the creator who doesn’t want to hire a developer or Google Analytics expert just to get the 80/20 of what is important to them on their site.

Let’s say you want to track the number of people opting in to your newsletter, and what your conversion rate is. In Google Analytics, this could get overwhelming very quickly.

In Fathom, it’s as simple as declaring a goal, and adding one line of code to your page in most cases.

This allows you to track progress towards your growth over time, and to use the insights the data provides in  your marketing efforts.

The more goals you define, the more useful Fathom becomes over time.

Email Campaign Tracking with UTM Codes

Many newsletter creators have one simple goal in mind which is to know that their emails are actually effective at driving traffic to their website, and to know which content is most engaging to their audience.

One thing I like about both ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit is that you can automatically add UTM tracking codes to links in your emails. Once you have enabled this feature, in Fathom Analytics you can see exactly how many visitors are coming to your site from a specific newsletter issue which gets tracked as a campaign.

If driving traffic from email is a goal of your business, this because a very valuable gauge of your success. You can filter your website traffic by a specific newsletter issue for instance, and see which page visits have been directly related to your email.

This can also be very motivating to be able to see a direct cause/effect from your efforts. You can even setup automated email reports yourself on a weekly basis to keep you up to date on how things are trending with your website views and audience growth.

Fathom Analytics is simple website analytics company that delivers a simple user-friendly experience, makes tracking easier than most analytics providers, and feels “fresh and so clean”.

At $14/month for creators with websites under 100,000 page views, it’s also affordable for most businesses even if you are just getting started.

No it’s not free, but theres a lot to be said for not having to hire an “expert” just to get access to essential insights about your business. It’s as easy as adding a simple analytics tracking script or embed code to your site.

If you’d like to give it a try, you can sign up for a 14-day trial here. This link will provide you with $10 off your first month with the service.

(yes, this is an affiliate link if you are wondering, however I never share products that I’m not actively using in my own biz or with my clients).