You regularly create and publish articles, but which ones are best received by your readers? And which analyses are compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)? We introduce you to the Google Analytics alternative Statify for WordPress.

It's clear: a tool to analyze the statistics of your website is a must. This is the only way you can invest in content that really resonates with your target group. It doesn't matter whether your website is small, simple or large and extensive. Or an online store with WooCommerce.

When it comes to website statistics, it makes no sense to rely on gut feeling. You can only find out whether your website is actually being visited and which posts are being read with a suitable analytics solution.

Google Analytics: The market leader

Many website operators use the market leader Google Analytics for their statistics. Even if the integration sounds tempting at first due to its popularity, there are some problems in practice. This is because personal data is automatically transmitted to Google when your website's analytics data is determined. And without the prior consent of your visitors, this is no longer GDPR-compliant.

In order to be able to use Google Analytics in compliance with data protection regulations, a cumbersome process is required. This means that, among other things, an order data processing contract must be concluded with Google and all visitors must be asked for permission to be tracked as soon as they access the website.

GDPR and tracking cookies

Since the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it has been a challenge to collect website statistics in compliance with data protection regulations. This is due in particular to tracking cookies, which may no longer be set without the express consent of your visitors. See, for example, the Borlabs Cookie solution for WordPress.

The ePrivacy Regulation, which is intended to expand and specify the GDPR, also includes the topic of data processing and data storage. It will also stipulate that tools such as Google Analytics will not be permitted in future if users do not give their clear consent. However, the ePrivacy Regulation is not due to come into force before 2023.

In order to obtain the consent of visitors, websites generally use cookie banners. This gives visitors the option of either accepting all cookies, rejecting all cookies or only accepting individual cookies. This option means there is a good chance that many visitors will reject all cookies. As a result, the figures are often no longer meaningful.

In addition, cookie banners are usually not designed to be particularly user-friendly. If a pop-up takes up the entire homepage on both the desktop and the mobile version or the buttons for rejecting cookies are hidden, this is rather off-putting.

WordPress plugin Statify as an alternative

What is the solution? Do without the statistics completely? As already mentioned, this is usually out of the question. After all, the figures are often the basis for important decisions for you or your company. A simple and clear solution is the WordPress plugin Statify.

Statify is a plugin that is already used by many website operators. More than 200,000 active installations are listed in the official WordPress plugin directory. In contrast to Google Analytics and Matomo (formerly Piwik), Statify only records the page views of your website and not individual visitors, including IP addresses, which are considered personal data.

Statify also records the referrers. These are the pages from which your users came to your website. Statify is particularly suitable for small websites that are not dependent on detailed statistics and specific figures. This is because the plugin provides the call data for the past 14 days by default. If you want to increase the time period, you can change this in the plugin settings.

You also have the option of setting whether you want to see the total number of views in your dashboard or only those for the current day.

Advantages and disadvantages of Statify

One of the biggest advantages of Statify is that the WordPress plugin attaches great importance to data protection. It does not set any cookies. So if you use Statify on your website, you generally don't need a cookie banner or active consent from your visitors, at least not for this purpose.

As the plugin does not store any personal data such as IP addresses, you are GDPR-compliant and have less to worry about with regard to the upcoming ePrivacy Regulation. However, you should have this checked by an online law firm for all your plugins on an ongoing basis if you want to be on the safe side. This is because both the regulations and the WordPress plugins can change.

Statify is particularly suitable for beginners and operators of small websites, as the analyses are clearly laid out. The figures are therefore easy to understand and analyze. What is advantageous for many users can also be negative for larger websites. The basic information is often not sufficient for them.

If you want to learn more about your visitors, a larger analytics solution is usually necessary. At the same time, as already mentioned, Statify only records page views and referrers. This means you won't know whether visitors have only visited your website once or ten times. The Statify WordPress plugin is therefore particularly suitable for small websites or for beginners.

Statify vs Google Analytics

The comparison between Statify and Google Analytics is somewhat misleading, as both tools have the same goal, namely to provide statistics for a website. In practice and in terms of the wealth of information, however, the two tools can hardly be compared with each other.

You can tell from the installation and setup that Google Analytics is a comprehensive and professional analytics solution. Various steps are necessary for the setup. The first step is to conclude a contract data processing agreement with Google. Then you embed a cookie banner on your website, add your privacy policy and load the Google Analytics code if the user agrees, but not if they do not.

In contrast, you simply install Statify via your WordPress dashboard. After installation, you activate the plugin and then select the settings you need for your statistics. Directly in your WordPress dashboard, you can then see, for example, the number of hits in the last 30 days and the five most successful articles.

The focus of Statify is therefore on the number of page views. In contrast, Google Analytics provides significantly more analysis. For example, you can see which pages and posts your readers visit, where they come from and how much time they spend on the pages and posts. Many people use Google Analytics right from the start of a WordPress project. They are often unaware that a WordPress plugin like Statify can be a much simpler, clearer and more data protection-compliant solution.

Extend and optimize Statify with plugins

Statify provides standard information on page visits. If you want more than that, you can expand the statistics with the help of two other plugins. One is the Statify Widget plugin. This plugin allows you to integrate a widget into your website. This widget then displays the most popular articles on your website.

This offers added value for your evaluations, but also for your visitors, who can use it to access other articles. There is also the Statify Filter plugin, which allows you to add a filter function to Statify. This is very helpful, for example, if a website has a particularly high number of spam hits. With Statify Filter, certain data, including individual domains or pages, can be filtered out. This gives website operators a better overview of which numbers in the statistics belong to the spam views.

Conclusion on WordPress Statify

Google Analytics is the market leader among analytics solutions and is therefore often automatically used as a tool for your own statistics. The problem is that many users do not understand what exactly they are seeing due to the wealth of information and figures. Accordingly, analyzing these figures is also complex, especially for beginners.

This is why the WordPress plugin Statify is particularly suitable for beginners and smaller WordPress websites. This is because the sheer number of page views usually already provides a good overview. Especially in combination with the two extensions Statify Widget and Statify Filter, Statify is a plugin that should be considered by many more projects.

The biggest factor that speaks in favor of using Statify is that it enables WordPress Analytics completely without tracking cookies. So if you are looking for a GDPR-compliant way to track the page views of your own website, you should take a closer look at Statify.