First things first, you don’t need website analytics on your author website,
Some of my author clients love knowing how many site visitors they get, and which pages of their website are the most popular. Some don’t care in the least.
If you’re in the first category and do want to start tracking your author website performance but don’t know where to start, here are three popular options.
Squarespace Analytics.
This is obviously exclusive to authors building their website on the the website platform, but if you are using Squarespace this is a solid option because it’s included in the Squarespace subscription price, and you can turn it on or off with a toggle button.*
Google Analytics.
Not a big fan of this one my self; I find it rather unethical. But I’d be remiss not to mention it because it’s king of the analytics world and “free.”*
Fathom Analytics.
Fathom is my analytics platform of choice. It’s a paid service, but I’d prefer paying for software instead of continuing google to secretly profiting off of my readers’ data. And less nobly, it means I don’t have to have one of those janky cookie pop-up banners on my site.
Fathom Analytics (affiliate link) →
*I am not an attorney and cannot (and should not!) advise you on how to make your website legally compliant, but it’s my understanding that if you use Squarespace’s default analytics or Google Analytics, your website may require a cookie banner. Fathom Analytics does not require a cookie banner. I wrote a blog post about cookie banners here.
