I don’t like being tracked. I expect you to not like being tracked too. This post is to explain the reason I have analytics enabled on this site.

I would like to help when help is requested

I became the “go-to tech guy” of my family and friends. They probably think that I eat and breath tech, day in and day out. Which means I receive request to help in many IT related topics. Some times that help is regarding which analytics software or service to use.

The only answer I had so far has been “Google Analytics”. I don’t really like this answer.

Analytics is valuable for organizations

People want to have the correct insight about the things they are spending time on, such as a business, or non-profit. If they don’t have good understanding of how things are going, they might be wasting time and money. That is a scary thought.

If interpreted correctly, I believe web analytics is an important data source to make better decisions.

My answer was always lacking. I know that analytics can be invaluable, but also easy to misinterpret, which may lead to misdiagnose of issues. I included questions in my answer to get them to understand what analytics can and cannot help with.

I can’t recommend anything I wouldn’t use

And I wouldn’t use Google Analytics for few reasons:

• Google is famous for exploiting its market dominance.
• I grew up hearing that monopolies are bad for economy. Google is almost synonym with online analytics monopoly.
• Google has a bad track record when it comes to respecting our privacy.

I can’t recommend anything I never used

That is why I never recommend high heels 🙂

I feel like recommending something I never used would be hypocrisy. But only thing I can recommend is the thing I don’t want to recommend. I am aware of few alternatives to which seem to be good enough that I wouldn’t mind recommending, such as Plausible, Umami, Rybbit.

I may not need to know analytics of this website, but it is the only website I have on which I can test these tools, and learn more about them.

Reason for starting with Umami

I am starting this experiment with Umami for one reason, convenience. I wanted to check out PikaPods, and noticed that Umami was available to start using immediately. Umami is running on analytics.murtezayesil.me, and connected to this site via Integrate Umami plugin for WordPress.

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Unrelated, but I wanted to share anyway. Whenever someone asks for an IT related help, I try to be helpful by guiding them to the solution. I more and more rarely, but still get replies such as “But I can’t do that because I didn’t study IT like you did” when I mention that they need to fill a form on a website, send an email, or get the phone number of Edmonton Yellow Taxi from their website. This is just pure laziness, and I am glad that these are not my family members.

Dear not-at-all computer savvy people, we love helping those who are willing to learn, and despise doing things for those who are just being lazy and trying to use us.