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Observability

Web Analytics

Choose how acquisition, traffic sources, campaigns, pages, site goals, and aggregate web performance are measured.

Recommendation

Route by acquisition depth, privacy posture, and hosting ownership.

Mainstream campaign analytics, managed privacy-minimizing analytics, self-hosting, and lightweight edge measurement answer different web questions.12

For: Website, growth, marketing, and product teams measuring public-site acquisition and conversion

Main trade-off

Website analytics can simplify acquisition measurement, but identity depth, campaign semantics, privacy posture, hosting responsibility, and ecosystem coupling differ materially.1234

Why there is no single default: The routes trade marketing depth, data minimization, ecosystem coupling, infrastructure ownership, and metric scope; no single route dominates those constraints.

Decision criteria

Define the acquisition and site questions before selecting collection depth or a privacy posture.

  1. Measurement scope

    List traffic source, medium, campaign, landing page, content, goals, conversion, and Core Web Vitals requirements.12

  2. Identity and privacy

    Define cookies, identifiers, consent, data minimization, deletion, retention, region, and legal-review boundaries.12

  3. Ecosystem

    Decide whether advertising integrations, Google workflows, Cloudflare context, or independent analytics are material.1

  4. Operating model

    Compare managed service against self-hosting, including upgrades, security, backups, reliability, and support.12

Web analytics routes

Choose the smallest route that answers acquisition and site questions; move to Product Analytics only for persistent behavioral and account analysis.

Mainstream acquisition and advertising integration matter

Evaluate Google Analytics.

Google Analytics fits teams needing campaign and acquisition analysis in the Google marketing ecosystem.

Verify: Privacy, consent, implementation, retention, and ecosystem coupling require explicit governance.1

Managed privacy-minimizing site analytics is sufficient

Evaluate Plausible.

A focused managed product can cover aggregate traffic and goals with a smaller data model.

Verify: Persistent user behavior, account analysis, or richer product-event workflows point to Product Analytics.2

Self-hosted privacy-oriented analytics is required

Evaluate Umami.

Self-hosting can provide deployment control for a focused web-analytics model.

Verify: Security, upgrades, backups, scale, reliability, and legal obligations remain the team's responsibility.3

Basic site and web-vitals visibility inside Cloudflare is enough

Evaluate Cloudflare Web Analytics.

A lightweight edge-aligned measurement route can fit sites already using Cloudflare.

Verify: Do not present it as a full campaign or custom product-event analytics replacement.4

Official resources

Verify current capabilities, collection boundaries, privacy controls, retention, and commercial terms in the official documentation before implementation.

DocumentationUmami documentation

Sources

Official product documentation supporting the decision routes and boundaries on this page.

  1. 1
    Google Analytics overview

    Google · Accessed Official

  2. 2
    Plausible documentation

    Plausible · Accessed Official

  3. 3
    Umami documentation

    Umami · Accessed Official

  4. 4
    Cloudflare Web Analytics

    Cloudflare · Accessed Official