What is cookieless analytics, and is it right for you?

If you’ve been working with websites for as long as I have, you might remember when Google Analytics was fun. Ooh, look at all these interesting facts about who’s visiting your website! And how they’re using it! Look at which content people love the most! Let's make more of that!

Then things changed.

First, Google started using analytics data across many more of its products, especially advertising, which added bloat. Then the EU started requiring you to add cookie consent notices, which annoy your customers, so lots of people don't consent, which messes up the accuracy of your data because now you're not seeing the full picture. And then of course there was the shift to GA4, and Consent Mode v2. 

Now, Google Analytics is hardly any fun, and an awful lot of faff.

But if you’re the person in charge of managing a cultural website and all of that accompanying data, we have good news. You might be able to ditch the faff and get back to the fun!

Short on time? Head to the How to get started summary 👇

What’s the problem with cookies, anyway?

There’s nothing fundamentally bad about cookies. A cookie is what lets your favourite website remember that you’re logged in, or any stored preferences you can set. The issue with Google Analytics is more about what it uses cookies for: tracking and profiling individual users. 

As soon as you start doing that, you need to collect consent — sometimes multiple different levels of consent — hence the need for the cookie banner, and super-complicated Tag Manager setups.

But the thing is, you don’t need to track or profile individuals just to get basic data about how many people are using your website, and how they're using it. The main reason Google does it is to improve targeting of adverts.

To be fair, tracking individuals can give you some useful data about how many people are repeat visitors to your website, and whether those repeat visitors do different things than first-timers. But if you’re not looking at that level of nuance in your data, why give yourself the headache of collecting it?

What's the alternative?

Rather than plumping for Google Analytics, you could opt for an analytics platform that’s been designed 'privacy-first'. One that doesn't drop cookies. There are lots of cookieless platforms out there – we've listed a couple in How to get started

Essentially, they collect a lot of the same data you might need about your website, but they do it entirely anonymously. Absolutely no identifying data is collected about who those users are.

What can you track with a cookieless analytics platform?

• Page-level traffic data — which pages get the most and least visits
• Traffic sources — organic search, direct, referral, social, email
• UTM parameter tracking — so you can measure specific campaigns
• Custom event tracking — button clicks, scroll depth, form completions, outbound link clicks, and potentially conversions too
• Geographic and device data — at an aggregate, non-identifying level
• Referral sources — which sites are sending you traffic

In short: everything you need to inform a content strategy, evaluate marketing performance, and report on audience reach. Minus the cookie compliance headaches.

What can you not track with cookieless analytics?

This is a harder question to answer in the abstract, because it depends on what you’re already tracking with Google. But there are a few things you definitely won’t be able to do if you ditch GA4 completely:

• Optimise your Google PPC campaigns with conversion data
• Use Google’s audience segmentation or remarketing features
• Easily hook-up your own analytics to a third-party CRM or ticketing platform – because most of these integrate with Google as their default analytics platform

On that last point, it’s worth saying that it is technically possible to make a cookieless platform track users on your third-party systems as well — and do pretty much anything else Google does. (The only thing you’re guaranteed to lose out on is integration with other Google products.) But setting this up takes time and money.

Time and money are often in short supply when it comes to digital marketing in the arts, so this is a serious consideration. It could be that moving away from Google Analytics is out of your grasp, even if you don’t use Google’s other products. Just bear in mind that if you’re not paying for a service, somebody else is – and in this case, it’s your customers, who are giving up their data for Google to use … however they choose to use it.

Can cookieless analytics and Google Analytics work together?

Yes! And, in some cases, this could be ideal. 

Running a cookieless platform alongside Google Analytics will allow you to:

• Grab a complete (anonymous) set of visitor data – so you’re getting a full picture of your traffic
• Debug your GA implementation – for example, if your cookieless platform shows lots of Safari users, and your GA data shows none, that may be a sign that something’s wrong with your setup
• Check how accurate your GA data is – if the numbers are mostly the same across both platforms, you can be more confident in your GA data. In fact, if the trends are the same across both platforms, you can be more confident in your GA data, even if the absolute numbers are much smaller.

Many cookieless platforms offer a free trial (or even a completely free tier). So, you could do some of the above checks and tests during a defined period, then remove the cookieless analytics – confident that your GA data is good enough.

How to get started

If you’re interested in giving cookieless analytics a try, here’s how to get started:

1) Audit all the ways you currently use analytics

Who in your organisation uses analytics data, and what for?

2) Decide whether you still need Google Analytics

Two key signs that you do are, one, that you’re running Google advertising in some form; and two, that you’re relying on conversion data from a third party platform (like Spektrix, Ticketsolve, or Tessitura). But this will really vary by organisation, so if in doubt, reach out to your digital agency!

This article might also be useful: Why you might not need (or want) Google Analytics

3) Pick a cookieless platform

There are lots out there, but some of the most popular (and the ones we’ve used before) are Plausible and Simple Analytics. Which one you pick will depend on your budget, your traffic, and whether you want to fully replace GA or just run something alongside it. Again, if in doubt, talk to your digital agency!

4) Install your new cookieless platform

Even if you’re planning on getting rid of GA completely, leave them both running concurrently for a month or two, so that you can test and fine-tune the new platform without the risk of losing data.

5) Make a final decision

Do you like the new platform? Is it giving you all the data you need? (At this point you might want to go back to the audit from step 1, and make sure all your boxes are ticked.) If it’s a definite improvement, congratulations! And if you’re really lucky, bye-bye GA4 – and cookies – forever.

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