Visitor tracking via third-party cookies was the cornerstone of user metrics and marketing for years. But, users are more privacy-aware than ever, and regulators are working hard to reduce the amount of personal data websites process.
That’s why we have a new generation of website visitor tracking software built with privacy in mind. It gives you accurate results while protecting users’ fragile personal information.
Visitor tracking is a process of tracking and analyzing the information about users who visit your website, particularly insights into visitor behavior, such as:
As you can see, the information tracking software displays is incredibly useful. It will help you uncover information about website traffic and allow you to optimize your pages and marketing campaigns to improve the user experience and conversion.
While tools for tracking website visitors differ, the best website analytics tools offer most of these features:
We have mentioned how traditional website analytics have a poor reputation for infringing user privacy, which is one of their main downsides. Here is a list of their problematic features that will help you understand how they work:
The default method of user tracking was third-party cookies, pieces of code that were quietly installed on users’ browsers. These cookies tracked users and collected valuable data that website owners could use to optimize their content.
What’s more, a third-party cookies-powered tool like Google Analytics tracks users across websites, giving insights into user behavior and preferences, allowing site owners to serve dynamic, targeted content.
While this granular approach to user metrics does have certain advantages for sales and marketing teams, it comes at a high cost of infringing user privacy.
Over time, user data has become an incredibly valuable resource as tech giants indirectly monetize it to optimize their advertising programs. Relying on third-party cookie analytics can result in a website’s visitors’ data being reused on other websites, creating privacy concerns.
The EU was the first major legislator to recognize the problem, which was addressed in detail in the famous General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Other major markets soon followed with regulations, such as California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). As time went by, the GDPR became the gold standard as more countries released privacy laws that aligned with GDPR recitals.
After GDPR, you are required to greet visitors with complicated cookie banners and pop-ups that require them to select the amount of personal data that will be collected for tracking purposes. If you don’t do this adequately, you are facing drastic fines for non-compliance that can go as high as €20 million or 4% of your global annual turnover.
If you want to comply with privacy regulations and display cookie notifications and pop-ups, you are taking users’ attention away from your content.
Then again, if you try to reduce the size of the pop-ups, you risk being non-compliant as you are making it hard for users to reject cookies, which will also result in fines.
While cookie-based website visitor tracking software used to have a clear advantage in terms of the precision of the metrics it provides, that is no longer the case.
Legislators aren’t the only ones trying to protect privacy—users themselves are becoming increasingly aware of their fragile rights and the way tech giants misuse their information.
An increasing number of features, such as Do Not Track, ad blockers, privacy-oriented browsers, and search engines, contribute to inaccurate results of cookie-based software. Even tech giants such as Apple and Google are announcing they will end the support for third-party cookies on their devices in the near future.
Not only are legislators tightening the rules, but even tech companies and users are moving away from cookie-powered metrics. As a result, you will not be able to estimate web traffic accurately, as a growing number of users are refusing cookies or using devices and tools to cloak their traffic. In other words, third-party cookies are no longer what they used to be, especially regarding accuracy, creating problems for sales teams in traffic and conversion tracking.
Even if you are GDPR compliant and fine with cookie banners interfering with the UX, using third-party tools can cause reputational risks.
We have already mentioned that visitors are increasingly aware of their privacy, which is why they use tools to protect it. When privacy-aware users see cookie notifications, it often becomes a red flag in their eyes—the website they are visiting is collecting their personal data and is likely sharing it with third-party websites and tech giants.
If that is the case with your website, privacy-aware users might question the ethical principles behind your brand, which can hurt your reputation in the long run.
Due to rising privacy awareness, website owners are faced with a dilemma: How can they accurately monitor website traffic without interfering with personal protection regulations?
The answer lies in privacy-friendly and privacy-first website tracking software.
Privacy-friendly website visitor tracking tools gets rid of third-party cookies, which is a step in the right direction when it comes to privacy.
Instead, they rely on tracking methods such as:
While privacy-friendly tools respect privacy, they only do it partially. Privacy-friendly analytics still process personal data, which is why consent banners are still mandatory.
Privacy-first website visitor tracking tools provide you a way to track users accurately without infringing privacy.
Rather than relying on processing IP addresses, hashing, and fingerprinting, privacy-first solutions measure data that is impossible to trace back to individual users. In other words, true privacy-first analytics don’t process any personal data.
Instead, they rely on data that can not be used for website visitor identification, even if it is combined with other similar pieces of information. For example, instead of using precise geographical locations, privacy-first tools can use time zones—the result will be precise enough to distinguish individual visits but not accurate enough to track them back to a single person, even when combined with other data.
As a result, using privacy-first web analytics won’t require consent banners and pop-ups. You will remain compliant, and your UX and brand reputation will remain intact.
But because there is no data processing, ad and pop-up notification blockers won’t interfere with the data. You will see accurate metrics, which cookie-based analytics can’t give.
In other words, privacy-first tools give you the best of both worlds—compliance without consent banners combined with reliable data.
mandera is a private-by-design website tracking software that will give you useful user data while keeping you fully compliant. Here’s what makes mandera unique:
mandera is built with privacy in mind, and we don’t process any personal data.
With mandera, there is no IP hashing, fingerprinting, or IP storage. By default, we drop the IP address from every single request, so there’s no IP processing.
mandera respects DoNotTrack requests. Users who have turned on these settings won’t be taken into account.
Because of this, the technical information process isn’t considered personal data, as it can’t be traced back to individual users.
Plus, our servers are based in Germany, are fully encrypted, and the data is only accessible by you, making our service safe and fully GDPR and CCPA-compliant.
We also don’t assign unique identifiers to users but instead rely on an untraceable combination of metrics such as:
This type of information allows us to distinguish individual visits without processing personal data:
Furthermore, mandera gives us accurate readings, as no personal data processing means ad-blockers, and rejecting cookies won’t interfere with the results, as they do with traditional tools.
We can also display user flows, giving you predictions of where users are likely to go after they enter your website.
mandera has a sleek and intuitive interface that displays essential information about traffic.
The script is super lightweight, easy to install, and provides metrics in minutes through our intuitive dashboard.
mandera pricing is simple, as you only pay a fixed price for each domain. If your traffic exceeds 500k pageviews per month, we will notify you to upgrade to our Enterprise plan.
As a result, you don’t have to worry about website traffic spikes—with mandera, there will be no unpleasant surprises in invoices.
Privacy first website visitor tracking software combines the best of both worlds: privacy and quality metrics. It allows you to collect accurate traffic information without processing fragile visitor data.
Because of this, pop-ups and consent banners will not be needed, keeping the website interface intact. Additionally, visitors will notice that you respect their privacy and that your company maintains high ethical standards, which you can be proud of.
Sign up for mandera free trial today and see why privacy-first tools are the future of website tracking software.
