Comparing 5 Analytics Tools for the 2coffee.dev Blog

Comparing 5 Analytics Tools for the 2coffee.dev Blog

Daily short news for you
  • For over a week now, I haven't posted anything, not because I have nothing to write about, but because I'm looking for ways to distribute more valuable content in this rapidly exploding AI era.

    As I shared earlier this year, the number of visitors to my blog is gradually declining. When I looked at the statistics, the number of users in the first six months of 2025 has dropped by 30% compared to the same period last year, and by 15% compared to the last six months of 2024. This indicates a reality that users are gradually leaving. What is the reason for this?

    I think the biggest reason is that user habits have changed. They primarily discover the blog through search engines, with Google being the largest. Almost half of the users return to the blog without going through the search step. This is a positive signal, but it's still not enough to increase the number of new users. Not to mention that now, Google has launched the AI Search Labs feature, which means AI displays summarized content when users search, further reducing the likelihood of users accessing the website. Interestingly, when Search Labs was introduced, English articles have taken over the rankings for the most accessed content.

    My articles are usually very long, sometimes reaching up to 2000 words. Writing such an article takes a lot of time. It's normal for many articles to go unread. I know and accept this because not everyone encounters the issues being discussed. For me, writing is a way to cultivate patience and thoughtfulness. Being able to help someone through my writing is a wonderful thing.

    Therefore, I am thinking of focusing on shorter and medium-length content to be able to write more. Long content will only be used when I want to write in detail or delve deeply into a particular topic. So, I am looking for ways to redesign the blog. Everyone, please stay tuned! 😄

    » Read more
  • CloudFlare has introduced the pay per crawl feature to charge for each time AI "crawls" data from your website. What does that mean 🤔?

    The purpose of SEO is to help search engines see the website. When users search for relevant content, your website appears in the search results. This is almost a win-win situation where Google helps more people discover your site, and in return, Google gets more users.

    Now, the game with AI Agents is different. AI Agents have to actively seek out information sources and conveniently "crawl" your data, then mix it up or do something with it that we can't even know. So this is almost a game that benefits only one side 🤔!?

    CloudFlare's move is to make AI Agents pay for each time they retrieve data from your website. If they don’t pay, then I won’t let them read my data. Something like that. Let’s wait a bit longer and see 🤓.

    » Read more
  • Continuing to update on the lawsuit between the Deno group and Oracle over the name JavaScript: It seems that Deno is at a disadvantage as the court has dismissed the Deno group's complaint. However, in August, they (Oracle) must be held accountable for each reason, acknowledging or denying the allegations presented by the Deno group in the lawsuit.

    JavaScript™ Trademark Update

    » Read more

Problem

When owning a website, everyone wants to know how effective it is. For example, how many daily, monthly, yearly visitors it has, what pages they visit, what actions they take, etc. This information helps us plan upgrades or adjustments to improve the conversion rate and generate revenue.

Google Analytics (GA) is a well-known name in the web analytics field. According to statistics, GA is always at the top of the list of analytics tools. GA is powerful, but fully exploring its capabilities is not easy.

From the early days, 2coffee.dev chose GA as its analytics tool. Thanks to GA, I can understand the current situation and make decisions on what actions to take next. However, I am not a professional data analyst, so I can only view a few basic reports, while GA is more complex. Recently, I have started using some simpler analytics tools. Today, I am here to share what I have discovered during this process.

5 Analytics Tools

Google Analytics

First is Google Analytics, a well-known tool and a product of Google. It collects a wealth of useful information not only for you but also for Google.

I integrated GA into my blog from the beginning to collect data on daily users, number of visits, and which pages they accessed. This helps me gauge their interest in the content and create more relevant articles.

GA has many features. Some reports I am interested in as a daily user include the number of users, session duration, bounce rate, new users, traffic sources, and popular articles. GA also allows tracking specific events like button clicks or interactions with certain elements. This helps me optimize the user experience on my website.

However, GA can be difficult for beginners. I remember spending a lot of time learning its features. The interface can be overwhelming, and I didn't fully understand the functionality of many built-in features.

Another drawback is the privacy concerns with GA. Many browsers default to blocking all tracking tools, including GA, which can result in incomplete and inaccurate data collection.

Posthog

Posthog is a versatile tool that I have written about in an article titled Introducing Posthog - User Data Collection for "Engineers". It has some similarities to GA, such as user and page tracking, but it also offers additional user research features like session recording, surveys, A/B testing, and data pipeline.

I use Posthog for user behavior analysis on my website. For example, analyzing mouse movements, interactive areas, user interactions, and quickly detecting interface issues for prompt fixes.

Posthog is an open-source tool, but they also offer a limited free plan on their Cloud. If you have a high-traffic website and want to freely use all the features, you may need to upgrade to a paid plan. Like GA, Posthog may also raise privacy concerns and be blocked by similar tools.

Cloudflare Analytic

Since migrating my blog to Cloudflare (CF) using their service as described in the article Completing the Blog Migration to "Web is on the Edge", I discovered that CF also provides web analytics.

Unlike GA and Posthog, CF does not require adding JavaScript code to the website for data collection. If your domain is using CF's DNS service, all requests will be captured and analyzed by CF, making it difficult for regular ad-blockers or browsers to block. This means CF's user and traffic data is more accurate.

However, CF's analytics dashboard is relatively simple and lacks the customization options of GA or Posthog. Personally, I use CF primarily to block bad traffic.

Search Console

Search Console or Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster are tools that help website administrators understand the SEO performance of their websites on popular search engines.

To have a website indexed and found on Google or Bing, you need to inform these search engines through their respective data collection tools, such as Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster. These tools crawl your website, gather data, and distribute your content to users when they search. They provide analytics related to SEO effectiveness.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing website quality and traffic by improving its visibility on search engines like Google and Bing. For SEO analysis, I focus on metrics such as traffic sources, keywords, number of visitors, and other important information. Each tool provides additional analysis features. For example, Google Search Console can track SEO issues, data indexing, or poor user experiences on certain pages.

Simple Analytics

Simple Analytics (SA) is the newest tool I integrated into my website. It is a paid tool, but I am lucky enough to use it for free.

SA has a unique data collection approach, emphasizing user privacy. As a product from the EU, they strictly follow certain principles, like not using cookies or collecting IP addresses. You may refer to their detailed data collection policy in the Metrics - Simple Analytics Docs.

True to its name, SA's analytics dashboard is relatively simple and clean. It provides essential information such as user count, page views, session duration, devices, browsers, and countries of origin. SA also supports event tracking and has an AI feature that allows direct communication for specific data requests.

SA is simple, focuses on user privacy, and provides real-time data collection. It is definitely worth trying.

Conclusion

This article presented 5 analytics tools I use to develop my blog. I hope this information helps readers choose the right tool for their needs. If you have experience with a different tool, please leave a comment for others to know.

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Me & the desire to "play with words"

Have you tried writing? And then failed or not satisfied? At 2coffee.dev we have had a hard time with writing. Don't be discouraged, because now we have a way to help you. Click to become a member now!

Have you tried writing? And then failed or not satisfied? At 2coffee.dev we have had a hard time with writing. Don't be discouraged, because now we have a way to help you. Click to become a member now!

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