Web

Visitor statistics without cookies

Own project · 2 min read · Otto Boström

When I send a proposal to a company I want to know one thing: did they open the link? The usual statistics tools can answer that, but they need a cookie banner on the site and send the visitors' details to another company. I built my own instead.

The problem

A cookie banner is the first thing a visitor meets, and many leave the page right there. At the same time I only needed answers to a few questions: how many come, where from, how far they read and whether they press the contact button.

The solution

• No cookies. The page saves nothing in the visitor's browser in order to measure.
• No IP addresses are stored. A visitor can only be recognised within the same day, and never from one day to the next.
• A link per recipient. Each company I write to gets its own short link, and I can see whether that one has been opened.
• Reading depth and clicks, not people. I see which sections are reached, where on the page the clicks land and how long the page stays open.
• A private overview that only I can reach.

How it is built

The statistics live in the same cloud service as the site, in a database of their own. They respect the browser's "do not track" setting, and my own visits are not counted. The whole thing is a few hundred lines of code and has no monthly cost.

Where it stands today

These statistics are used on both ottr.work and the page you are reading now. How the data is handled is described in the privacy policy (in Swedish).

For your company

If you have a site where the cookie banner is the only thing that needs consent, a solution like this can remove it completely. It can also be built into an internal tool, so you can see which parts are actually used.