Jonathan Whitaker, Author at

3D conversion funnel narrowing toward a target, illustrating funnel analysis stages

What Is a Conversion Funnel? A Practical Guide to Funnel Analysis

Most visitors who land on your site never do the thing you want them to do. They arrive, look around, and leave. A conversion funnel is how you figure out…

Jonathan Whitaker June 4, 2026

Flat illustration of a cloud server processing analytics charts, representing server-side tracking

Privacy & Compliance

Server-Side vs Client-Side Tracking: What’s the Difference?

Your analytics script loads in the visitor's browser, an ad blocker quietly kills it, and that visit never gets counted. Multiply that across a privacy-conscious audience and you're missing a…

Jonathan Whitaker May 18, 2026

Marketing analyst working on a laptop in a cafe, planning campaign UTM tracking

Analytics Basics

UTM Parameters Explained: A Practical Guide to Campaign Tracking

You share a link in a newsletter, post it on social, and drop it in a paid ad. A week later, traffic is up — but you have no idea…

Jonathan Whitaker April 27, 2026

Flat-style cyber security shield, representing bot traffic detection and filtering

Analytics Basics

What Is Bot Traffic? How to Spot and Filter It

Your traffic spiked 40% overnight and nobody on the team ran a campaign. Before you celebrate, check whether real people drove that spike — because a lot of the time,…

Jonathan Whitaker April 9, 2026

One-page weekly marketing report template showing four sections: traffic overview, top content, conversions, and insight with action item

How to Build a Weekly Marketing Report in 30 Minutes

Nobody reads a 20-page marketing report. The best reports I've built fit on a single page and take 30 minutes to put together. Here's the template. After six years of…

Jonathan Whitaker March 29, 2026

Comparison of conversion tracking features in Plausible, Umami, and Matomo analytics tools

How to Track Goals and Conversions Without Google Analytics

You don't need Google Analytics to track conversions. In fact, most privacy-first tools make it simpler. Here's how to set up goal tracking in Plausible, Umami, and Matomo — with…

Jonathan Whitaker March 26, 2026

Diagram showing the six steps to set up Plausible Analytics: create account, add tracking script, verify tracking, set up goals, configure custom properties, and share dashboard

How to Set Up Plausible Analytics (Complete Guide)

Plausible takes about ten minutes to set up. No tag managers, no cookie banners, no consent prompts. Here's every step. I've set up Plausible on dozens of sites over the…

Jonathan Whitaker March 22, 2026

Comparison chart showing differences between Matomo self-hosted and cloud versions across cost, data ownership, setup, features, and maintenance

Matomo Review: Full-Featured Open-Source Analytics

Matomo is the only privacy-first analytics platform that genuinely tries to match Google Analytics feature-for-feature. Whether that's a strength or a weakness depends on what you need. I've been running…

Jonathan Whitaker March 19, 2026

Side-by-side feature comparison chart showing Plausible and Umami analytics tools across dashboard UX, script size, goal tracking, API, self-hosting, license, GDPR, and pricing

Plausible vs Umami: Choosing Your GA Replacement

Plausible and Umami are the two tools I recommend most when someone asks me to replace Google Analytics. They're both excellent — but they're built for different people. I've deployed…

Jonathan Whitaker March 15, 2026

Evaluation matrix comparing Plausible, Umami, Fathom, Matomo, and PostHog across privacy, accuracy, ease of use, dashboard, value, and features

5 Best Privacy-First Analytics Tools in 2026

Every privacy-first analytics tool claims to replace Google Analytics. Most can — but they do it differently. After testing all of these on real sites, here's what I'd actually recommend…

Jonathan Whitaker March 10, 2026