A measuring tool should not slow down what it measures
Metrimato's tracking script is 2.5 kilobytes compressed. Google Analytics loads roughly twenty times that on every page, on every device, before a single number reaches you.
A twentyfold difference loads on every pageview, on every device. It shows up in the speed of the site and in the visitor's data bill.
Why a few kilobytes matter
The size of an analytics tool is not a matter of taste. It is one of the few things about a measuring tool that shows up directly in the speed of the site and in the visitor's data bill.
- Analytics runs on every page, not once
- A cache helps with the download for a returning visitor. Parsing and executing the script happens again on every page either way.
- The visitor pays, not you
- On a mobile connection the script is paid for in data by the person who came to read your page.
- Speed is a ranking signal and a conversion number
- A heavy measurement stack can move the numbers it was installed to report. That is an awkward way to be wrong.
- The banner is dead weight too
- A consent platform is more JavaScript, it has to run before the page is usable, and it is the first thing the visitor sees. Removing the reason for it removes both.
Metrimato is small because it does less
The size is not a compression trick. The script is small because it does not have to build a profile: there is no cookie to read and write, no browser fingerprint to collect, no identity to keep in step across pages and sessions, and no consent state to negotiate. What is left is the visit, which was what you wanted to know in the first place.
The script sends one request when the page opens and one more when the visitor leaves, carrying the reading time and how far down the page they got. There is nothing else to send.
- No cookie handling
- Nothing is written to the browser and nothing is read from it, so there is no storage code and no consent state to keep track of.
- No fingerprinting
- We do not collect fonts, canvas, plugins or screen details to tell devices apart. That code is simply not in the file.
- No identity to maintain
- There is no user id that has to survive a page change, so nothing has to be synchronised between pages, tabs or sessions.
- No advertising integrations
- Nothing is sent to an advertising platform, so there are no extra tags, pixels or redirects riding along.
- One request, not a stream
- The script uses the browser's own background send and plain text, so the request needs no preflight and does not hold up the page.
And no cookie banner
Metrimato writes no cookies and reads nothing from browser storage, and what is collected cannot be tied to a person. There is nothing for the visitor to consent to, so there is nothing to ask.
- Nothing is stored on the visitor's device, so the rule that requires consent for storage does not apply to Metrimato.
- No personal data is collected, so no consent is needed on that basis either.
- The banner is JavaScript as well, so leaving it out saves more than the script does.
- And what is measured is measured: nobody disappears from the report because they ignored a banner.
One honest limit
This says something about Metrimato, not about your whole site. If you also run advertising pixels, embedded videos, chat widgets or fonts loaded from another company, those may still need consent, and then the banner stays.
What Metrimato does change is that the banner has one item fewer, that your measurement no longer depends on the answer, and that the cookie policy has one paragraph fewer. If Metrimato is the only measurement on the site, there is nothing left to ask about.
Read the privacy policyGoogle Analytics is not built for the person who owns the site
That is not a complaint about its quality. Google Analytics 4 does well the job it was designed for: feeding an advertising business and giving analysts a very large surface to dig into.
If you buy a lot of advertising through Google and have someone whose actual work is analysis, Google Analytics earns its place.
- It answers questions you did not ask
- Explorations, audiences, attribution models and lifetime value are a rich toolbox for an analyst and a wall for everybody else.
- The simple question takes the longest
- Which pages were read last month and where the readers came from is a report you build, not a report you open.
- The default view is not your view
- A useful dashboard is something you configure, and keeping it useful is something you maintain.
- More data is not more understanding
- A site owner needs a handful of numbers regularly, not every number occasionally.
Switch to a measure that respects the visitor
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