Web Analytics

VitalSentinel Web Analytics gives you privacy-focused insights into your website traffic without tracking individual users. No cookies required, fully GDPR compliant.

Getting Started

Web Analytics requires the Web Analytics script installed on your website:

<script
  src="https://analytics.vitalsentinel.com/analytics.js"
  data-key="YOUR_TRACKING_ID"
  async
></script>

See Web Analytics Script Installation for full details.

Dashboard Overview

Web Analytics is organized into several views inside the domain dashboard (Domain → Analytics):

• Overview - Aggregated traffic, sources, behavior, and device data for any time range.
• Realtime - A live view of active visitors, current pages, recent activity, and where visitors are coming from right now.
• Audience - Visitor segments, geo/language checks, and visitor anomalies.
• Acquisition - Referrer quality, campaign efficiency, and the search-to-visit bridge.
• Engagement - Scroll depth, rage clicks, bounce diagnosis, and the engagement quadrant.
• Journeys & Goals - User journeys, custom funnels, site-search insights, and outbound-click hubs.
• Ecommerce - Revenue, orders, conversion funnel, and per-product performance (only populated when the analytics script detects a supported store).
• Ecommerce funnel - A per-product breakdown of the shopping funnel.
• Performance & Reliability - How Core Web Vitals relate to conversion.
• Trends & Anomalies - Page decay, traffic anomalies, and search clusters.
• Experiments - Statistical before/after tests for site changes.

Every view can be filtered by date range, and most support period-over-period comparison.

Key Metrics

The Overview's headline cards:

Main Chart

Pick up to two metrics from the headline list to plot on a dual-axis chart. Toggle comparison mode to overlay the previous period.

Tabs

Below the chart, the Overview surfaces five drill-down tabs:

Click any row in the tables to apply it as a filter – for example, click "Mobile" in the Devices tab to scope the entire dashboard to mobile traffic.

Traffic Sources

Source Types

Visitors are categorized by how they arrived:

Referrer Details

For each source, see:

• Specific referring domains
• Landing pages
• Conversion rates

UTM Tracking

Track campaign effectiveness with UTM parameters:

Example URL:

https://example.com?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=spring_sale

User Behavior

Top Pages

See which pages get the most traffic:

• Page views per page
• Average time on page
• Bounce rate per page
• Entry and exit rates

Engagement Metrics

• Scroll Depth - How far visitors scroll (25%, 50%, 75%, 90%, 100%)
• Time on Page - Active engagement time
• Pages per Session - Average pages viewed

Site Search

If your site has search functionality, track:

• Search queries used
• Search result clicks
• No-result searches

Device & Location

Device Breakdown

• Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet
• Operating systems
• Browsers and versions
• Screen resolutions

Geographic Data

• Country-level breakdown
• Top regions by traffic
• Performance by location

Realtime View

The Realtime page (Domain → Analytics → Realtime) is a live snapshot of what's happening on your site right now. It's useful for confirming that a campaign launch, deploy, or marketing push is landing.

Active Visitors

A live Active visitors count in the page header shows visitors active in the last 5 minutes.

Sections

The page polls every 10 seconds. A Live / Paused toggle lets you freeze the view if you want to read a snapshot without it shifting under you.

Audience

The Audience view (Domain → Analytics → Audience) groups your visitors and flags unusual patterns.

• Visitor segments - Compare cohorts such as new vs returning, mobile vs desktop, and by traffic source.
• Geo/language mismatch - Surfaces visitors whose country and browser language don't line up, which is useful for spotting localization gaps.
• Visitor anomalies - Highlights unexpected spikes or drops in visitor counts.

Cards support period-over-period comparison.

Acquisition

The Acquisition view (Domain → Analytics → Acquisition) focuses on where traffic comes from and how well it performs.

• Referrer quality - Ranks referring domains by engagement and conversion, not just volume.
• Campaign efficiency - Compares UTM campaigns on engagement and conversion signals.
• Search bridge - Connects search-driven visits to on-site behavior.

Engagement

The Engagement view (Domain → Analytics → Engagement) shows how deeply visitors interact with your pages.

• Scroll-depth map - How far visitors scroll on each page.
• Rage-click hotspots - Pages and elements where visitors click repeatedly in frustration.
• Bounce diagnosis - Explains why specific pages bounce.
• Engagement quadrant - Plots pages by traffic vs engagement to find high-traffic, low-engagement pages.

Journeys & Goals

The Journeys & Goals view (Domain → Analytics → Journeys & Goals) maps the paths visitors take and the goals they reach.

• User journeys - Common page-to-page paths through your site.
• Custom funnel builder - Define your own multi-step funnels and measure drop-off.
• Site-search insights - What visitors search for on your site, including no-result queries.
• Outbound-click hubs - Pages that send the most traffic to external destinations.

Ecommerce View

If your site has the analytics script installed and the script detects a supported store, the Ecommerce page (Domain → Analytics → Ecommerce) fills with revenue and conversion data.

Headline Metrics

Each metric supports comparison mode for period-over-period change.

Main Chart

Pick which of the four headline metrics to plot. Comparison overlay is available.

Conversion Funnel

A four-stage funnel showing how many users reach each step:

1. Product Views
2. Add to Cart
3. Checkout
4. Purchase

Each stage shows the count and its share as a percentage of Product Views (the first stage), so you can spot the biggest drop-off.

All Products Table

Per-product breakdown with views, add-to-carts, purchases, revenue, and per-product conversion rate.

Tracked Events

The script automatically detects the following events on supported platforms:

Supported Platforms

• Shopify
• WooCommerce
• Magento
• Squarespace

See Web Analytics Script Installation for setup details.

Ecommerce funnel

The Ecommerce funnel view (Domain → Analytics → Ecommerce funnel) breaks the standard shopping funnel (product view to add to cart to checkout to purchase) down per product, so you can see which products lose the most visitors at each step.

Performance & Reliability

The Performance & Reliability view (Domain → Analytics → Performance & Reliability) connects site speed to business outcomes.

• Core Web Vitals vs conversion - Whether faster pages convert better.

Trends & Anomalies

The Trends & Anomalies view (Domain → Analytics → Trends & Anomalies) watches your metrics over time and calls out what changed.

• Page decay - Pages steadily losing traffic.
• Traffic anomalies - Statistically unusual spikes or drops.
• Search clusters - Groups of related on-site search queries.

Experiments

The Experiments view (Domain → Analytics → Experiments) runs statistical before/after tests so you can tell whether a change (a redesign, a new campaign, a content update) actually moved a metric. It supports difference-in-differences, Bayesian structural time series, and Mann-Whitney tests.

Custom Events

Track custom actions using the JavaScript API:

// Track a button click
window.VitalSentinelAnalytics.track('button_click', {
  button_id: 'signup-cta',
  location: 'homepage'
});

// Track a form submission
window.VitalSentinelAnalytics.track('form_submit', {
  form_name: 'contact',
  success: true
});

Data Attribute Tracking

Track events without JavaScript:

<button data-vs-event="signup_click" data-vs-plan="free">
  Sign Up Free
</button>

Filtering & Segmentation

Filter by:

• Date range
• Traffic source
• Device type
• Country/region
• Page URL

Segment Analysis

Compare performance across segments:

• Mobile vs Desktop
• New vs Returning
• By traffic source

Privacy Features

No Cookies by Default

VitalSentinel Analytics works without cookies:

• No consent banner required
• Fully GDPR compliant
• No cross-site tracking

Data Collection

What we collect:

• Anonymous session data
• Page views and events
• Device/browser information (anonymous)
• Geographic region (city level)

What we don't collect:

• Personal information
• IP addresses (hashed/discarded)
• Cross-site tracking data

Consent Levels

If you want enhanced tracking (returning visitors), use consent:

// After user consents
window.VitalSentinelAnalytics.grantConsent('persistent');

See Privacy & Consent for details.

Comparing with Google Analytics

Best Practices

Focus on Key Metrics

• Traffic - Are you attracting visitors?
• Engagement - Are they interested?
• Conversion - Are they taking action?

Set Up Custom Events

Track actions that matter to your business:

• Sign-ups
• Downloads
• Video plays
• Feature usage

Monitor Trends

Look for:

• Traffic changes over time
• Seasonal patterns
• Campaign effectiveness
• Content performance

Related Features