Koko Analytics Review

Not a fan of Google Analytics? Don’t worry I have you covered, take a look at my review of Koko Analytics.

Looking for an alternative to Google Analytics for your WordPress website?

Let’s face it. Google Analytics is excellent; it really is, but, it’s kind of overkill for many WordPress bloggers.

In fact, for many fellow bloggers, it can be overly complicated when let’s face it, you just want to know a few things and don’t need war and peace.

Plus if you add in the way Google goes about things in terms of user data, using Google Analytics isn’t the most privacy focussed way of doing things.

Nobody likes a third party handling your website data, or visitor data. So how do ensure you get analytics, without compromising on your visitor’s data? Sounds like a tricky thing to do right?

Well, not anymore. And as you’d come to expect with WordPress.

There’s a plugin for that.

About Koko Analytics WordPress plugin

Koko Analytics is a relatively new WordPress plugin from Danny van Kooten, it’s designed to be the most privacy focused analytical plugin for WordPress.

So how does it fair, is Koko Analytics really privacy focused, and how does it perform?

Installing the Koko Analytics plugin

I’m assuming you’re not an idiot here, to install Koko Analytics you can download from WordPress.org here or search your admin backend and install it from there. Literally takes a minute if that.

Setting up Koko Analytics

Again a very straight forward affair. Once installed you will see a new admission in your admin sidebar, just below the Dashboard icon, entitled Analytics.

In fact, KA (easier to call it that than type Koko Analytics all the time) adds a widget to your home screen as well.

Koko Analytics settings

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, setting up Koko Analytics that’s it, take a look at the settings page screenshot. It’s simple and no-frills, which to be frank for anyone who will use KA, it’s precisely what it needs to be, simple.

Here you can set the pageview exclusion by a specific user role, great if you have a load of different user levels that can affect your analytics, so perfect for more significant sites with lots of user roles.

Use a cookie?

Here you can choose either yes or no to use a cookie to help determine unique visitors and of course page views. If you decide to opt for no, then returning users will be harder to detect.

Data handling

Handy this, here you can automatically purge data over a specific period. You can choose to disable this function by setting it to 0; The default is 60 months, I’m unsure of the database load, so I’m going for two months.

I’m erring on the side of caution granted. I like this feature; I’m only interested in the last 60 days of traffic.

*Edit:- This came direct from the developer Danny van Kooten:

The plugin only stores a single 18-byte record per page on your website, per day. So in case of a website with 100 posts, this means a maximum of 640 kB per year of data.

Danny van Kooten on Twitter (link here)

Using the Koko Analytics WordPress plugin

Let’s not forget KA does not pretend to be anything it isn’t here. It’s a simple solution aimed at providing a handful of metrics. While that may put some off, I can understand.

Using a filter system you can narrow down your stats to a specific time frame, by month, year, quarter and much more.

It’s all located in one place, in your back end, no third party login, none of that noise, it’s all easily accessible from your WordPress backend.

What data does KA provide?

Simply put, two types. Pages viewed and referrers, let’s face it for many, that’s enough.

Pages run in numerical order, so top viewed pages/posts over your chosen time frame, along with the top referrers matching your time frame.

That’s it, nothing more, nothing less.

Privacy & Koko Analytics

Koko does not store any personal information from visitors, no IP addresses none of that. As per the plugin page description, no external services are used for the compilation of user data.

Is Koko Analytics GDPR compliant? Yup, fully. It doesn’t store any identifiable user data, nor does it use a third party. KA also supports AMP works with caching plugins and only shows you the stats you need.

Pros & cons to the Koko Analytics plugin

As much as I love Koko, there are always pros and cons, take a look below and see what I mean.

Bare minimum stats

Just the stats, nothing more nothing less. Koko really does offer a no-frills stats experience, which means many will love its simplicity. Myself included.

Privacy

Not having the headache of worrying about what a third party is doing with your stored visitor data is a welcome relief. Not tracking users IP addresses and being GDPR compliant is made pain free with Koko.

Easy to use

KA is ridiculously easy to use, in fact, you couldn’t really mess it up if you tried!

Useful simple stats

While the stats are minimal, they are actionable and useful to know. The filtering system is a cinch to use and actually offers decent insight into how your site is performing.

Bare minimum stats!

As much as it is a positive thing, for some, I can imagine people would want more from a stats solution. If that’s the case KA isn’t for you, it does what it says it does if you need more look elsewhere!

Take it for a spin

I’d strongly recommend you take Koko Analytics for a spin. It’s beautifully simple (that’s not a bad thing being simple!) and gives you just enough data to make your blog work.

Those looking for a more complicated experience or a solution that offers a billion different things, use Google Analytics, it’s as simple as that!

Hell, you could use both at the same time if you wanted to, why you’d do that I don’t know, but hey you could if you had to.

I know Koko Analytics isn’t going to be for everyone, I totally understand that. Some need more from an analytics solution, I dig that.

Those of you who want something simple and effective, Koko Analytics is right up your street.

I’ve scored Koko Analytics lower on the reporting functionality not out of spite you understand, but I’d be remiss if I let my enthusiasm for it overshadow the fact that the stats are simple.

Highly recommended. Koko Analytics does what it says on the tin, privacy focused and easy to use. I’d urge you to give this free plugin a go, it’s elegant and useful.

If you want more use another solution, for what Koko Analytics does it’s perfect and I kind of love it.

Koko Analytics Review Score