Welcome back to The Deep Dive. Today we're jumping straight into a really
interesting shift happening in web analytics.
You know, for years if you wanted to understand website visitors
it usually meant these huge complex platforms.
Yeah, often loaded with cookies, complex tracking scripts,
making things like GDPR and CCPA compliance a real headache
and expensive too. Exactly. It felt, well, overwhelming, often intrusive, sometimes
slow, and maybe just over-engineered for what
many people actually need day to day. Right. So today we're cutting through
that complexity. We're looking at a new kind of tool,
specifically an open source project called Ribbit. Ribbit, okay. Yeah, its
position is this open source privacy friendly
alternative to the big players like Google Analytics. And here's the kicker.
They claim it's 10x more intuitive. 10 times more intuitive. That's a bold claim.
It is. So our mission today is pretty simple. We want to break down Ribbit for
beginners. We want you listening to get a clear idea of what these
next-gen lightweight, cookie-less analytics actually mean
for your website, your data, and importantly your compliance.
Okay, sounds good. And before we really dig into how this tool
aims to redefine website analysis, we absolutely need to thank the supporter of
this deep dive, Safe Server. They're dedicated
to hosting software and helping with digital transformation.
So if you're thinking about deploying open source solutions like Ribbit, which
we're discussing, they can really guide you. You can find
more info at www.safeserver.de. Definitely worth checking out if you're
considering self-hosting. Okay, so let's unpack Ribbit. It's got some
serious community buzz, 9.2 thousand stars, over 400 forks on
GitHub. That's not insignificant. How does it
actually redefine understanding visitors? What's the
fundamental difference here? It can't just be a nicer looking dashboard.
No, not at all. It's really about the commitment to compliance and simplicity
right from its core. The foundational promise is structural.
Ribbit is designed as a modern open source analytics solution that's
inherently lightweight, meaning it's fast and
crucially cookie-less. Cookie-less. That's the key phrase, isn't it?
That's the absolute key because the platform uses, and I quote,
no cookies or user tracking in the traditional sense. It claims
full GDPR and CCPA compliance right out of the box.
Wow. Think about that. For anyone running a site serving users in, say,
California or the EU, that's a massive operational simplification.
No more complex consent banners for analytics cookies, theoretically. That
sounds almost too easy. For someone new to
analytics, maybe even new to open source, the idea of complete control can feel
a bit abstract. How does someone actually use this tool? What are the practical
ways to get started? Good question. They give you two clear paths, which is
great for choice. The quickest way is their hosted service. It's cloud-based,
set up for you, and importantly, they have a pretty
generous free tier. Makes it really painless to just try it out.
Okay, so like a sauce offering, dip your toes in. Exactly.
Then there's the second path, which is the classic open source advantage,
self-hosting. This means you deploy and manage Rivet yourself
on your own server, like a virtual private server,
a VPS. This gives you what they call complete control.
We're talking true data sovereignty here. Your data lives on your infrastructure.
And that flexibility combined with the open source license, it's
AGPL 3.0, right? Okay. That must put a huge draw. I mean, if you've ever felt
locked into a proprietary system, struggling to get your data out,
an open source license like AGPL means you control the software and the data.
You're never trapped again. Precisely. That choice between speed and ease
with the hosted option versus total data autonomy with self-hosting
is built right in. It really speaks to that next-gen analytics idea.
Okay. Let's shift from setup to the actual insights. You get it running,
you log into the dashboard. What are the essential metrics Ribbit
gives you right away? The things every site owner needs to keep an eye on?
It covers all the basics you'd expect. Sessions, unique users, page views,
that standard stuff. Then you get the key behavioral metrics like bounce rate,
average session duration, all vital signs for engagement.
What about location? Can you see where visitors are coming from?
Yep, it includes pretty rich location tracking, three levels,
country, then region, then city. And they have nice map visualizations to go with
it. It's the standard set, but the presentation is really focused on
being intuitive and clear. Okay, standard but clear. Now here's
something that always gets me excited seeing activity as it happens.
So many platforms have that frustrating delay, maybe 30 minutes, maybe more.
What about Ribbit's real-time analytics? Ah, this is where it gets really cool.
It's basically instantaneous data. The source material gives a great example.
A dashboard showing 28 online visitors right now.
Yeah, live. And tracking specific actions. It might show, say,
someone performed a button click event in Great Britain 45 seconds ago,
or a new visitor just landed on a page from Germany. That's incredibly useful
for monitoring campaigns as they launch. Maybe catching a sudden traffic spike or
even just confirming everything's working after pushing an update.
Exactly. That real-time pulse is invaluable.
And to get deeper than just traffic counts, you need
event tracking and goal conversion, right? Understanding the
impact of those visits. Absolutely. You don't just want page views. You want to
know if people are doing what you want them to do.
So Ribbit lets you monitor specific interactions, clicks, form submissions,
downloads, whatever you define, and then you tie those to conversion goals.
Like signing up for a newsletter or starting a free trial.
Precisely. The examples they give are things like seeing a newsletter sign up
goal, hitting an 8.7% conversion rate, or maybe a free trial registration at 12.4%.
It makes tracking your key business
outcomes really straightforward. Okay. And they mentioned something about
custom events using JSON properties. Can you unpack that a bit? Why is that
important? Especially for maybe a beginner. Right.
JSON properties. It sounds technical, but the concept is simple
and powerful. It lets you add context to your events
without needing invasive tracking. How so? Instead of just tracking
a generic click, you can track a button click and attach
extra information properties to that event. For instance,
track the click but include data like button.signupback to
and maybe usersegment.newvisitor. Ah, okay.
So you know which button was clicked and who, in terms of segment, clicked it.
Exactly. All tied to an anonymous session ID, not some
persistent cookie tracking them across the web. It allows for really deep
segmentation and understanding of what's happening and why.
But in a privacy preserving way. That detail is crucial.
But let's get into what often feels like the magic. The advanced tools for
understanding actual user behavior. You mentioned Ribbit is intuitive and
next-gen and often that means features going way beyond just counting things.
Yeah, this is where Ribbit really steps up from being just a lightweight
analytics tool into the realm of, well, deep product
analytics. They highlight three major features that give you that
rich behavioral context. Okay, what's the first one?
The first one, and maybe the most surprising given the privacy focus,
is session replays. Session replays? Like watching a video of what a user did.
Essentially, yes. It lets you, and I quote,
watch real user sessions to understand their behavior and identify pain points.
Wait a minute. If this whole thing is cookie-less
and GDPR compliant, how on earth are session replays possible?
Isn't watching someone's session the ultimate form of tracking?
That's the million dollar question, right? And it comes down to a critical
technical distinction. Traditional systems use cookies to stitch
together a user's identity across multiple visits,
maybe even across different websites. Right, the persistent tracking.
Exactly. Ribbit, being cookie-less, doesn't do that.
For each specific visit, it generates an anonymous, unique session identifier.
The replay isn't based on tracking you personally over time.
It reconstructs that specific session's journey based on the stream of
anonymized events, page views, clicks, scrolls, mouse movements, tied
only to that single temporary session ID. Ah, okay, so it's
recreating the session, not tracking the person long term.
That makes sense. It's anonymized playback of a single visit.
Precisely. They're reconstructing the what happened during that visit, not
building a permanent profile of who you are. And the source mentioned an
anecdote about seeing a user who clicked add to cart three times in a replay.
That kind of insight is gold. It tells you instantly there's friction or
confusion right there. Absolutely. Friction points become
immediately obvious, and that leads perfectly into the second
big feature, user profiles. User profiles? But you just said it's anonymous.
It is anonymous, but they can still link all the events and sessions
from what appears to be the same browser or device, using probabilistic methods
or fingerprinting likely, to a generated anonymous profile ID.
The example given is an ID like 84F43D7E associated with, say,
48 separate sessions and 134 page views over time.
So you can see repeat anonymous visitor behavior without personal data?
Correct. You understand the patterns of activity associated with that anonymous
ID, like how often they return or what features they use, without knowing their
actual identity. You know, what they did, not who they are.
Okay, that's clever. And the third piece for behavior,
visualizing the journey. Yes, user flow analysis or user journeys.
This maps out the common paths users take through your site or app.
Super important for optimization. Like seeing where people drop off.
Exactly. The source example showed a top path. Home products back check out
converting at 26%. If you see a huge drop off
between products and checkout, you know immediately where to focus your
efforts to improve things. Makes sense. Visualizing the flow is key.
Now quickly, you also mentioned technical performance monitoring,
web vitals. Right, web vitals. This isn't just about behavior, but the technical
experience. It monitors those core metrics Google
uses for page experience and rankings. LCP, FID, CLS, FCP.
Can you define those for beginners? Sure. LCP, largest contentful paint, is
basically how fast the main content loads. FID, first input delay, is how
quickly the page responds when you first click or interact.
CLS, cumulative layout shift, measures how much things jump around
unexpectedly while loading really annoying. Oh yeah, hate that. So these feed
into an overall performance score like the example
82 Good. Helps you keep the site fast and user friendly.
Okay, good overview, but important caveat here.
The source material does note that these advanced features,
web vitals, session replays, user profiles,
these tend to be in the paid tiers or sometimes noted as cloud only.
Yes, that's a crucial distinction. The core analytics are often free,
but these deeper behavioral and performance tools usually require a paid
subscription. Standard practice really. Okay, so let's
connect this back to the bigger picture. Someone's using Google Analytics, maybe
another tool like Plausible or Cloudflare Analytics.
Why would they switch to Ribbit? The comparison table in the source seems
pretty direct about this. Yeah, it makes a
strong case focusing on control and the depth of insight you get despite the
privacy focus. So what are the highlights from that
comparison? Where does Ribbit really stand out against GA4,
Plausible, Cloudflare? Well first, the fundamentals of control.
Ribbit is explicitly open source. GA4 is obviously not.
Ribbit fully supports self-hosting. GA4 doesn't.
Even competitors like Plausible might only offer limited self-hosting
in, say, a community edition. So for developers or organizations where data
control and transparency are paramount, Ribbit has a clear edge there. A huge edge.
But then there's the insight side. Features like detailed session details,
session replays, and user profiles. These are often core parts of Ribbit's paid
offering.
But when you look at the comparison table for GA4, Plausible, Cloudflare,
those features are often just marked with an X or not available.
So the implication is you get the privacy compliance without sacrificing those deep
user experience insights. That's kind of the holy grail, isn't it?
That seems to be the core value proposition. You don't necessarily have to choose
between
GDPR compliance and understanding user friction through replays or flows. Ribbit
aims to give you
both. That blend of privacy and power is compelling and accessibility matters,
especially for
beginners. Let's quickly touch on the pricing tiers again, just to reinforce how
someone can
get started. Absolutely. The free tier is really designed to remove any barrier to
entry. First
10,000 events per month are free. That's plenty for many small sites or projects.
It covers up
to three websites, one user, and gives you six months of data retention. And
critically,
no credit card needed to sign up for the free tier, right? Correct. No credit card
required
upfront. Just sign up and go. Then if you need more. If you grow, the standard tier
is listed
at $19 a month. That adds important features like web vitals tracking, funnels,
goal tracking,
and error tracking. Really rounds out the core analytics. And for the power users
needing those
deep behavioral tools. That's the pro tier at $39 a month. This is where you unlock
the session
replays. Plus you get unlimited websites and team members. So it scales pretty
logically as your
needs for detail and collaboration increase. Okay. That makes sense. A clear path
from free
exploration to professional tooling. So to sort of wrap up the key takeaway for you,
the learner,
Rivet is offering this suite of next gen analytics tools. You get everything from
the real time
dashboards to those detailed session replays. But it's all built on a foundation
that's
cookie lists and designed for privacy compliance, meeting standards like GDPR and
CCPA. It's
essentially bringing powerful product analytics insights without the traditional
baggage of
invasive tracking. Okay. So let's reflect on that. What does this really mean? If a
tool is fully
GDPR and CCPA compliant, because it ditches cookies technically, but it still lets
you watch
detailed session replays minute by minute and build up these comprehensive, albeit
anonymized,
user profiles, it raises a really interesting question, doesn't it? Where do you
draw the line?
Exactly. When you achieve technical privacy compliance, how does the sheer detail
of the
data you can still collect, like seeing exactly how someone navigated, where they
hesitated,
what they clicked three times, how does that redefine your ethical responsibility
as a site
owner? Understanding the user journey is vital, no doubt, but navigating that space
between necessary
insight and potentially excessive surveillance, even if technically compliant. That's
something
we all need to think about in this new era. Definitely something to mull over.
That's a great point to end on. The tools change, but the ethical considerations
evolve
right alongside them. And once again, we really want to thank Safe Server for
supporting this
deep dive. Yes, absolutely. You can find out more about their hosting and digital
transformation
solutions at www.safeserver.de. Check them out.
Thanks for joining us and we'll catch you on the next deep dive.