Analytics for a solo founder: what to track and what to skip
Updated October 2026 · 3 min read
A solo founder needs six numbers and a way to be told when one of them moves: visitors, where they come from, which of them sign up or pay, where the rest stop, whether the site is broken, and whether it is fast. Everything else is detail you can look up when a question comes up. This guide lists what to track, what to skip, and a setup that runs itself after the first hour.
The six numbers
| Number | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|
| Visitors, against last period | The only number that tells you whether anything is growing. |
| Sources, with AI assistants as their own row | Where to spend the next week. ChatGPT and Perplexity are now a channel, and a visit without a referrer shows as Direct in every tool, so look for one that also matches tagged links and the apps. |
| Conversion, with revenue by source | Which source brings people who pay, not just people. A source with few visitors and most of the revenue is the one to feed. |
| Where visitors stop | The one page where most leavers give up. Fix that page before touching anything else. |
| Errors, counted by sessions | A broken signup form costs more than any marketing you will do this month. |
| Speed on the pages that matter | Slow pages lose visitors quietly. One number per page is enough. |
What to skip
- Session recordings. Watching ten minutes of someone scrolling tells you less than one answer to "why did you leave". Ask instead.
- Retention cohorts and event taxonomies. Product analytics for a product that has users. Until then, three custom events are plenty.
- Real-time dashboards. Watching visitors arrive is a pastime, not a decision.
- Rankings and backlink reports. Worth a monthly look, not a daily one.
- Anything you have to configure before it works. If a tool needs an event plan, you will not finish it.
The setup, in an hour
- Paste one script tag. Pageviews, sources, speed, errors, scroll and clicks come with it.
- Name the win. One line where a signup or purchase happens:
window.clerion.trackEvent("signup"), with a value if money changed hands. - Bring your history if you have Google Analytics, so the first briefing has a year to read.
- Write down your goal in one sentence inside the tool. Every finding is ranked against it.
- Ask leaving visitors why on the pricing page, with one attribute on the snippet.
- Mark deploys from your deploy job, so a bad release names itself.
Then stop looking. The point of the setup is that the reading comes to you.
What a morning looks like after that
Open the Overview, read one line, and if it says nothing changed, close it. On a day something moved, the briefing says what, why, and the one fix to make first, and every sentence opens the numbers behind it. When a question comes up that the briefing did not answer, ask it in plain words. When you owe someone a document, the traffic section of an investor update or a bug ticket for a contractor, ask for that too.
That is the whole practice: one line most mornings, a paragraph on the mornings that matter. Clerion is built for exactly this; the features page lists what it watches, and the quickstart is the hour above.
Frequently asked questions
Is Google Analytics enough for a solo founder?
It has the numbers, but it leaves every reading to you, files AI visits under Direct unless the referrer survives, and needs a consent banner in Europe. It is enough if you enjoy reports. Most founders do not.
What about a product-analytics tool?
Add one when your product has enough users that retention is the question. Before that, it is an event plan you will not finish.
How much should analytics cost at this stage?
The price of a lunch a month. Spend the difference on the fix the data points at.