Web Analytics

While our web site will provide you with some basic statistics such as total page views or number of sales, it does not track page views over time, browser stats, or referrals. That's where a third-party analytics system can come in. It allows you to track all the things we don't track for you. We have integrated with a tool called GoatCounter (silly name, but a serious tool).

GoatCounter

GoatCounter lets you see what pages have been hit, who referred those hits, and what browsers were used to hit the pages. This can help you track any marketing efforts you are making for your products on our site.

Using GoatCounter with The Game Crafter

You can track game shop pages, crowd sales, design asset shop pages, and your designer page. To do this you will need to sign up with GoatCounter, and then add your Goat Code to the Goat Code field in our game editor, crowd sale editor, design asset editor, or designer editor. Yes, you need to enter you goat code on each game (or other object) separately. We did this because some people will want to track each game separately, and thus may have separate GoatCounter codes for each.

FAQ

Why would I want to use analytics?

If you are doing any kind of marketing of your games, analytics can tell you how many people are visiting your page each day, and where they are coming from. You can then compare that against your sales to see if a good percentage of the people that visit your products actually buy them or not. If they aren't, perhaps you need to change something about your page.

What can I track with GoatCounter?

All of these over time (so you get daily, weekly, monthly and yearly trends): Page views, referral links from other sites, user's country of origin, web browser types, screen sizes, and operating systems.

Do I have to pay for GoatCounter?

While Goat Counter has a free plan, if you are using it on our site to sell your games that is a commercial relationship so you should pay the €5/month they ask for. You can track unlimited games using that one monthly fee. Besides, as an indie game designer you work hard on your games and want people to pay you for them, so why wouldn't you also want to support an indie programmer who is helping you sell your games?

If you cannot afford €5/month, then they have an option for you to pay whatever you can afford.

Why GoatCounter and not something more popular like Google Analytics?

The primary reason is that GoatCounter specifically does not track personally identifiable information about users. This is important for compliance with privacy laws such as GDPR. The secondary reason is that GoatCounter is very simple to use. Google Analytics is so complicated that it takes professional training for most people to get anything useful from it.

Can I use my own tracker instead of GoatCounter?

No. Injecting 3rd party trackers into our web site is a violation of the terms of our web site. Doing so is grounds to have your games immediately and permanently deleted.

Why can't I use my own?

Allowing users to insert code that could take a user's personal information without their consent is unethical. In addition the violation of laws like GDPR make fines so large that a small company like ours would be put out of business immediately for any violation. We simply cannot risk it.