I use a lightweight, privacy-oriented analytics plug-in called PanelBear, which tells me:

• how many people visit the site
• from what countries
• whether they're accessing the site from mobile or desktop
• what specific pages on the site are getting viewed
• the high-level view of what link they followed to get here (i.e. google, twitter - but not which tweet or what phrase they searched).

(It seems like more things when it's itemised like that, but I want to be really transparent.)

PanelBear doesn't store individualised data, link it to a person's broader web presence, sell it, or use it to target ads.

I don't use any tracking/cookies to follow you around the web (which is why you didn't see a pop-up banner about it).