An invisible counter for any page

Not everybody wants a counter on their page. Plenty of people want the numbers and would rather not have a badge in the corner announcing them — a portfolio, a company site, a page where a visible visit count would look like it was measuring the wrong thing.

There are two designs for that, and the difference between them is small and deliberate.

The two of them

Design 980 shows nothing at all. It renders an image that takes up no visible space — 202 bytes of it — and the page looks exactly as it did before. Nobody can tell it is there.

Design 981 shows a small icon, 636 bytes, which links through to the statistics. Almost nothing on the page, but a way in for the site owner and for anybody curious enough to click.

Both count exactly like every other design. Nothing about the counting changes when the counter stops being visible.

One deliberate difference

Design 980 has no link on it. That is not an oversight, and it is worth explaining because it looks like one.

An invisible image that is also a link is a transparent click target sitting on somebody else's page. Nobody would ever hit it on purpose; they would only ever hit it by accident, and land somewhere they did not ask to go. That is a dark pattern, in miniature, and the fix was to leave the link off.

For an invisible counter and a way to reach the statistics, 981 is the one. A small visible icon is honest about being clickable.

What invisible does not mean

Worth being plain about this. Invisible means invisible on the page. It does not mean nothing happens.

The counter is still a request from the visitor's browser to our server, and that request is still what does the counting. Any description of what a site loads has to include an invisible counter exactly like a visible one. Hiding the badge does not remove the thing it was a badge for.

What it does not do is set a cookie or read anything from the device — that is true of every design here, and there is a post about how that works.

Where it is most useful

Tag Manager, mainly. When the counter is injected by a container whose position is out of reach, an invisible design sidesteps the whole question of where it lands on the page — which is why the Tag Manager guide reaches for 981 first.