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Organic Traffic : What It Is and How to Increase It
19 septembre 2023, par Erin — Analytics TipsOrganic traffic can be a website’s most valuable source of visitors. But it can also be the hardest form of traffic to acquire. While paid ads can generate traffic almost instantly, you need to invest time and energy into growing traffic from search engines.
And it all starts with understanding exactly what organic traffic is.
If you want to understand what organic traffic is, how to measure it and how to generate more of it, then this article is for you.
What is organic traffic?
Organic traffic is the visitors your website receives from the unpaid results on search engines like Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo.
The higher your website ranks in the search engine results pages and the more search terms your website ranks for, the more organic traffic your site will receive.
Organic traffic is highly valued by marketers, partly because it has a much higher clickthrough rate than PPC ads. Research shows the top organic result has a 39.8% CTR compared to just 2.1% for paid ads.
So, while you can pay to appear at the top of search engines (using a platform like Google Ads, for instance), you probably won’t receive as much traffic as you would if you were to rank organically in the same search engine.
What other types of traffic are there?
Organic traffic isn’t the only type of traffic your website can get. You can also receive traffic from the following channels:
Direct
People familiar with your site may visit it directly, either by entering your URL into their browser or accessing it through a bookmarked link; both scenarios are counted as direct traffic.
Social
Social traffic includes visits to your website from a social media platform. For example, if someone shares a link to your website on Facebook, any user who clicks on it will be counted as social traffic.
Websites
Social media isn’t the only way for someone to share a link to your website. Any time a visitor finds your website by clicking on a link on another website, it will be counted as “websites”. This is also known as referral traffic on some analytics platforms.
Campaign
Campaign traffic encompasses both paid and unpaid traffic sources. Paid sources include advertising on search engines and social media (also known as PPC or pay-per-click), as well as collaborations with influencers and sponsorships. Unpaid sources, such as your organisation’s email newsletters, cross-promotions with other businesses and other similar methods, are also part of this mix.
In simpler terms, it’s the traffic you deliberately direct to your site, and you utilise campaign tracking URLs to measure how these efforts impact your ROI.
A word on multi-touch attribution
If you are interested in learning more about types of traffic to track conversions, then it’s important to understand multi-touch attribution. The truth is most customers won’t just use a single traffic channel to find your website. In reality, the modern customer journey has multiple touchpoints, and customers may first find your site through an ad and then search for more about your brand on Google before going directly to your website.
You are at risk of under or overestimating the effectiveness of a marketing channel without using multi-touch attribution tracking. With this marketing analytics model, you can accurately weigh the impact of every channel and allocate budgets accordingly.
What are the benefits of organic traffic?
Getting more organic traffic is a common marketing goal for many companies. And it’s not surprising why. There’s a lot to love about organic traffic.
For starters, it’s arguably the most cost-effective traffic your site can receive. You will still need to pay to create and distribute organic content (whether it’s a blog post or product page). You don’t need to pay for it to show up in a search engine. You continue to get value from organic traffic long after you’ve created the page, too. A good piece of organic content can receive high volumes of monthly visitors for years. That’s a stark difference from paid ads, where traffic stops as soon as you turn off the ad.
It also puts your website in front of a massive audience, with Google alone processing over 3.5 billion searches every day. There’s a good chance that if your target audience is looking for a solution to their problems, they start with Google.
Organic traffic is fantastic at building brand awareness. Usually, users aren’t searching for a specific brand or company. They are searching for informational keywords (“how to brew the perfect cup of coffee”) or unbranded transactional keywords (“best home workout machine”). In both cases, customers can use search engines to become aware of your brand.
Finally, organic traffic brings in high-quality leads at every marketing funnel stage. Because users are searching for informational and transactional keywords, your site can receive visits from buyers at every stage of the marketing funnel, giving you multiple chances to convert them and helping to increase the number of touch points you have.
How to check your website’s organic traffic
You don’t need to complete complex calculations to determine your site’s organic traffic. A web analytics solution like Matomo will accurately measure your site’s organic traffic.
In Matomo, on the left-hand sidebar, you can access organic traffic data by clicking Acquisition and then selecting All Channels.
You’ll find a detailed breakdown of all traffic sources, including organic traffic, within the specified timeframe. The report is set to the current day by default, but you can view organic traffic metrics over a day, week, month, year or a date range of your choice.
If you want to take things further, you can get a detailed view of organic visitors by creating a custom report for “Visitors from Search Engines only.” By creating a custom report with the segment “Channel Type is search”, you’ll be able to combine other metrics like average actions per visit, bounce rate, goal conversions, etc., to create a comprehensive report on your organic traffic and the behavior of these visitors.
Matomo also lets you integrate Google, Bing and Yahoo search consoles directly into your Matomo Analytics to monitor keyword performance.
How to increase organic traffic
Follow these six tips if you want to increase the web traffic you get organically from search engines.
Create more and better content
Here’s the reality: Most websites don’t get much traffic from Google. Only 40% of sites rank on the first page, and just 23% sit in the top three results.
Let’s take quality first. The best content tends to rise to the top of search engines. That’s because it gets shared more, receives more backlinks and gets more user engagement. So, if you want to appear at the top of Google results, creating mediocre content probably won’t cut it. You need to go above and beyond what is already there.
But you can’t just create one fantastic piece of content and expect to receive thousands of visitors. You need multiple pages targeting as many search terms as possible. The more pages search engines index, the more opportunities you have to rank. Or, to put it another way, the more shots you take, the greater your chances of scoring.
Use keyword research tools
While creating great content is essential, you want to ensure that content targets the right keywords. These keywords receive a suitable amount of traffic and are easy to rank for.
Keyword research tools like Ahrefs of Semrush are the easiest way to find high-traffic topics to write about. Specifically, you want to aim for long-tail keywords. These are search terms that contain three or more words. Think “Nike men’s basketball shoe” rather than “basketball shoe.”
As you can see, long tail keywords have a lower monthly search volume (250 vs. 1,100 using the example above) than broad terms but are much easier to rank for (14 vs. 41 Keyword Difficulty).
While the above tools can help you find new topics to write about, Matomo’s Search Engine Keywords Performance plugin can help highlight topics you have already covered that could be expanded.
The plugin automatically connects to APIs from all significant search engines and imports all the keywords people search for when clicking on your websites into your Matomo report.
If you find a cluster of keywords on the same topic that generates a lot of visitors, it may be worth creating even more content on that topic. Similarly, if there’s a topic you think you have covered but isn’t generating much traffic, you can look at revising and refreshing your existing content to try to rank higher.
Build high-quality backlinks
Backlinks are arguably the most important Google ranking factor and the primary way Google assesses the authoritativeness of your site and content. Backlinks strongly and positively correlate with traffic — at least according to 67.5% of respondents in a uSERP industry survey.
There are plenty of ways you can create high-quality backlinks that Google loves. Strategies include:
- Creating and promoting the best content about a given topic
- Guest posting on high-authority websites
- Building relationships with other websites
Ensure you avoid building low-quality spam links at all costs — such as private blog networks (PBNs), forum and comment spam links and directory links. These links won’t help your content to rank higher, and Google may even penalise your entire site if you build them.
Find and fix any technical Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) issues
Search engines like Google need to be able to quickly and accurately crawl and index your website to rank your content. Unfortunately, many sites suffer from technical issues that impede search engine bots.
The good news is that certain tools make these issues easy to spot. Take the Matomo SEO Web Vitals feature, for instance. This lets you track a set of core web vital metrics, including:
- Page Speed Score
- First Contentful Paint (FCP)
- Final Input Delay (FID)
- Last Contentful Paint (LCP)
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Take things even further by identifying major bugs and issues with your site. Crashes and other issues that impact user experience can also hurt your SEO and organic traffic efforts — so it’s best to eliminate them as soon as they occur.
Use Matomo’s Crash Analytics feature to get precise bug location information as well as the user’s interactions that triggered, the device they were using, etc. Scheduled reporting and alerts allow you to automate this task and instantly detect bugs as soon as they occur.
Improve your on-page SEO
As well as fixing technical issues, you should spend time optimising specific elements of your website to improve how it ranks in search engines.
There are several on-page elements you should optimise:
- Image alt tags
- URLs
- Headings
- Title tags
- Internal links
Your goal should be to include a target keyword in each element above. For example, your URL should be something like yoursite.com/keyword.
It’s best to err on the side of caution here. Avoid adding too many keywords to each of these elements. This is called keyword stuffing, and Google may slap your site with a penalty.
Track your content’s performance
One final way to increase organic traffic is to use an analytics platform to understand what content needs improving and which pages can be removed.
Use an analytics platform like Matomo to see which pages generate the most organic traffic and which lag behind. This can help you prioritise your SEO efforts while highlighting pages that add no value. These pages can be completely revamped, redirected to another page or removed if appropriate.
Conclusion
Organic traffic is arguably the most valuable traffic source your site can acquire. It is essential to monitor organic traffic levels and take steps to increase your organic traffic.
A good analytics platform can help you do both. Matomo’s powerful, open-source web analytics solution protects your data and your users’ privacy, while providing the SEO tools you need to send your organic traffic levels soaring.
Start a free 21-day trial now, no credit card required.
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GDPR Compliance Checklist : A Detailed Walkthrough
14 septembre 2023, par Erin — GDPRAs digital transformation drives global economies, data has become a valuable currency to businesses of all shapes and sizes. As a result, the complex issue of data privacy is often in the spotlight.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the key legal framework in the European Union to protect individual privacy and regulate business data handling.
Compliance with the GDPR is not just a legal mandate, it’s also good business. An 86% majority of users want more control over their data and 47% of users have switched providers over data privacy concerns.
To help guide your business decisions around user privacy, this article will cover the key principles of GDPR, including a comprehensive GDPR compliance checklist.
The key principles and requirements of GDPR
Before we can translate GDPR’s objectives into practical steps, let’s begin with the defining features and key principles.
GDPR: An overview
The GDPR bolsters and unifies data protection standards for everyone within the EU. Enacted in 2018, it represented a seismic shift for companies and public authorities alike in protecting personal information. Its primary objective is to offer greater control to individuals over their data and to hold organisations accountable for its protection.
GDPR establishes a legal framework that mandates corporate compliance with key principles to ensure user data security, transparency and choice. It sets the terms for your organisation’s privacy practices and the landscape of legal obligations you must navigate in data handling.
Key principles of GDPR
There are seven core principles pivotal to GDPR compliance, which provide a roadmap for ethical and legal data practices.
- Lawfulness, fairness and transparency: This principle demands lawful and fair processing of personal data. Companies should be transparent about their data processing activities, providing clear information in an accessible form.
- Purpose limitation: Personal data should be collected for explicit, legitimate purposes and not further processed in a way incompatible with those purposes. This demands careful planning of data processing activities.
- Data minimisation: Companies should only collect personal data that are necessary for their specified purposes, as anything more than this is illegal. This principle emphasises the importance of limiting scope, rather than performing blanket data collection.
- Accuracy: This principle calls for maintaining data that is accurate, up-to-date and not misleading. Regular internal audits and updates are crucial to following this principle.
- Storage limitation: Personal data should only be kept for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected. This underscores the need for a detailed retention policy in your GDPR compliance efforts.
- Integrity and confidentiality: Companies should protect personal data from unauthorised or unlawful processing and accidental loss or damage. Your organisation’s technical security measures play a vital role in this.
- Accountability: Organisations should be able to demonstrate their compliance with GDPR principles. This underscores the importance of records of processing activities and regular audits as part of your compliance checklist.
The importance of GDPR compliance for businesses
Embracing GDPR compliance isn’t merely a matter of avoiding penalties — it’s a commitment to principles that reflect integrity, transparency and respect for personal data. At Matomo, we champion these principles, empowering companies with powerful and compliant web analytics. We make the compliance journey accessible and straightforward, making sure website analytics aligns with legal obligations and ethical practices.
The implications of non-compliance
It’s easy to highlight the dramatic fines imposed on tech giants such as Google and Meta. However, it’s essential to recognise that GDPR compliance extends to all companies, including small businesses — for whom even smaller fines can have a significant impact.
The implications of non-compliance aren’t limited to financial penalties alone, either. Failing to meet obligations can tarnish reputations, erode trust and hinder business activities. Non-compliance could lead to a breach of privacy policy, causing a ripple effect that may be challenging to overcome.
The potential benefits of being GDPR compliant
Adhering to GDPR regulations is more than a checkbox on a form — it’s a comprehensive approach to handling personal data responsibly. It fosters trust, opens doors to European customers and builds enduring relationships with individuals whose rights are protected. In fulfilling these obligations and practices, businesses not only meet legal requirements but also foster a culture of ethical conduct and business success.
Comprehensive GDPR compliance checklist
Ensuring GDPR compliance may seem like a complex task, but this detailed checklist will simplify your journey. From consent management to data security, we’ve got you covered.
Establish personal data collection and consent management
When it comes to GDPR compliance, not all consent is created equal. Two distinct forms exist: explicit consent and implied consent. But what exactly sets them apart, and why does it matter to your organisational measures?
Explicit consent from users means that the individual has unequivocally agreed to the processing of personal data. It’s an unambiguous agreement, often obtained through a deliberate action like ticking a box. Details are paramount, as the person giving consent must be fully informed about the processing activities.
- Inform clearly: Use plain language to explain how data will be used and be transparent about processing practices.
- Obtain active agreement: Use forms or checkboxes (not pre-ticked boxes) to ensure active participation and that you are obtaining explicit user consent.
- Document it: Keep records of consent, including when and how it was obtained, as a crucial part of your compliance efforts.
- Facilitate withdrawal: Use consent mechanisms that allow for easy withdrawal of consent for users who decide to opt out.
- Manage consent forms: Tools like Matomo’s Consent Management Platform can provide accessible forms that not only enhance transparency but also empower individuals, allowing them to feel in control of their details and rights.
Facilitate data subject rights and access requests
GDPR emphasises individual rights by empowering users with control over their personal data processing. Here’s a succinct breakdown:
- Know the rights of individuals: GDPR outlines individual rights such as data access, error rectification, erasure and data portability, allowing individuals to guide how their details are used, processed or shared.
- Simplify complying with access requests: Companies must respond to access requests efficiently, usually within one month, without undue delay, reflecting organisational measures of respect.
- Employ ethical and compliant digital analytics: As a leader in ethical web analytics, Matomo subtly aids in compliance efforts, protecting privacy without compromising functionality.
These practices align with a modern understanding of privacy, emphasising more than legal obligations. By employing Matomo, companies simplify the processing of access requests, which fosters transparency and user control over personal data.
Implement clear data privacy practices
Data privacy and consent mechanisms are key tools for compliance. Crafting a comprehensive privacy policy helps protect individuals’ rights and provides integrity in personal data processing. Designing sites and applications with data protection in mind ensures your compliance from the ground-up.
- Create an easy to understand privacy policy: Create a clear, GDPR-compliant privacy policy that details processing activities, storage limitations and organisational measures, all in plain language.
By implementing these steps, companies not only adhere to their legal obligations but also foster an inclusive community that values privacy and ethics. Whether you’re an IT professional or marketer, Matomo’s platform can guide you through the maze of GDPR complexities, inspiring positive change towards responsible data handling.
Implement data storage limitations and robust security
Data storage and security are foundational elements of compliance efforts. Companies must foster a proactive approach to preventing data breaches by understanding potential cyberthreats and enforcing appropriate security controls across applications and infrastructures.
- Implement storage limitations: Define limitations on time and scope to avert undue retention and protect personal details.
- Embrace technical security: Utilise secure processes like encryption, access controls, firewalls and so on, bolstering protection by design.
- Establish a comprehensive security policy: Align security practices with privacy laws and regulations, including GDPR.
- React swiftly to personal data breaches: A security breach requires an immediate response, without undue delay, to honour legal obligations and maintain customer trust. Develop a plan for notifying supervisory authorities and affected individuals promptly in the event of a personal data breach.
Security measures for personal data are about more than just fulfilling legal obligations — they’re about building a safe and ethical digital ecosystem that instils confidence in customers.
Keep cross-border data transfers in mind
Cross-border data transfers present a unique challenge, with increased complexity due to varying data privacy laws across regions. You must understand the respective regulations of participating countries and align your compliance practices appropriately to respect all that are relevant to your organisation.
For example, data privacy laws in the US are generally more lax than the GDPR so US companies taking on EU customers must hold themselves to a higher standard, with stricter controls placed on their data processing practices.
- Evaluate third-party services: For companies utilising global networks of third-party services, be sure to select providers that maintain ongoing knowledge and vigilance towards privacy law compliance. Platforms like Matomo that innately prioritise transparency and privacy, have implemented robust security measures, and document transfers diligently are worth considering.
Conduct internal audits and compliance checks
Compliance is not a “one and done” setup, but an ongoing journey requiring regular internal audits. Systems settings can drift over time, and datasets can become increasingly complex as companies scale. Human error happens, too. Audits identify gaps in your compliance efforts to guide actionable improvements.
- Conduct regular audits: Stay proactive with internal audits and systematic monitoring, adapting policies to align with privacy laws. Clarity in privacy notices and cookie banners fosters confidence, while regular assessments ensure alignment with GDPR requirements.
- Ensure transparency: Platforms like Matomo simplify audits, offering valuable insights and support for ethical web analytics and transparency. The right platform can increase visibility and make generating your reports easier. Integrating these processes guarantees GDPR-aligned measures while emphasising data ownership and customer-centric values.
- Educate and train staff: Engage in ongoing staff education and training on GDPR compliance, privacy policies, and their related responsibilities.
Case study: GDPR compliance in action
Achieving compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) stands as a paramount concern for businesses worldwide. Both small and large companies have embarked on this journey, implementing measures and revising privacy policies to conform to these regulations.
Typeform
Based in Ireland, Typeform, a company dealing with online forms, took GDPR compliance very seriously. Here’s how they achieved it:
- Conducting a data protection impact assessment (DPIA): This vital step helped them assess personal data breach risks and enabled systematic monitoring of potential challenges.
- Implementing technical and organisational measures: Security measures such as encryption, access control and drafting a security policy reinforced their personal data processing mechanisms.
- Revamping privacy policy: They transformed their privacy policy with accessible, plain language, making it clear and user-friendly.
- Appointing a data protection officer (DPO): This aligned with their core activities and strengthened their compliance efforts.
The benefits for Typeform were profound:
- Enhanced customer trust and confidence
- Reduced risk of fines and penalties
- Bolstered data security and privacy
- Improved brand reputation, positioning them favourably among European customers
Ensuring GDPR Compliance with Matomo Analytics
Matomo is more than just an analytics platform; it is a trusted guide in the realm of data privacy. Our mission is to empower users with full data ownership, fostering an inclusive digital community built on trust and transparency. Our suite of features has been meticulously designed to align with GDPR regulations, ensuring that businesses can navigate the complexities of compliance with ease and confidence.
1. Data Anonymisation
Matomo’s focus on ethical digital analytics means the platform allows for the anonymisation of user data, ensuring that individual identities remain protected.
2. Robust GDPR Management
Beyond just a GDPR Manager, Matomo provides an encompassing framework to streamline compliance activities. From managing user consent to meticulous record-keeping of processing activities, Matomo ensures you are always a step ahead.
3. User Empowerment with Opt-Out Capabilities
Matomo respects user choices. The platform offers users an easy way to opt-out of all tracking, giving them control over their data.
4. First-party Cookies as the Standard
By using first-party cookies by default, Matomo ensures data remains with the website owner, minimising potential breaches or misuse.
5. Transparent Data Collection Practices
Users have the right to know their data. With Matomo, they can view the exact data being collected, reinforcing a transparent relationship between businesses and their users.
6. Visitor Data Management
Upon request, Matomo offers capabilities to delete visitor data, aligning with the GDPR’s right to be forgotten.
7. Data Ownership and Privacy Assurance
Unlike other web analytics platforms, with Matomo, you retain full ownership of your data and can rest assured that it is not being used for other purposes such as advertising.
8. IP Anonymisation
Protecting user location details, Matomo anonymises IP addresses, adding an additional layer of privacy.
9. Customisable Data Visualisation
Recognising that not all data is essential, Matomo allows the disabling of visitor logs and profiles, giving businesses the flexibility to decide what data they track.
By taking a holistic approach to GDPR compliance, Matomo streamlines the processes for you and ensures you follow the legal and ethical best practices.
Start your GDPR compliance journey today
The global focus on data privacy requires using a GDPR compliance checklist. With 137 countries implementing data protection laws (UN), companies must align with international standards. Compliance, after all, goes beyond avoiding breaches— it’s about upholding privacy and building trust.
As your trusted guide, Matomo invites you on this GDPR journey. With us, you’ll uphold privacy obligations and manage your processing activities effectively. Compliance isn’t a one-time task but a continuous journey to enhance practices and align with individual rights. Start this vital journey with Matomo today. Try it free for 21-days. No credit card required.
Disclaimer
We are not lawyers and don’t claim to be. The information provided here is to help give an introduction to GDPR. We encourage every business and website to take data privacy seriously and discuss these issues with your lawyer if you have any concerns.
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8 Best Tools to Analyse Website Traffic
Do you want to analyse your website traffic?
Maybe you want to know how well you’re converting your traffic. Or maybe you’re looking to track the performance and ROI of your marketing campaigns. Regardless, you won’t get far without relying on a dependable web traffic analysis platform.
In this article, we’ve compiled a list of the top web analytics tools available (including the pricing for each one).
Let’s dive in.
What is website traffic analysis?
Curious about what it means to analyse website traffic?
Simply put, it involves collecting and examining data about your website visitors and the actions they take. Marketers, analysts and website owners can then take this data and use it to optimise their strategy to improve site traffic, conversion rates and ROI.
A website analytics tool is software that tracks and measures various visitor activities and behaviours on your website. Common metrics include pageviews, traffic source, bounce rate and average time on page. Using a web analytics solution can give you insights into what’s working (and what’s not working) so you can optimise your website, campaigns or marketing strategy.
Advantages of using a website traffic analysis tool
1. Performance measurement and optimisation
Tracking the success of your marketing efforts is a challenging task. The primary benefit of using a web analytics tool is implementing effective performance measurement. If you don’t know how to measure your efforts, you won’t know what’s working and what’s not with your campaigns and content.
A web analysis tool can give you the insights you need to understand whether your marketing initiatives have been successful or if they need to be improved.
For instance, your new web design facelift may seem beautiful, but if visitors aren’t staying on your site as long and it is resulting in lower conversions, then it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
2. Audience insights to improve the user experience
Web traffic analysis platforms don’t just show you what your visitors are doing. It shows you who your audience is. A powerful website analytics tool will give you in-depth audience data, including demographics like geographical location (e.g., city, state or country), to help you better understand your audience.
Additionally, you can learn more about your audience by seeing how they interact with different content on your site. You’ll start to see that certain content performs better than others, giving you a greater understanding of your audience’s needs and wants. This means you’ll be able to tailor your website content and marketing efforts to your audience to improve the overall user experience.
3. Improve SEO
In the first two advantages, we touched on how insights can help you craft better content for the visitors already coming to your site to improve the user experience and improve conversions. But did you know that using a website analytics tool can also help improve how much traffic you’re getting to your site?
Since a web analytics tool can help you craft better content, one side effect is an increase in traffic from organic search through SEO. Additionally, your platform will likely show you other traffic sources that your visitors are coming from (i.e., another website is referring traffic to you) so you can tap into those high-performing sources and optimise your incoming traffic over time.
Top 8 Tools to Analyse Website Traffic
Here’s a breakdown of the top eight web analytics platforms to help you analyse each tool’s unique features, price, advantages and disadvantages so you can make the best decision.
1. Matomo
Matomo is an open-source website analytics tool that’s focused on protecting user privacy and data while offering robust insights into your web traffic. It’s one of the most powerful tools to track the entire customer journey on your site.
Why Matomo: As the leader in open-source, privacy-friendly and ethical web analytics, Matomo is trusted by more than 1 million websites, including NASA, the United Nations and the European Commission.
Matomo plays well with Google Analytics to track your websites by filling in the gaps where Google Analytics has limitations (i.e., cookie consent banner requirement). Matomo combines traditional and behavioural web analytics for deeper insights while ensuring compliance with the strictest privacy regulations like GDPR, LGPD and HIPAA.
Matomo Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include comprehensive visitor tracking, multi-attribution, goal tracking, event tracking, custom dimensions, custom reports, automated email reports, session recordings, tag manager, roll-up reporting to pull data from multiple sites, Google Analytics importer, heatmaps and more.
Integrations include WordPress, Google Ads, Wix, Drupal, Joomla, Cloudflare, Magento, Vue, SharePoint, WooCommerce and more.
Pricing starts free for Matomo On-Premise (but requires technical skills and servers to set up) and $23/month for Matomo Cloud, which includes a 21-day free trial (no credit card required).
Pros
- Best for respecting visitor privacy
- You own your data — ensuring that it’s not shared with third parties for purposes like advertising
- Compliant with the strictest privacy laws
- Greater flexibility with open-source advantages, as well as the option to either self-host or cloud host
- Can run cookieless — providing ~100% accurate data and a better user experience without the need for an annoying cookie consent banner
- Exceptional customisability — from white labeling, alerts and custom dimensions to dashboards and reports, tailor your insights for faster decisions, deeper insights and superior outcomes
Cons
- On-Premise is free, but there are additional costs for advanced features
- On-Premise requires servers and technical expertise to manage
2. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the most well-known and used web analytics platform in the world, with nearly 30 million active websites.
Why Google Analytics: It’s one of the leading web traffic analysis tools backed by the Alphabet group of companies. For anyone getting started, it’s a great free option to understand your web traffic and your audience.
Google Analytics Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include in-depth visitor tracking, event tracking with Google Analytics 4 (GA4), easy integration with Google marketing tools (i.e., Google Search Console and Google Ads), custom reports and easy data importing from third-party sources.
Integrations include Google Ads, Google Webmaster Tools, AdSense, WordPress, Wix, Shopify, Zendesk, Facebook, Marketo, WordPress, Hotjar, SEMrush, Salesforce, Hootsuite and more.
Pricing is free.
Pros
- Detailed audience insights
- Customisable reports
- Seamless integration with other Google products
- Easy to set up
Cons
- Not privacy-friendly — you don’t own your data (data is shared with third parties for advertising purposes)
- Complex interface
- Requires cookie consent banner for GDPR compliance, which negatively impacts data accuracy and user experience
3. Fathom Analytics
Founded in 2018, Fathom Analytics is a privacy-friendly and lightweight web analytics tool. The platform offers a simple, minimalistic dashboard.
Why Fathom Analytics: Fathom Analytics is a minimalistic tool to help website owners gain insights into customer behaviour without compromising on privacy. It’s an easy-to-use tool that offers a simplified breakdown of the most popular data points. For newcomers to web analytics seeking essential metrics like visitor counts and traffic sources, Fathom Analytics provides a straightforward, cost-effective solution.
Fathom Analytics Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include easy, automated GA4 importing with lifetime data retention, a single-page dashboard for a quick overview of metrics, traffic summaries for chosen timeframes, visually striking graphs for better data digestion and privacy protection covering major compliance regulations.
Integrations include Google Analytics, Squarespace, Drupal, WordPress, Discourse, Bloggi, ConvertKit, Webflow, Transistor, Remix, Gatsby and Carrd.
Pricing starts at $14/month for up to 100k pageviews (with a 30-day free trial).
Pros
- Doesn’t use cookies
- Out-of-the-box GDPR, ePrivacy, PECR and CCPA compliance
- Great for visual data insights
- Lightweight tracking script for fast loading
Cons
- Can’t easily see traffic trends on specific pages
- Metrics may be too simple for those wanting advanced analytics
4. Mixpanel
Mixpanel is a web analytics platform that helps you track visitors as well as improve customer retention. The software has 8,000 customers worldwide, including Netflix, Yelp, BuzzFeed and CNN.
Why Mixpanel: Mixpanel is great for websites with e-commerce functionality. The tool helps you understand both your site visitors and your customers so you can optimise your customer experience and improve conversions.
Mixpanel Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include deep insights into how your products are being used, including your most popular features, user cohorts that let you segment users based on specific actions, and visual analysis showing where users drop off.
Integrations include Google Cloud, Figma, Mailchimp, Zoho CRM, Databox, Marketo, Hotjar, Slack, Zapier, Amazon Web Services, Google Ads and HubSpot.
Pricing starts free for up to 20 million events per month and $20/month for Growth.
Pros
- Interface is easy for beginners
- Exhaustive reporting options
- Custom event tracking options
- Predict user actions based on data science models
- Send targeted messages to specific users to encourage action
Cons
- User-based pricing isn’t the most ideal for everyone
- Alert management can be confusing
5. Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics is a marketing and product analytics tool that helps e-commerce and SaaS companies grow through qualitative data insights. The web analytics tool is trusted by 10,000 users, including Microsoft, Unbounce, AWeber, Dropbox DocSend and SendGrid.
Why Kissmetrics: As an e-commerce-driven analytics platform, the platform is best suited for Enterprise businesses, but it also offers flexible pricing plans that make it easy for someone to get their feet wet with website analytics.
Kissmetrics Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include a customisable dashboard to see key metrics at a glance, comprehensive visitor tracking, cohort analysis including power user tracking to understand your most active visitors and customers and insights into customer lifetime value and churn rate.
Integrations include Chargify, HubSpot, Slack, Live Chat, Marketo, Optimizely, Mailchimp, Recurly, Wufoo Forms, Facebook Ads, WordPress, Shopify and WooCommerce.
Pricing starts at $0.0025/event for the Pay As You Go Plan, $25.99/month for Build Your Plan and $199/month for Small Teams, which includes a 7-day free trial.
Pros
- Flexible pricing options
- Easy to install
- Several analytics viewing options
- Visual checkout funnel insights
- Track sessions by desktop or mobile
Cons
- Despite more pricing options, it’s still quite expensive overall
- Difficult to use for beginners
6. Adobe Analytics
Adobe Analytics is a web and marketing analytics platform within the Adobe Experience Platform. Used by over 170,000 businesses, it’s one of the most popular analytics solutions available.
Why Adobe Analytics: Adobe Analytics was created for large organisations. It’s essentially the enterprise version of Google Analytics. The tool does a great job of offering a customised analytics solution that’s capable of delivering personalised user experiences at scale.
Adobe Analytics Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include attribution, AI-driven predictive analytics, robust customer segmentation and automation based on customer behaviour.
Integrations include all Adobe products, Salesforce, Hootsuite, Contentsquare, Sisense, Mouseflow, Google Ads, Google Search Console, HubSpot and Microsoft Teams.
Pricing is custom and available upon request, but users can expect to pay at least $2,000 per month, and there is no free trial.
Pros
- Built for enterprise businesses
- Seamless workflow integration for Adobe Experience Cloud users
- Incredible customisation options
- Integration process is flexible
- Capable of accurately tracking large volumes of traffic
Cons
- Very expensive
- Not suitable for small businesses
- The setup is challenging for beginners
7. SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is a robust analytics platform used to track your website data and compare it to other websites. Backed by a team of experienced data scientists and mathematicians for in-depth website traffic and search engine analysis. Founded in 2007, the platform is trusted by major brands like Adidas, DHL, PepsiCo and Walmart.
Why SimilarWeb: The tool relies on multiple scientific methodologies and approaches to data analysis to help provide a better understanding of visitors and customers. The platform is great for crafting prediction models for customer acquisitions by using machine learning to offer SEO insights and competitive analysis.
SimilarWeb Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include competition traffic and engagement analysis, in-depth visitor tracking, keyword analysis to optimise your SEO and search ads, affiliate traffic analysis, search traffic analysis and funnel insights.
Integrations include Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Shift, AT Internet, Adverity, SimilarTech, Biscience and more.
Pricing starts at $125/month for the Starter plan, which includes a 7-day free trial.
Pros
- Has a user-friendly dashboard for simple insights
- Highly customisable platform to meet your specific needs
- Easy competition analysis
- Funnel insights to improve your conversion rates
- Great customer support
Cons
- Expensive pricing
- Doesn’t include a code snippet to pull data directly from websites
- Doesn’t show sub-domains of your site
8. Hotjar
Hotjar is a behavioural website analytics tool with a focus on providing insights into individual user sessions with features like heatmaps and session recordings. Founded in 2014, Hotjar is used by 900,000 sites around the world.
Why Hotjar: Unlike traditional web analytics tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar is a behavioural analytics tool that provides in-depth behaviour insights session by session. The tool offers a variety of features that give you a sneak peek into your users’ behaviours by watching how they interact with your site action by action.
Hotjar Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include comprehensive heat mapping, visitor session recordings to see what visitors did moment by moment, feedback polls to gain insights from site visitors and conversion funnels to help you analyse leaks in your funnel at each conversion stage.
Integrations include HubSpot, Slack, Jira, WordPress, Shopify, Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Microsoft Teams, Zapier and ClickFunnels.
Pricing starts at free for the Basic plan and $80/month for Business, which includes a 15-day free trial.
Pros
- You can see exactly where visitors click, move and scroll
- Watch session replays to see what visitors did step-by-step
- See what percentage of visitors take certain actions
- Data segmentation features to help you understand KPIs in-depth
- There are no user limits with the platform, making it easy to scale
Cons
- While it offers behavioural analytics, Hotjar doesn’t provide insights into traditional web analytics like Matomo does, including traffic sources and bounce rate
- History data monitoring is complex
Elevate your website performance today
Understanding your visitors’ behaviour and needs is essential when you’re looking to improve your website performance.
By leveraging a website analytics platform, you’ll be able to gain new insights into your visitors and use insights from your content and campaign performance to improve your user experience.
If you’re looking to start using a web traffic analysis tool today, then Matomo is an excellent choice.
Matomo is a powerful, privacy-friendly and compliant tool that gives in-depth insights into your audience, your content and your marketing efforts to help you improve your site’s performance.
The platform also includes a variety of robust behavioural analytics features like heatmaps, session recording and more, which are included in your Cloud subscription.
Start your 21-day free trial of Matomo today (no credit card required).
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How to Track Website Visitors : Benefits, Tools and FAQs
Businesses spend a ton of time, money and effort into creating websites that are not only helpful and captivating, but also highly effective at converting visitors. They’ll create content, revise designs, add new pages and change forms, all in the hope of getting visitors to stay on the site and convert into leads or customers.
When you track website visitors, you can see which of your efforts are moving the needle. While many people are familiar with pageviews as a metric, website visitor tracking can be much more in-depth and insightful.
In this article, we’ll cover how website visitor tracking works, what you can track, and how this information can improve sales and marketing results. We’ll also explain global privacy concerns and how businesses can choose the right tracking software.
What is website visitor tracking?
Website visitor tracking uses software and applications to track and analyse how visitors interact with your website. It’s a vital tool to help businesses understand whether their website design and content are having the desired effect.
Website visitor tracking includes very broad, non-specific data, like how many times visitors have come to your site. But it can also get very specific, with personal information about the user and even recordings of their visit to your site. Site visits, which may include visiting several different pages of the same site, are often referred to as “sessions.”
Although Google Analytics is the most widely used website visitor tracking software, it isn’t the most comprehensive or powerful. Companies that want a more in-depth understanding of their website may need to consider running a more precise tool alongside Google Analytics, like Matomo.
As we’ll cover later, website tracking has many important business applications, but it also poses privacy and security concerns, causing some states and countries to impose strict regulations. Privacy laws and your company’s values should also impact what web analytics tool you choose.
How website tracking works
Website tracking starts with the collection of data as users interact with the website. Tracking technologies like cookies, JavaScript and pixels are embedded into web pages. These technologies then gather data about user behaviour, session details and user actions, such as pageviews, clicks, form submissions and more.
More advanced tracking systems assign unique identifiers (such as cookies or visitor IDs) to individual users. This enables tracking of user journeys across multiple sessions and pages. These detailed journeys can often tell a different story and provide different insights than aggregated numbers do.
All this collected data is transmitted from the user’s browser to a centralised tracking system, which can be a third-party web analytics tool or a self-hosted solution. The collected data is stored in databases and processed to generate meaningful insights. This process involves organising the data, aggregating metrics, and creating reports.
Analytics tools process the collected data to generate reports and visualisations that provide insights into user behaviour. Metrics such as pageviews, bounce rates, conversion rates and user paths are analysed. Good web analytics tools are able to present these insights in a user-friendly way. Analysts and marketing professionals then use this knowledge to make informed decisions to improve the user experience (UX).
Advanced tracking systems allow data segmentation and filtering based on various criteria, such as user demographics, traffic sources, devices and more. This enables deeper analysis of specific user groups. For example, you might find that your conversion rate is much lower when your website is viewed on a mobile device. You can then dig deeper into that segment of data to find out why and experiment with changes that might increase mobile conversions.
3 types of website tracking and their benefits
There are three main categories of website tracking, and they each provide different information that can be used by sales, marketing, engineering and others. Here, we cover those three types and how businesses use them to understand customers and create better experiences.
Website analytics
Website analytics is all about understanding the traffic your website receives. This type of tracking allows you to learn how the website performs based on pageviews, real-time traffic, bounce rate and conversions.
For example, you would use website analytics to determine how effectively your homepage drives people toward a product or pricing page. You can use pageviews and previous page statistics to learn how many people who land on your homepage read your blog posts. From there, you could use web analytics to determine the conversion rate of the call to action at the end of each article.
User behaviour
While website analytics focuses on the website’s performance, user behaviour tracking is about monitoring and quantifying user behaviour. One of the most obvious aspects of user behaviour is what they click on, but there are many other actions you can track.
The time a user spends on a page can help you determine whether the content on the page is engaging. Some tracking tools can also measure how far down the page a user scrolls, which reveals whether some content is even being seen.
Session recordings are another popular tool for analysing user behaviour. They not only show concrete actions, like clicks, but can also show how the user moves throughout the page. Where do they stop? What do they scroll right past? This is one example of how user behaviour data can be quantitative or qualitative.
Visitor information
Tracking can also include gathering or uncovering information about visitors to your site. This might include demographic information, such as language and location, or details like what device a website visitor is using and on which browser they view your website.
This type of data helps your web and marketing teams make better decisions about how to design and format the site. If you know, for example, that the website for your business-to-business (B2B) software is overwhelmingly viewed on desktop computers, that will affect how you structure your pages and choose images.
Similarly, if visitor information tells you that you have a significant audience in France, your marketing team might develop new content to appeal to those potential customers.
Use website visitor tracking to improve marketing, sales and UX
Website visitor tracking has various applications for different parts of your business, from marketing to sales and much more. When you understand the impact tracking has on different teams, you can better evaluate your company’s needs and build buy-in among stakeholders.
Marketing
At many companies, the marketing team owns and determines what kind of content is on your website. From landing pages to blog posts to the navigation bar, you want to create an experience that drives people toward making a purchase. When marketers can track website visitors, they can get a real look at how visitors respond to and engage with their marketing efforts. Pageviews, conversion rates and time spent on pages help them better understand what your customers care about and what messaging resonates.
But web analytics can even help marketing teams better understand how their external marketing campaigns are performing. Tracking tools like Matomo reveal your most important traffic sources. The term “traffic source” refers to the content or web property from which someone arrives at your site.
For instance, you might notice that an older page got a big boost in traffic this month. You can then check the traffic sources, where you find that an influential LinkedIn user posted a link to the page. This presents an opportunity to adjust the influencer or social media aspects of your marketing strategy.
Beyond traffic sources, Matomo can provide a visual user journey (also known as User Flow), showing which pages visitors tend to view in a session and even in what order they progress. This gives you a bird’s-eye view of the customer journey.
Sales
Just like your marketing team, your sales team can benefit from tracking and analysing website visitor information. Data about user behaviour and visitor demographics helps sales representatives better understand the people they’re talking to. Segmented visitor tracking data can even provide clues as to how to appeal to different buyer personas.
Sales leadership can use web analytics to gauge interest over time, tie visitors to revenue and develop more accurate sales forecasts and goals.
And it’s not just aggregated website tracking data that your sales team can use to better serve customers. They can also use insights about an individual visitor to tailor their approach. Matomo’s Visits Log report and Visitor Profiles allow you to see which pages a prospect has viewed. This tells your sales team which products and features the prospect is most interested in, leading to more relevant interactions and more effective sales efforts.
User experience and web development
The way users interact with and experience your website has a big impact on their impression of your brand and, ultimately, whether they become customers. While marketing often controls much of a website’s content, the backend and technical operation of the site usually falls to a web development or engineering team. Website analytics and tracking inform their work, too.
Along with data about website traffic and conversion rates, web development teams often monitor bounce rates (the percentage of people who leave your website entirely after landing on a page) and page load time (the time it takes for an individual web page to load for a user). Besides the fact that slow loading times inconvenience visitors, they can also negatively affect your search engine optimization (SEO).
Along with session recordings, user experience teams and web developers may use heatmaps to find out what parts of a page draw a visitor’s attention and where they are most likely to convert or take some other action. They can then use these insights to make a web page more intuitive and useful.
Visitor tracking and privacy regulations
There are different data privacy standards in other parts of the world, which are designed to ensure that businesses collect and use consumer data ethically. The most-discussed of these privacy standards is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was instituted by the European Union (EU) but affects businesses worldwide. However, it’s important to note that individual countries or states can have different privacy laws.
Many privacy laws govern how websites can use cookies to track visitors. With a user’s consent, cookies can help websites identify and remember visitors. However, many web visitors will reject cookie consent banners. When this happens, analysts and marketers can’t collect information from these visitors and have to work with incomplete tracking data. Incomplete data leads to poor decision-making. What’s more, cookie consent banners can create a poor user experience and often annoy web visitors.
With Matomo’s industry-leading measures to protect user privacy, France’s data protection agency (CNIL) has confirmed that Matomo is exempt from tracking consent in France. Matomo users have peace of mind knowing they can uphold the GDPR and collect data without needing to collect and track cookie consent. Only in Germany and the UK are cookie consent banners still required.
Choosing user tracking software
The benefits and value of tracking website visitors are enormous, but not all tracking software is equal. Different tools have different core functionalities. For instance, some focus on user behaviour over traditional web analytics. Others offer detailed website performance data but offer little in the way of visitor information. It’s a good idea to start by identifying your company’s most important tracking goals.
Along with core features, look for useful tools to experiment with and optimise your website with. For example, Matomo enables A/B testing while many other tools do not.
Along with users of your website, you also need to think about the employees who will be using the tracking software. The interface can have a big impact on the value you get from a tool. Matomo’s session recording functionality, for example, not only provides you with video but with a colour-coded timeline identifying important user actions.
Privacy standards and compliance should also be a part of the conversation. Different tools use different tracking methods, impacting accuracy and security and can even cause legal trouble. You should consider which data privacy laws you are subject to, as well as the privacy expectations of your users.
Some industries have especially high data security standards. Government and healthcare organisations, for example, may require visitor tracking software that is hosted on their premises. While there are many purely cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) tracking tools, Matomo is available both On-Premise (also known as self-hosted) and in the Cloud.
Frequently asked questions
Here are answers to some of people’s most common questions about tracking website visitors.
Can you track who visited your website?
In most cases, tracking your website’s traffic is possible. Still, the extent of the tracking depends on the visitor-tracking technology you use and the privacy settings and precautions the visitor uses. For example, some technologies can pinpoint users by IP address. In other cases, you may only have access to anonymized data.
Is it legal to track someone’s IP address?
It is legal for websites and businesses to track someone’s IP address in the sense that they can identify that someone from the same IP address is visiting a page repeatedly. Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), IP addresses are considered personally identifiable information (PII). The GDPR mandates that websites only log and store a user’s IP address with the user’s consent.
How do you find where visitors are clicking the most?
Heatmap tools are among the most common tools for learning where visitors click the most on your website. Heatmaps use colour-coding to show what parts of a web page users either click on or hover over the most.
Unique tracking URLs are another way to determine what part of your website gets the most clicks. For example, if you have three links on a page that all go to the same destination, you can use tracking links to determine how many clicks each link generates.
Matomo also offers a Tag Manager within the platform that lets you manage and unify all your tracking and marketing tags to find out where visitors are clicking.
What is the best tool for website visitor tracking?
Like most tools, the best website visitor tracking tool depends on your needs. Each tool offers different functionalities, user interfaces and different levels of accuracy and privacy. Matomo is a good choice for companies that value privacy, compliance and accuracy.
Tracking for powerful insights and better performance
Tracking website visitors is now a well-ingrained part of business operations. From sales reps seeking to understand their leads to marketers honing their ad spend, tracking helps teams do their jobs better.
Take the time to consider what you want to learn from website tracking and let those priorities guide your choice of visitor tracking software. Whatever your industry or needs, user privacy and compliance must be a priority.
Find out how much detail and insight Matomo can give you with our free 21-day trial — no credit card required.
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LGPD : Demystifying Brazil’s New Data Protection Law
31 août 2023, par Erin — PrivacyThe General Personal Data Protection Law (LGPD or Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados Pessoais) is a relatively new legislation passed by the Brazilian government in 2018. The law officially took effect on September 18, 2020, but was not enforced until August 1, 2021, due to complications from the COVID-19 pandemic.
For organisations that do business in Brazil and collect personal data, the LGPD has far-reaching implications, with 65 separate articles that outline how organisations must collect, process, disclose and erase personal data.
In this article, you’ll learn what the LGPD is, including its contents and how a legal entity can be compliant.
What is the LGPD?
The LGPD is a new data protection and privacy law passed by the Federal Brazilian Government on May 29, 2018. The purpose of the law is to unify the 40 previous Brazilian laws that regulated the processing of personal data.
Many of the older laws have been either updated or removed to accommodate this change. The LGPD comprises 65 separate articles, and each covers a different area of the legislation, such as the rights of data subjects and the legal bases on which personal data may be collected. It also sets out the responsibilities of the National Data Protection Authority (ANPD), a newly created agency responsible for the guidance, supervision and enforcement of the LGPD.
LGPD compliance is essential for organisations wishing to operate in Brazil and collect personal data for commercial purposes, whether online or offline. However, understanding the different rules and regulations and even figuring out if the LGPD applies to you can be challenging.
Fortunately, the LGPD is relatively easy to understand and shares many similarities with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the data protection law implemented on May 25, 2018, by the European Union. This may help you better understand why the LGPD was enacted, the policies it contains and the goals it hopes to achieve. Both laws are very similar, but some items are unique to Brazil, such as what qualifies as a legal basis for collecting personal data.
For these reasons, organisations should not apply a one-size-fits-all approach to GDPR and LGPD compliance, for they are different laws with different guiding principles and requirements.
Who does the LGPD apply to, and who is exempt?
The LGPD applies to any natural person, public entity and private entity that collects, processes and stores personal data for commercial purposes within the national territory of Brazil. The same also applies to those who process the personal data of Brazilian and non-Brazilian citizens within the national territory of Brazil, even if the data processor is outside of Brazil. It also applies to those who process personal data collected from the national territory of Brazil.
So, what does this all mean?
Regardless of your location, if you conduct any personal data processing activities in Brazil or you process data that was collected from Brazil, then there is a high possibility that the LGPD applies to you. This is especially true if the data processing is for commercial purposes; or, to be more precise, for the offering or provision of goods or services. It also means that subjects whose personal data is collected under these conditions are protected by the nine data subject rights.
There are exceptions where the LGPD does not apply to data processors. These include if you process personal data for private or non-commercial reasons; for artistic, journalistic and select academic purposes; and for the purpose of state security, public safety, national defence and activities related to the investigation and prosecution of criminal offenders. Also, if the processed data originates from a country with similar data protection laws to Brazil, such as any country in the European Union (where the GDPR applies), then the LGPD will not apply to that individual or organisation.
For these reasons, it is vital that you are familiar with the LGPD so that your data processing activities comply with the new standards. This is also important for the future, as an estimated 75% of the global population’s personal data will be protected by a privacy regulation. Getting things right now will make life easier moving forward.
What are the nine LGPD data subject rights?
The LGPD has nine data subject rights. These protect the rights and freedoms of subjects, regardless of their political opinion and religious belief.
These rights, listed under Article 19 of the LGPD, confirm that a data subject has the right to:
- Confirm the processing of their data.
- Access their data.
- Correct data that is incomplete, not accurate and out of date.
- Anonymize, block and delete data that is excessive, unnecessary and was not processed in compliance with the law.
- Move their data to a different service provider or product provider by special request.
- Delete or stop using personal data under certain circumstances.
- Gain information about who the data processor has shared the processed data with, including private and public entities.
- Be informed as to what the consequences may be for denying consent to the collection of personal data.
- Revoke consent to have their personal data processed under certain conditions.
Many of these data subject rights are like the GDPR. For example, both the GDPR and LGPD give data subjects the right to be informed, the right to access, the right to data portability and the right to rectify false data. However, while the LGPD has nine data subject rights, the GDPR has only eight. What is the extra data subject right? The right to gain information on who a data processor has shared your data with.
There are other slight differences between the GDPR and LGPD with regard to data subject rights. For instance, the GDPR has a clear right to restrict certain data processing activities, such as those related to automation. The LGPD has this, too. But the subject of data collection automation is under Article 20, separate from all the data subject rights listed under Article 19.
Under what conditions can personal data in Brazil be processed?
There are various conditions under which organisations can legally conduct personal data processing in Brazil. The aim of these conditions is to give data subjects confidence — that their personal data is processed for only safe, legal and ethical reasons. Also, the conditions help data processors, both individuals and organisations, determine if they have a legal basis for processing personal data in or in relation to Brazil.
According to Article 7 of the LGPD, data processing may only be carried out if done:
- With consent by the data subject.
- To comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
- By public authorities to assist with the execution of a public policy, one established by law or regulation.
- To help research entities carry out studies; granted, when possible, subjects can anonymize their data.
- To carry out a contract or preliminary procedure, in particular, one related to a contract where the data subject is a party.
- To exercise the right of an arbitration, administration or judicial procedure.
- To protect the physical safety or life of someone
- To protect the health of someone about to undergo a procedure performed by health entities
- To fulfill the legitimate interests of a data processor, unless doing so would compromise a data subject’s fundamental rights and liberties.
- To protect one’s credit score.
Much like the nine data subject rights, there are key differences between the LGPD and GDPR. The GDPR has six lawful bases for data processing, while the LGPD has ten. One notable addition to the LGPD is for the protection of one’s credit score, which is not covered by the GDPR. Another reason to ensure compliance with both data protection laws separately.
LGPD vs. GDPR: How do they differ?
The LGPD was modeled closely on the GDPR, so it’s no surprise the two are similar.
Both laws ensure a high level of protection for the rights and freedoms of data subjects. They outline the legal justifications for data processing, establish the responsibilities of a data protection authority and lay out the penalties for non-compliance. That said, there are key differences between them.
First, data subject rights; the LGPD has nine, while the GDPR has eight. The GDPR gives data subjects the right to request a human review of automated decision-making, while the LGPD does not. Second, the legal bases for processing; the LGPD has ten, while the GDPR has six. The four legal bases unique to the LGPD are: for protection of credit, for protection of health, for protection of life and for research entities carrying out studies.
Both the LGPD and GDPR have different non-compliance penalties. The maximum fine for an infraction under the GDPR is up to €20 million (or 4% of the offender’s annual global revenue, whichever is higher). The maximum fine for an LGPD infraction is up to 50 million reais (around €9.2 million), or up to 2% of an offender’s revenue in Brazil, whichever is higher.
6 steps to LGPD compliance with Matomo
Below are steps you can follow to ensure your organisation is LGPD compliant. You’ll also learn how Matomo can help you comply quickly and easily.
Let’s dive in.
1. Appoint a DPO
A DPO is a person, group, or organisation that communicates with data processors, data subjects, and the ANDP.
Curiously, the LGPD lets you appoint your own DPO — even if they reside out of Brazil. So if the LGPD applies to you, you can appoint someone in your organisation to be a DPO. Just make sure that the nominated person has the understanding and capacity to perform the role’s duties.
2. Assess your data
Once you’re familiar with the LGPD and confirm your eligibility for LGPD compliance, take the time to assess your data. If you plan to collect data within the territory of Brazil, you’ll need to confirm the exact location of your data subjects.
To do this in Matomo, simply go to the previous year’s calendar. Then click on visitors, go to locations, and look for Brazil under the “Region” section. This will tell you how many of your web visitors are located in Brazil.
3. Review privacy practices
Review your existing privacy policies and practices, as there’s a good chance they’ll need to be updated to comply with the LGPD. Also, review your data sharing and third-party agreements, as you may need to communicate these new policies to partners that you rely on to deliver your services.
Lastly, review your procedures for tracking personal data and Personally Identifiable Information (PII). You may need to modify the type of data that you track to comply with the LGPD. You may even be tracking this data without your knowledge.
4. Anonymize tracking data
Data subjects under the LGPD have the right to request data anonymity. Therefore, to be LGPD compliant, your organisation must be able to accommodate for such a request.
Fortunately, Matomo has various data anonymization techniques that help you protect your data subject’s privacy and comply with the LGPD. These techniques include the ability to anonymize previously tracked raw data, anonymize visitor IP addresses, and anonymize relevant geo-location data such as regions, cities and countries.
You can find these features and more under the Anonymize data tab within the Privacy menu on the Matomo Settings page. Learn more about how to configure privacy settings in Matomo.
5. Comply with LGPD consent laws without cookies
By using Matomo to anonymize the data of your data subjects, this enables you to comply with LGPD consent laws and remove the need to display cookie consent banners on your website. This is made possible by the fact that Matomo is a cookieless tracking web analytics platform.
Unlike other web analytics platforms like Google Analytics, which collect and use third-party cookies (persistent data that remains on your device, until that data expires or until you manually delete it) for their “own purposes,” Matomo is different. We use alternative means to identify web visitors, such as count the number of unique IP addresses and perform browser fingerprinting, neither of which involve the collection of personal data.
As a result, you don’t have to display cookie consent banners on your website, and you can track your web visitors even if they disable cookies.
6. Give users the right to opt-out
Under the LGPD, data subjects have the right to opt-out of your data collection procedures. For this reason, make sure that your web visitors can do this on your website.
You can do this in Matomo by adding an opt-out from tracking form to your website. To do this, click on the cog icon in the top menu, load the settings page, and click on the Users opt-out menu item in the Privacy section. Then follow the instructions to customise and publish the Matomo opt-out form.
Achieve LGPD compliance with Matomo
Like GDPR for Europe, the LGPD will impact organisations doing business in Brazil. And while they both share much of the same definitions and data subject rights, they differ on what qualifies as a legal basis for processing sensitive data. Complying with the GDPR and LGPD separately is non-negotiable and essential to avoiding maximum fines of €20 million and €9.2 million, respectively.
As a web analytics platform with LGPD compliance, Matomo prioritises data privacy without compromising performance. Switch to a powerful LGPD-compliant web analytics platform that respects users’ privacy.
Get a 21-day free trial of Matomo today. No credit card required.
Disclaimer
We are not lawyers and don’t claim to be. The information provided here is to help give an introduction to LGPD. We encourage every business and website to take data privacy seriously and discuss these issues with your lawyer if you have any concerns.
