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Introducing Crash Analytics for Matomo
Bugs and development go hand in hand. As code matures, it contends with new browser iterations, clashes with ad blockers and other software quirks, resulting in the inevitable emergence of bugs. In fact, a staggering 13% of all pageviews come with lurking JavaScript errors.
Monitoring for crashes becomes an unrelenting task. Amidst this never-ending effort to remove bugs, a SurveyMonkey study unveils a shared reality: a resounding 66% of individuals have encountered bug-ridden websites.
These bugs lead to problems like malfunctioning shopping carts, glitchy checkout procedures and contact forms that just won’t cooperate. But they’re not just minor annoyances – they pose a real danger to your conversion rates and revenue.
According to a study, 58% of visitors are inclined to abandon purchases as a result of bugs, while an astonishing 75% are driven to completely abandon websites due to these frustrating experiences.
Imagine a website earning approximately 25,000 EUR per month. Now, factor in errors occurring in 13% of all pageviews. The result? A potential monthly loss of 1,885 EUR.
Meet Crash Analytics
Driven by our vision to create an empowering analytics product, we’re excited to introduce Crash Analytics, an innovative plugin for Matomo On-Premise that automatically tracks bugs on your website.
View crash reports by evolution over time By offering insights into the precise bug location and the user’s interactions that triggered it, along with details about their device type, browser and more, Crash Analytics empowers you to swiftly address crashes, leading to an improved user experience, higher conversion rates and revenue growth.
Soon, Crash Analytics will become available to Matomo Cloud users as well, so stay tuned for further updates and announcements.
Say goodbye to lost revenue – never miss a bug again
Even if you put your website through the toughest tests, it’s hard to predict every little hiccup that can pop up across different browsers, setups and situations. Factors such as ad blockers, varying internet speeds for visitors and browser updates can add an extra layer of complexity.
When these crashes happen, you want to know immediately. However, according to a study, only 29% of surveyed respondents would report the existence of the site bug to the website operator. These bugs that go unnoticed can really hurt your bottom line and conversion rates, causing you to lose out on revenue and leaving your users frustrated and disappointed.
Detailed crash report Crash Analytics is here to bridge this gap. Armed with scheduled reporting (via email or texts) and automated alert functionalities, you gain the power to instantly detect bugs as they occur on your site. This proactive approach ensures that even the subtlest of issues are brought to your attention promptly.
With automated reports and alerts, you can also opt to receive notifications when crashes increase or ignore specific crashes that you deem insignificant. This keeps you in the loop with only the issues that truly matter, helping you cut out the noise and take immediate action.
Forward crash data Easily forward crash data to developers and synchronise the efforts of technical teams and marketing experts. Track emerging, disappearing and recurring errors, ensuring that crash data is efficiently relayed to developers to prioritise fixes that matter.
Track emerging, disappearing and recurring bugs Plus, your finger is always on the pulse with real-time reports that offer a live view of crashes happening at the moment, an especially helpful feature after deploying changes. Use annotations to mark deploys and correlate them with crash data, enabling you to quickly identify if a new bug is linked to recent updates or modifications.
Crash data in real time And with our mobile app, you can effortlessly stay connected to your website’s performance, conveniently accessing crash information anytime and anywhere. This ensures you’re in complete control of your site’s health, even when you’re on the move.
Streamline bug resolution with combined web and crash analytics
Crash Analytics for Matomo doesn’t just stop at pinpointing bug locations; it goes a step further by providing you with a holistic perspective of user interactions. Seamlessly combining Matomo’s traditional and behavioural web analytics features—like segments, session recordings and visitor logs—with crash data, this integrated approach unveils a wealth of insights so you can quickly resolve bugs.
For instance, let’s say a user encounters a bug while attempting to complete a purchase on your e-commerce website. Crash Analytics reveals the exact point of failure, but to truly grasp the situation, you delve into the session recordings. These recordings offer a front-row seat to the user’s journey—every click and interaction that led to the bug. Session recordings are especially helpful when you are struggling to reproduce an issue.
Visits log overlayed with crash data Additionally, the combination of visitor logs with crash data offers a comprehensive timeline of a user’s engagement. This helps you understand their activity leading up to the bug, such as pages visited, actions taken and devices used. Armed with these multifaceted insights, you can confidently pinpoint the root causes and address the crash immediately.
With segments, you have the ability to dissect the data and compare experiences among distinct user groups. For example, you can compare mobile visitors to desktop visitors to determine if the issue is isolated or widespread and what impact the issue is having on the user experience of different user groups.
The combination of crash data with Matomo’s comprehensive web analytics equips you with the tools needed to elevate user experiences and ultimately drive revenue growth.
Start in seconds, shape as needed: Your path to a 100% reliable website
Crash Analytics makes the path to a reliable website simple. You don’t have to deal with intricate setups—crash detection starts without any configuration.
Plus, Crash Analytics excels in cross-stack proficiency, seamlessly extending its capabilities beyond automatically tracking JavaScript errors to covering server-side crashes as well, whether they occur in PHP, Android, iOS, Java or other frameworks. This versatile approach ensures that Crash Analytics comprehensively supports your website’s health and performance across various technological landscapes.
Elevate your website with Crash Analytics
Experience the seamless convergence of bug tracking and web analytics, allowing you to delve into user interactions, session recordings and visitor logs. With the flexibility of customising real-time alerts and scheduled reports, alongside cross-stack proficiency, Crash Analytics becomes your trusted ally in enhancing your website’s reliability and user satisfaction to increase conversions and drive revenue growth. Equip yourself to swiftly address issues and create a website where user experiences take precedence.
Start your 30-day free trial of our Crash Analytics plugin today, and stay tuned for its availability on Matomo Cloud.
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Increasing Website Traffic : 11 Tips To Attract Visitors
For your website and business to succeed, you need to focus on building traffic.
However, you aren’t the only one with that goal in mind.
There are millions of other websites trying to increase their traffic as well. With that much competition, it’s important to make sure your website stands out. Accomplishing that can require a great deal of strategy.
We’ve compiled a list of tips to help you develop a solid plan for increasing website traffic, to expand your reach, grow your audience and boost customer engagement levels — creating more opportunities for your business.Using these tips, more visitors will find their way to your website — meaning more customers for your business.
Why is website traffic important?
Website traffic is essentially the number of people visiting your website. When someone lands on your site, they’re considered a visitor and increase your website traffic.
When your website traffic is high, you’ll get more clicks, customer interactions and brand engagement. As a result, search engines will have a positive impression of your website and send more people there, meaning even more people will see your content and have the opportunity to buy your product.
When using a website for your business or any other venture, tracking your website traffic using a web analytics solution like Matomo is critical.
With over 200 million actively maintained and visited websites in 2023, it’s important to make sure yours stands out if you want to increase your website traffic and grow your online presence.
11 tips for increasing website traffic
Here are 11 tips to increase your organic traffic and elevate your business.
1. Perfect your SEO
Optimising your website to show up in search engine results shouldn’t be overlooked, as 63% of consumers start researching a product by using a search engine. Search engine optimisation, or SEO, increases the visibility and discoverability of your website on search engine results pages (SERPs). SEO targets organic searches, which means it doesn’t add to social media traffic, direct traffic or referrals, and it isn’t paid traffic.
SEO is number one on this list for a reason — most of these tips will directly, or indirectly, improve your SEO efforts.
Steps to improve your search engine optimisation can include:
- Using relevant keywords that are incorporated naturally throughout your content
- Using a web analytics tool like Matomo, with its search keyword feature, to gain insights and identify opportunities for improvement
- Using descriptive meta titles and meta descriptions
- Link to your own content internally with descriptive anchor tags, and make sure unused pages are removed
- Keeping your target audience in mind and marketing your content toward them
- Making sure your website’s structure is optimised to be mobile-friendly, fast and responsive — such as with Matomo’s SEO Web Vitals feature, which monitors key metrics like your website’s page speed and loading performance, pivotal for optimising search engine results
2. Research the competition
It’s important to remember that while your business might be unique, it’s likely not the only one in its field. Thousands of other websites from other companies are also looking to improve their website traffic and increase sales, and you have to outcompete them.
Looking at what your competitors are doing is vital from a strategic perspective. You can see what their content looks like, how they’re framing their specific use cases and what target audience they’re marketing toward.
Knowing what your competitors are doing can help you find ways to improve your content and make it unique. Are your competitors missing a specific use case or neglecting a particular audience? Fill in their content gaps on your website, and pick up the traffic they’re missing.
3. Create high-quality, evergreen content
If your content is high-quality, visitors will read more of it and stay longer on your site. This obviously increases the likelihood they will purchase your product or service, and it tells search engines that your website is a good answer for a search query.
High-quality content will also be shared more often, leading to even more website traffic. You should aim to develop content that doesn’t lose relevance over time (aka “evergreen content”). If you include time-sensitive data, statistics or content in your website, blog posts or articles, it’ll be relevant only around that time frame.
While this month’s viral content is highly popular, it likely won’t be relevant in a few months. Instead, if you ensure your content is evergreen, it will continue to get engagement long after it’s published.
4. Implement creative visuals
It’s important to have engaging, fun and interactive media on your website to keep visitors on your site longer. Like good content, interesting visuals (and the resulting longer visits) can translate to more purchases (and favourable assessments by search engines).
Media can take the form of videos, infographics, images or web graphics.
With Matomo’s Media Analytics feature, you can automatically gain even deeper insights into how your visitors engage with your media content, enhancing your understanding of their preferences and behaviours.
If you have interesting, captivating visuals, visitors will be more likely to stay on your website longer and see what you have to offer. Without captivating visuals to break up walls of text, you’ll likely find visitors will tend to leave your site in favour of something more engaging.
Just make sure you design your visuals with your target audience in mind. Flashy, fun graphics might not be a good fit for a professional audience, but they’re great for younger audiences. If you get your audience correct, they may also share the images with others. Depending on your business, that might be a useful infographic shared across LinkedIn, or a picture of a clever use case shared on Pinterest.
As a bonus, if other companies use your graphics on their websites, that earns you some backlinks — more on those in a bit.
5. Create a comprehensive knowledge base
Having a knowledge base is critical to making sure your service or product is well understood and well documented, especially in the tech industry. If a visitor or potential customer is interested in your product or service, they need to know exactly what it will do for them and that they have a good foundation of support in case they need help. A knowledge base is also a good place for internal links (more on those in a bit).
Visitors can also use your knowledge base as a source of information, and if they cite you as a source, that’ll lead right back to more website traffic for you (see our backlinks section for more about this). If your website is a good source of information, visitors will come back to it again and again.
6. Use social media often and consistently
Digital marketing nowadays heavily relies on social media platforms. Having an online presence no longer means just having a website — if you’re not using social media sites, you’re missing out on a huge portion of potential visitors and customers.
A strong social media presence with profiles on platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram or LinkedIn can be invaluable for increasing your website traffic. Visitors to your social media profiles will click on regularly shared content, read your blog posts and possibly become customers.
Participating in relevant communities and networking with other companies in groups in your industry can also be invaluable. If you participate in online communities and forums for your niche, you can offer insight, answer questions and plug your website. All of this will increase your clicks, which will increase your website traffic.
If you’ve managed to build your own community on social media, make sure to keep them engaged! Implementing your own forum, hosting live chats and Q&As, offering helpful and engaging content will make sure visitors keep coming back and spreading the word.
7. Use email marketing or newsletters
Having an email list and sending marketing emails or newsletters is a great way to increase website traffic. You can offer exclusive content, and promise discounts or resources to your subscribers for when they return to your website. This will help keep your loyal audience engaged, entice new customers to subscribe to your newsletter, give you a chance to upsell to people who have already expressed an interest in your product and potentially convert curious subscribers into customers.
8. Make sure your content can earn backlinks
A backlink is when a website links to a different website — ideally using relevant anchor text — and it’s an effective strategy for increasing referral traffic, that is, visitors who get to your website via a link on another website. The more backlinks you have, the more your referral traffic will increase. Social share buttons make it easy for people to cite you on social platforms, too.
We’ve already talked about making expert content that’s link-worthy, but also make sure that you’re creating linkable assets (like those interesting visuals mentioned earlier), building relationships with other sites that will link to you (like by inviting an expert or influencer to write on your page and promote it from their platform, or by writing your own guest content for their sites) and sharing your own content. All of this can help increase your referral traffic, particularly when you’re linked from websites with a higher domain authority than you have.
You can also make sure your website is listed in online directories. Some sites will do interviews and roundups, as well — these are great opportunities to increase your backlinks.
9. Optimise your CTR
Click-through rate, or CTR, is the percentage of users who click on specific links to your website. A high CTR means your visitors are following a link — whether in an advertisement, a search result or a social media post — and a low CTR means they’re passing it by. Optimising your CTR can greatly improve your website traffic.
To improve CTR, identify successful elements such as copy, imagery, and offers in your ads, enabling you to amplify effective elements and minimise less impactful ones.
10. Ensure your website is responsive and mobile-friendly
If a visitor is frustrated by your site being slow, laggy, clunky or not mobile-friendly, they won’t stay long. That doesn’t look good to search engines if that’s how your visitors got there. Your website needs to be clean, responsive, user-friendly and accessible.
If your website is slow, try increasing your website’s performance by:
- Optimising images: Reduce the size of images and compress them for faster load times. Opt for JPEG format for photos and PNG format for graphics.
- Limit the use of plugins: If you are using a CMS like WordPress, consider removing plugins that are unnecessary or not essential.
- Embrace lazy loading: To further enhance site speed and reduce initial load times, set up your site to load images and content only as visitors scroll down. Prioritising the content and images at the top of the page makes the site feel faster. Some CMS platforms will offer this option, but others may require a bit of coding to set this up.
Many people rely on their phones to research services or products, especially if they’re doing a quick search. Make sure your website is friendly to mobile users. It should scale vertically and scroll smoothly so users aren’t frustrated when using your site. They should be able to find the info they need immediately without any technical issues.
11. Track your website’s metrics
As you test out each of these strategies to increase your web traffic, don’t forget to closely analyse the performance of your site. To truly understand the impact of your efforts, you’ll need a reliable web analytics solution. Think of a dependable web analytics solution as your website’s GPS. Without it, you’d be lost, unsure of your direction and missing out on valuable insights to steer your growth.
Matomo is a powerful web analytics tool that can help you do just that by providing information on your site visitors and campaign performance, complemented by an array of behavioural analytics features that delve into user interactions. Among these, our heatmap feature stands out, enabling greater insights into user interactions and optimisation of your site’s effectiveness.
Google Analytics is another powerful analytics option, though it has challenges with data accuracy; there are multiple other web analytics solutions as well.
Regardless of what web analytics solution you choose, the process of analysing your website metrics is incredibly important for identifying areas of improvement to increase website traffic.
Increasing your web traffic is a process
Increasing website traffic isn’t something you accomplish overnight. It’s a comprehensive, ongoing endeavour that requires constant analysis and fine-tuning.
By applying these tips to create consistent, high-quality content that gets spotlighted on search engines, shared on social media and returned to again and again, you’ll see a steady stream of increased traffic.
With Matomo, you can understand your visitor behaviour to see what works and what doesn’t as you work to increase your website traffic. Get your free 21-day trial now. No credit card required.
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How to Check Website Traffic As Accurately As Possible
18 août 2023, par Erin — Analytics TipsIf you want to learn about the health of your website and the success of your digital marketing initiatives, there are few better ways than checking your website traffic.
It’s a great way to get a quick dopamine hit when things are up, but you can also use traffic levels to identify issues, learn more about your users or benchmark your performance. That means you need a reliable and easy way to check your website traffic over time — as well as a way to check out your competitors’ traffic levels, too.
In this article, we’ll show you how to do just that. You’ll learn how to check website traffic for both your and your competitor’s sites and discover why some methods of checking website traffic are better than others.
Why check website traffic?
Dopamine hits aside, it’s important to constantly monitor your website’s traffic for several reasons.
Benchmark site performance
Keeping regular tabs on your traffic levels is a great way to track your website’s performance over time. It can help you plan for the future or identify problems.
For instance, growing traffic levels may mean expanding your business’s offering or investing in more inventory. On the flip side, decreasing traffic levels may suggest it’s time to revamp your marketing strategies or look into issues impacting your SEO.
Analyse user behaviour
Checking website traffic and user behaviour lets marketing managers understand how users interact with your website. Which pages are they visiting? Which CTAs do they click on? What can you do to encourage users to take the actions you want? You can also identify issues that lead to high bounce rates and other problems.
The better you understand user behaviour, the easier it will be to give them what they want. For example, you may find that users spend more time on your landing pages than they do your blog pages. You could use that information to revise how you create blog posts or focus on creating more landing pages.
Improve the user experience
Once you understand how users behave on your website, you can use that information to fix errors, update your content and improve the user experience for the site.
You can even personalise the experience for customers, leading to significant growth. Research shows companies that grow faster derive 40% more of their revenue from personalisation.
That could come in the form of sweeping personalisations — like rearranging your website’s navigation bar based on user behaviour — or individual personalisation that uses analytics to transform sections or entire pages of your site based on user behaviour.
Optimise marketing strategies
You can use website traffic reports to understand where users are coming from and optimise your marketing plan accordingly. You may want to double down on organic traffic, for instance, or invest more in PPC advertising. Knowing current traffic estimates and how these traffic levels have trended over time can help you benchmark your campaigns and prioritise your efforts.
Increasing traffic levels from other countries can also help you identify new marketing opportunities. If you start seeing significant traffic levels from a neighbouring country or a large market, it could be time to take your business international and launch a cross-border campaign.
Filter unwanted traffic
A not-insignificant portion of your site’s traffic may be coming from bots and other unwanted sources. These can compromise the quality of your analytics and make it harder to draw insights. You may not be able to get rid of this traffic, but you can use analytics tools to remove it from your stats.
How to check website traffic on Matomo
If you want to check your website’s traffic, you’d be forgiven for heading to Google Analytics first. It’s the most popular analytics tool on the market, after all. But if you want a more reliable assessment of your website’s traffic, then we recommend using Matomo alongside Google Analytics.
The Matomo web analytics platform is an open-source solution that helps you collect accurate data about your website’s traffic and make more informed decisions as a result — all while enhancing the customer experience and ensuring GDPR compliance and user privacy.
Matomo also offers multiple ways to check website traffic:
Let’s look at all of them one by one.
The visits log report is a unique rundown of all of the individual visitors to your site. This offers a much more granular view than other tools that just show the total number of visitors for a given period.
You can access the visits log report by clicking on the reporting menu, then clicking Visitor and Visits Log. From there, you’ll be able to scroll through every user session and see the following information:
- The location of the user
- The total number of actions they took
- The length of time on site
- How they arrived at your site
- And the device they used to access your site
This may be overwhelming if your site receives thousands of visitors at a time. But it’s a great way to understand users at an individual level and appreciate the lifetime activity of specific users.
The Real-time visitor map is a visual display of users’ location for a given timeframe. If you have an international website, it’s a fantastic way to see exactly where in the world your traffic comes from.
You can access the Real-time Visitor Map by clicking Visitor in the main navigation menu and then Real-time Map. The map itself is colour-coded. Larger orange bubbles represent recent visits, and smaller dark orange and grey bubbles represent older visits. The map will refresh every five seconds, and new users appear with a flashing effect.
If you run TV or radio adverts, Matomo’s Real-time Map provides an immediate read on the effectiveness of your campaign. If your map lights up in the minutes following your ad, you know it’s been effective. It can also help you identify the source of bot attacks, too.
Finally, the Visits in Real-time report provides a snapshot of who is browsing your website. You can access this report under Visitors > Real-time and add it to your custom dashboards as a widget.
Open the report, and you’ll see the real-time flow of your site’s users and counters for visits and pageviews over the last 30 minutes and 24 hours. The report refreshes every five seconds with new users added to the top of the report with a fade-in effect.
The report provides a snapshot of each visitor, including:
- Whether they are new or a returning
- Their country
- Their browser
- Their operating system
- The number of actions they took
- The time they spent on the site
- The channel they came in from
- Whether the visitor converted a goal
3 other ways to check website traffic
You don’t need to use Matomo to check your website traffic. Here are three other tools you can use instead.
How to check website traffic on Google Analytics
Google Analytics is usually the first starting point for anyone looking to check their website traffic. It’s free to use, incredibly popular and offers a wide range of traffic reports.
Google Analytics lets you break down historical traffic data almost any way you wish. You can split traffic by acquisition channel (organic, social media, direct, etc.) by country, device or demographic.
It also provides real-time traffic reports that give you a snapshot of users on your site right now and over the last 30 minutes.
Google Analytics may be one of the most popular ways to check website traffic, but it could be better. Google Analytics 4 is difficult to use compared to its predecessor, and it also limits the amount of data you can track in accordance with privacy laws. If users refuse your cookie consent, Google Analytics won’t record these visits. In other words, you aren’t getting a complete view of your traffic by using Google Analytics alone.
That’s why it’s important to use Google Analytics alongside other web analytics tools (like Matomo) that don’t suffer from the same privacy issues. That way, you can make sure you track every single user who visits your site.
How to check website traffic on Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that lets you analyse the search traffic that your site gets from Google.
The top-line report shows you how many times your website has appeared in Google Search, how many clicks it has received, the average clickthrough rate and the average position of your website in the search results.
Google Search Console is a great way to understand what you rank for and how much traffic your organic rankings generate. It will also show you which pages are indexed in Google and whether there are any crawling errors.
Unfortunately, Google Search Console is limited if you want to get a complete view of your traffic. While you can analyse search traffic in a huge amount of detail, it will not tell you how users who access your website directly or via social media behave.
How to check website traffic on Similarweb
Similarweb is a website analysis tool that estimates the total traffic of any site on the internet. It is one of the best tools for estimating how much traffic your competitors receive.
What’s great about Similarweb is that it estimates total traffic, not just traffic from search engines like many SEO tools. It even breaks down traffic by different channels, allowing you to see how your website compares against your competitors.
As you can see from the image above, Similarweb provides an estimate of total visits, bounce rate, the average number of pages users view per visit and the average duration on the site. The company also has a free browser extension that lets you check website traffic estimates as you browse the web.
You can use Similarweb for free to a point. But to really get the most out of this tool, you’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan which starts at $125 per user per month.
The price isn’t the only downside of using Similarweb to check the traffic of your own and your competitor’s websites. Ultimately, Similarweb is only an estimate — even if it’s a reasonably accurate one — and it’s no match for a comprehensive analytics tool.
7 website traffic metrics to track
Now that you know how to check your website’s traffic, you can start to analyse it. You can use plenty of metrics to assess the quality of your website traffic, but here are some of the most important metrics to track.
- New visitors: These are users who have never visited your website before. They are a great sign that your marketing efforts are working and your site is reaching more people. But it’s also important to track how they behave on the website to ensure your site caters effectively to new visitors.
- Returning visitors: Returning visitors are coming back to your site for a reason: either they like the content you’re creating or they want to make a purchase. Both instances are great. The more returning visitors, the better.
- Bounce rate: This is a measure of how many users leave your website without taking action. Different analytics tools measure this metric differently.
- Session duration: This is the length of time users spend on your website, and it can be a great gauge of whether they find your site engaging. Especially when combined with the metric below.
- Pages per session: This measures how many different pages users visit on average. The more pages they visit and the longer users spend on your website, the more engaging it is.
- Traffic source: Traffic can come from a variety of sources (organic, direct, social media, referral, etc.) Tracking which sources generate the most traffic can help you analyse and prioritise your marketing efforts.
- User demographics: This broad metric tells you more about who the users are that visit your website, what device they use, what country they come from, etc. While the bulk of your website traffic will come from the countries you target, an influx of new users from other countries can open the door to new opportunities.
Why do my traffic reports differ?
If you use more than one of the methods above to check your website traffic, you’ll quickly realise that every traffic report differs. In some cases, the reasons are obvious. Any tool that estimates your traffic without adding code to your website is just that: an estimate. Tools like Similarweb will never offer the accuracy of analytics platforms like Matomo and Google Analytics.
But what about the differences between these analytics platforms themselves? While each platform has a different way of recording user behaviour, significant differences in website traffic reports between analytics platforms are usually a result of how each platform handles user privacy.
A platform like Google Analytics requires users to accept a cookie consent banner to track them. If they accept, great. Google collects all of the data that any other analytics platform does. It may even collect more. If users reject cookie consent banners, however, then Google Analytics can’t track these visitors at all. They simply won’t show up in your traffic reports.
That doesn’t happen with all analytics platforms, however. A privacy-focused alternative like Matomo doesn’t require cookie consent banners (apart from in the United Kingdom and Germany) and can therefore continue to track visitors even after they have rejected a cookie consent screen from Google Analytics. This means that virtually all of your website traffic will be tracked regardless of whether users accept a cookie consent banner or not. And it’s why traffic reports in Matomo are often much higher than they are in Google Analytics.
Given that around half (47.32%) of adults in the European Union refuse to allow the use of personal data tracking for advertising purposes and that 95% of people will reject additional cookies when it is easy to do so, this means you could have vastly different traffic reports — and be missing out on a significant amount of user data.
If you’re serious about using web analytics to improve your website and optimise your marketing campaigns, then it is essential to use another analytics platform alongside Google Analytics.
Get more accurate traffic reports with Matomo
There are several methods to check website traffic. Some, like Similarweb, can provide estimates on your competitors’ traffic levels. Others, like Google Analytics, are free. But data doesn’t lie. Only privacy-focused analytics solutions like Matomo can provide accurate reports that account for every visitor.
Join over one million organisations using Matomo to accurately check their website traffic. Try it for free alongside GA today. No credit card required.
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Protecting consumer privacy : How to ensure CCPA compliance
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is a state law that enhances privacy rights and consumer protection for residents of California.
It grants consumers six rights, like the right to know what personal information is being collected about them by businesses and others.
CCPA also requires businesses to provide notice of data collection practices. Consumers can choose to opt out of the sale of their data.
In this article, we’ll learn more about the scope of CCPA, the penalties for non-compliance and how our web analytics tool, Matomo, can help you create a CCPA-compliant framework.
What is the CCPA?
CCPA was implemented on January 1, 2020. It ensures that businesses securely handle individuals’ personal information and respect their privacy in the digital ecosystem.
CCPA addresses the growing concerns over privacy and data protection; 40% of US consumers share that they’re worried about digital privacy. With the increasing amount of personal information being collected and shared by businesses, there was a need to establish regulations to provide individuals with more control and transparency over their data.
CCPA aims to protect consumer privacy rights and promote greater accountability from businesses when handling personal information.
Scope of CCPA
The scope of CCPA includes for-profit businesses that collect personal information from California residents, regardless of where you run the business from.
It defines three thresholds that determine the inclusion criteria for businesses subject to CCPA regulations.
Businesses need to abide by CCPA if they meet any of the three options:
- Revenue threshold: Have an annual gross revenue of over $25 million.
- Consumer threshold: Businesses that purchase, sell or distribute the personal information of 100,000 or more consumers, households or devices.
- Data threshold: Businesses that earn at least half of their revenue annually from selling the personal information of California residents.
What are the six consumer rights under the CCPA?
Here’s a short description of the six consumer rights.
- Right to know: Under this right, you can ask a business to disclose specific personal information they collect about you and the categories of sources of the information. You can also know the purpose of collection and to which third-party the business will disclose this info. This allows consumers to understand what information is being held and how it is used. You can request this info for free twice a year.
- Right to delete: Consumers can request the deletion of their personal information. Companies must comply with some exceptions.
- Right to opt-out: Consumers can deny the sale of their personal information. Companies must provide a link on their homepage for users to exercise this right. After you choose this, companies can’t sell your data unless you authorise them to do so later.
- Right to non-discrimination: Consumers cannot be discriminated against for exercising their CCPA rights. For instance, a company cannot charge different prices, provide a different quality of service or deny services.
- Right to correct: Consumers can request to correct inaccurate personal information.
- Right to limit use: Consumers can specify how they want the businesses to use their sensitive personal information. This includes social security numbers, financial account details, precise geolocation data or genetic data. Consumers can direct businesses to use this sensitive information only for specific purposes, such as providing the requested services.
Penalties for CCPA non-compliance
52% of organisations have yet to adopt CCPA principles as of 2022. Non-compliance can attract penalties.
Section 1798.155 of the CCPA states that any business that doesn’t comply with CCPA’s terms can face penalties based on the consumer’s private right to action. Consumers can directly take the company to the civil court and don’t need prosecutors’ interventions.
Businesses get a chance of 30 days to make amends for their actions.
If that’s also not possible, the business may receive a civil penalty of up to $2,500 per violation. Violations can be of any kind, even accidental. An intentional violation can attract a fine of $7,500.
Consumers can also initiate private lawsuits to claim damages that range from $100 to $750, or actual damages (whichever is higher), for each occurrence of their unredacted and unencrypted data being breached on a business’s server.
CCPA vs. GDPR
Both CCPA and GDPR aim to enhance individuals’ control over their personal information and provide transparency about how their data is collected, used and shared. The comparison between the CCPA and GDPR is crucial in understanding the regulatory framework of data protection laws.
Here’s how CCPA and GDPR differ:
Scope
- CCPA is for businesses that meet specific criteria and collect personal information from California residents.
- GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) applies to businesses that process the personal data of citizens and residents of the European Union.
Definition of personal information
- CCPA includes personal information broadly, including identifiers such as IP addresses and households. Examples include name, email id, location and browsing history. However, it excludes HIPAA-protected medical data, clinical trial data and other personal information from government records.
- GDPR covers any personal data relating to an identified or identifiable individual, excluding households. Examples include the phone number, email address and personal identification number. It excludes anonymous and deceased person’s data.
Consent
- Under the CCPA, consumers can opt out of the sale of their personal information.
- GDPR states that organisations should obtain explicit consent from individuals for processing their personal data.
Rights
- CCPA grants the right to know what personal information is being collected and the right to request deletion of their personal information.
- GDPR also gives individuals various rights, such as the right to access and rectify their personal data, the right to erasure (also known as the right to be forgotten) and also the right to data portability.
Enforcement
- For CCPA, businesses may have to pay $7,500 for each violation.
- GDPR has stricter penalties for non-compliance, with fines of up to 4% of the global annual revenue of a company or €20 million, whichever is higher.
A 5-step CCPA compliance framework
Here’s a simple framework you can follow to ensure compliance with CCPA. Alongside this, we’ll also share how Matomo can help.
Matomo is an open-source web analytics platform trusted by organisations like the United Nations, NASA and more. It provides valuable insights into website traffic, visitor behaviour and marketing effectiveness. More than 1 million websites and apps (approximately 1% of the internet!) use our solution, and it’s available in 50+ languages. Below, we’ll share how you can use Matomo to be CCPA compliant.
1. Assess data
First, familiarise yourself with the California Consumer Privacy Act and check your eligibility for CCPA compliance.
For example, as mentioned earlier, one threshold is: purchases, receives or sells the personal data of 100,000 or more individuals or households.
But how do you know if you have crossed 100K? With Matomo!
Go to last year’s calendar, select visitors, then go to locations and under the “Region” option, check for California. If you’ve crossed 100K visitors, you know you have to become CCPA compliant.
Identify and assess the personal information you collect with Matomo.
2. Evaluate privacy practices
Review the current state of your privacy policies and practices. Conduct a thorough assessment of data sharing and third-party agreements. Then, update policies and procedures to align with CCPA requirements.
For example, you can anonymise IP addresses with Matomo to ensure that user data collected for web analytics purposes cannot be used to trace back to specific individuals.
If you have a consent management solution to honour user requests for data privacy, you can also integrate Matomo with it.
3. Communicate
Inform consumers about their CCPA rights and how you handle their data.
Establish procedures for handling consumer requests and obtaining consent. For example, you can add an opt-out form on your website with Matomo. Or you can also use Matomo to disable cookies from your website.
Documenting your compliance efforts, including consumer requests and how you responded to them, is a good idea. Finally, educate staff on CCPA compliance and their responsibilities to work collaboratively.
4. Review vendor contracts
Assessing vendor contracts allows you to determine if they include necessary data processing agreements. You can also identify if vendors are sharing personal information with third parties, which could pose a compliance risk. Verify if vendors have adequate security measures in place to protect the personal data they handle.
That’s why you can review and update agreements to include provisions for data protection, privacy and CCPA requirements.
Establish procedures to monitor and review vendor compliance with CCPA regularly. This may include conducting audits, requesting certifications and implementing controls to mitigate risks associated with vendors handling personal data.
5. Engage legal counsel
Consider consulting with legal counsel to ensure complete understanding and compliance with CCPA regulations.
Finally, stay updated on any changes or developments related to CCPA and adjust your compliance efforts accordingly.
Matomo and CCPA compliance
There’s an increasing emphasis on privacy regulations like CCPA. Matomo offers a robust solution that allows businesses to be CCPA-compliant without sacrificing the ability to track and analyse crucial data.
You can gain in-depth insights into user behaviour and website performance — all while prioritising data protection and privacy.
Request a demo or sign up for a free 21-day trial to get started with our powerful CCPA-compliant web analytics platform — 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 CCPA. 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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The 7 GDPR Principles : A Guide to Compliance
We all knew it was coming. It’s all anyone could talk about — the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) took effect on 25 May 2018.
You might think five years would have been plenty of time for organisations to achieve compliance, yet many have failed to do so. As of 2022, 81% of French businesses and 95% of American companies were still not compliant.
If you’re one of these organisations still working on compliance, this blog will provide valuable information about the seven GDPR principles and guide you on your way to compliance. It will also explore how web analytics tools can help organisations improve transparency, ensure data security and achieve GDPR compliance.
What is GDPR?
The European Union (EU) created the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to grant individuals greater control over their data and promote transparency in data processing.
Known by many other names across Europe (e.g., RGPD, DSGVO, etc.), the GDPR created a set of rules surrounding the handling of personal data of EU citizens and residents, to make sure organisations aren’t being irresponsible with user names, locations, IP addresses, information gleaned from cookies, and so on.
Organisations must assume several responsibilities to achieve GDPR compliance, regardless of their physical location. These obligations include:
- Respecting user rights
- Implementing documentation and document retention policies
- Ensuring data security
Why is GDPR compliance important?
Data has become a valuable asset for businesses worldwide. The collection and use of data is a feature of almost every sector. However, with increased data usage comes a greater responsibility to protect individuals’ privacy and rights.
A YouGov study conducted in 17 key markets found that two in three adults worldwide believe tech corporations across all markets have too much control over their data.
GDPR is the most extensive government framework aiming to tackle the increasing concern over data collection and handling. GDPR safeguards personal data from misuse, unauthorised access and data breaches. It ensures that businesses handle information responsibly and with respect for individual privacy. It also provided a foundation for similar laws to be created in other countries, including China, which is among the least concerned regions (56%), along with Sweden (54%) and Indonesia (56%).
GDPR has been pivotal in safeguarding personal data and empowering individuals with more control over their information. Compliance with GDPR builds trust between businesses and their customers. Currently, 71% of the countries in the world are covered by data protection and privacy legislation.
What are the risks of non-compliance?
We’ve established the siginficance of GDPR, but what about the implications — what does it mean for your business? The consequences of non-compliance can be severe and are not worth being lax about.
According to Article 83 of the GDPR, you can be penalised up to 4% of your annual global revenue or €20 million, whichever is higher, for violations. For smaller businesses, such substantial fines could be devastating. Non-compliance could even result in legal action from individuals or data protection authorities, leading to further financial losses.
Potential outcomes are not just legal and financial. GDPR violations can significantly damage your reputation as a company. Non-compliance could also cost you business opportunities if your policies and processes do not comply and, therefore, do not align with potential partners. Customers trust businesses that take data protection seriously over those that do not.
Finally, and perhaps the most timid outcome on the surface, individuals have the right to complain to data protection authorities if they believe you violate their data rights. These complaints can trigger an investigation, and if your business is found to be breaking the rules, you could face all of the consequences mentioned above.
You may think it couldn’t happen to you, but GDPR fines have collectively reached over €4 billion and are growing at a notable rate. Fines grew 92% from H1 2021 compared with H1 2022. A record-breaking €1.2 billion fine to Meta in 2023 is the biggest we’ve seen, so far. But smaller businesses can be fined, too. A bank in Hungary was fined €1,560 for not erasing and correcting data when the subject requested it. (Individuals can also be fined in flagrant cases, like a police officer fined €1,400 for using police info for private purposes.)
The 7 GDPR principles and how to comply
You should now have a good understanding of GDPR, why it’s important and the consequences of not being compliant.
Your first step to compliance is to identify the personal data your organisation processes and determine the legal basis for processing each type. You then need to review your data processing activities to ensure they align with the GDPR’s purpose and principles.
There are seven key principles in Article 5 of the GDPR that govern the lawful processing of personal data:
Lawfulness, fairness and transparency
This principle ensures you collect and use data in a legal and transparent way. It must be collected with consent, and you must tell your customers why you need their data. Data processing must be conducted fairly and transparently.
How to comply
- Review your data practices and identify if and why you collect personal data from customers.
- Learn what personally identifiable information (PII) is.
- Update your website and forms to include a clear and easy-to-understand explanation of why you need their data and what you’ll use it for.
- Obtain explicit consent from individuals when processing their sensitive data.
- Add a cookie consent banner to your website, informing users about the cookies you use and why.
- Website analytics tools like Google Analytics and Matomo offer the ability to create cookie consent banners and integrate with Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) to manage user consent and privacy settings.
- Matomo also offers a setting without tracking cookies, in which case you would not need to add the cookie consent banner.
- Privacy notices must be accessible at all times.
- To ensure your cookies are GDPR compliant, you must:
- Get consent before using any cookies (except strictly necessary cookies).
- Clearly explain what each cookie tracks and its purpose.
- Document and store user consent.
- Don’t refuse access to services if users do not consent to the use of certain cookies.
- Make the consent withdrawal process simple.
Use tools like Matomo that can be configured to automatically anonymise data so you don’t process any personal data.
Purpose limitation
You can only use data for the specific, legitimate purposes you told your visitors, prospects or customers about at the time of collection. You can’t use it for anything else without asking again.
How to comply
- Define the specific purposes for collecting personal data (e.g., processing orders, sending newsletters).
- Ensure you don’t use the data for any other purposes without getting explicit consent from the individuals.
Data minimisation
Data minimisation means you should only collect the data you need, aligned with the stated purpose. You shouldn’t gather or store more data than necessary. Implementing data minimisation practices ensures compliance and protects against data breaches.
How to comply
- Identify the minimum data required for each purpose.
- Conduct a data audit to identify and eliminate unnecessary data collection points.
- Don’t ask for unnecessary information or store data that’s not essential for your business operations.
- Implement data retention policies to delete data when it is no longer required.
Accuracy
You are responsible for keeping data accurate and up-to-date at all times. You should have processes to promptly erase or correct any data if you have incorrect information for your customers.
How to comply
- Implement a process to regularly review and update customer data.
- Provide an easy way for customers to request corrections to their data if they find any errors.
Storage limitation
Data should not be kept longer than necessary. You should only hold onto it for as long as you have a valid reason, which should be the purpose stated and consented to. Securely dispose of data when it is no longer needed. There is no upper time limit on data storage.
How to comply
- Set clear retention periods for the different types of data you collect.
- Develop data retention policies and adhere to them consistently.
- Delete data when it’s no longer needed for the purposes you specified.
Integrity and confidentiality
You must take measures to protect data from unauthorised or unlawful access, like keeping it locked away and secure.
How to comply
- Securely store personal data with encryption and access controls, and keep it either within the EU or somewhere with similar privacy protections.
- Train your staff on data protection and restrict access to data only to those who need it for their work.
- Conduct regular security assessments and address vulnerabilities promptly.
Accountability
Accountability means that you are responsible for complying with the other principles. You must demonstrate that you are following the rules and taking data protection seriously.
How to comply
- Appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO) or someone responsible for data privacy in your company.
- Maintain detailed records of data processing activities and any data breaches.
- Data breaches must be reported within 72 hours.
Compliance with GDPR is an ongoing process, and it’s vital to review and update your practices regularly.
What are GDPR rights?
Individuals are granted various rights under the GDPR. These rights give them more control over their personal data.
The right to be informed: People can ask why their data is required.
What to do: Explain why personal data is required and how it will be used.
The right to access: People can request and access the personal data you hold about them.
What to do: Provide a copy of the data upon request, free of charge and within one month.The right to rectification: If data errors or inaccuracies are found, your customers can ask you to correct them.
What to do: Promptly update any incorrect information to ensure it is accurate and up-to-date.The right to object to processing: Your customers have the right to object to processing their data for certain purposes, like direct marketing.
What to do: Respect this objection unless you have legitimate reasons for processing the data.Rights in relation to automated decision-making and profiling: GDPR gives individuals the right not to be subject to decisions based solely on automated processing, including profiling, if it significantly impacts them.
What to do: Offer individuals the right to human intervention and express their point of view in such cases.The right to be forgotten: Individuals can request the deletion of their data under certain circumstances, such as when the data is no longer necessary or when they withdraw consent.
What to do: Comply with such requests unless you have a legal obligation to keep the data.The right to data portability: People can request their personal data in a commonly used and machine-readable format.
What to do: Provide the data to the individual if they want to transfer it to another service provider.The right to restrict processing: Customers can ask you to temporarily stop processing their data, for example, while they verify its accuracy or when they object to its usage.
What to do: Store the data during this period but do not process it further.Are all website analytics tools GDPR compliant?
Unfortunately, not all web analytics tools are built the same. No matter where you are located in the world, if you are processing the personal data of European citizens or residents, you need to fulfil GDPR obligations.
While your web analytics tool helps you gain valuable insights from your user base and web traffic, they don’t all comply with GDPR. No matter how hard you work to adhere to the seven principles and GDPR rights, using a non-compliant tool means that you’ll never be fully GDPR compliant.
When using website analytics tools and handling data, you should consider the following:
Collection of data
Aligned with the lawfulness, fairness and transparency principle, you must collect consent from visitors for tracking if you are using website analytics tools to collect visitor behavioural data — unless you anonymise data entirely with Matomo.
To provide transparency, you should also clarify the types of data you collect, such as IP addresses, device information and browsing behaviour. Note that data collection aims to improve your website’s performance and understand your audience better.
Storage of data
Assure your visitors that you securely store their data and only keep it for as long as necessary, following GDPR’s storage limitation principle. Clearly state the retention periods for different data types and specify when you’ll delete or anonymise it.
Usage of data
Make it clear that to comply with the purpose limitation principle, the data you collect will not be used for other purposes beyond website analytics. You should also promise not to share data with third parties for marketing or unrelated activities without their explicit consent.
Anonymisation and pseudonymisation
Features like IP anonymisation to protect users’ privacy are available with GA4 (Google Analytics) and Matomo. Describe how you use these tools and mention that you may use pseudonyms or unique identifiers instead of real names to safeguard personal data further.
Cookies and consent
Inform visitors that your website uses cookies and other tracking technologies for analytics purposes. Matomo offers customisable cookie banners and opt-out options that allow users to choose their preferences regarding cookies and tracking, along with cookieless options that don’t require consent banners.
Right to access and correct data
Inform visitors of their rights and provide instructions on requesting information. Describe how to correct inaccuracies in their data and update their preferences.
Security measures
Assure visitors that you take data security seriously and have implemented measures to protect their data from unauthorised access or breaches. You can also use this opportunity to highlight any encryption or access controls you use to safeguard data.
Contact information
Provide contact details for your company’s Data Protection Officer (DPO) and encourage users to reach out if they have any questions or concerns about their data and privacy.
When selecting web analytics tools, consider how well they align with GDPR principles. Look for features like anonymisation, consent management options, data retention controls, security measures and data storage within the EU or a similarly privacy-protecting jurisdiction.
Matomo offers an advanced GDPR Manager. This is to make sure websites are fully GDPR compliant by giving users the ability to access, withdraw consent, object or erase their data, in addition to the anonymizing features.
And finally, when you use Matomo, you have 100% data ownership — stored with us in the EU if you’re using Matomo Cloud or on your own servers with Matomo On-Premise — so you can be data-driven and still be compliant with worldwide privacy laws. We are also trusted across industries as we provide accurate data (no trying to fill in the gaps with AI), a robust API that lets you connect your data to your other tools and cookieless tracking options so you don’t need a cookie consent banner. What’s more, our open-source nature allows you to explore the inner workings, offering the assurance of security firsthand.
Ready to become GDPR compliant?
Whether you’re an established business or just starting out, if you work with data from EU citizens or residents, then achieving GDPR compliance is essential. It doesn’t need to cost you a fortune or five years to get to compliant status. With the right tools and processes, you can be on top of the privacy requirements in no time at all, avoiding any of those hefty penalties or the resulting damage to your reputation.
You don’t need to sacrifice powerful data insights to be GDPR compliant. While Google Analytics uses data for its ‘own purposes’, Matomo is an ethical alternative. Using our all-in-one web analytics platform means you own 100% of your data 100% of the time.
Start a 21-day free trial of Matomo — 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.
