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Why do you need analytics for your WordPress ?
Not many people know this, but having a WordPress analytics tool gives you a competitive advantage. It’s also essential to the growth of your website. For many businesses, websites are the main driver of revenue and sales. In the case of blogs, it’s your first chance to make a lasting impression.
Now, maybe you’ve heard of Google Analytics or even the privacy-friendly alternative, Matomo Analytics, but have never tried them? These are analytics platforms that help you understand your website traffic and visitors. (You can find these platforms as plugins in the WordPress directory!)
They’re important because the insights you get help you determine what changes to make to improve your website. Without them you could face a tougher time figuring out what’s working, what the issues are (and solving them before they get out of hand), and making sure you’re taking your website in the right direction.
WordPress analytics gives you an understanding of what’s actually going on.
How does a WordPress analytics plugin benefit your website?
What this means for you is getting a toolkit to learn how to get more sales or followers and subscribers (aka conversions in analytics terms).
By getting insights into user behaviour, content performance, and how you can optimise your website, you can reach more of your goals, like increasing sales or growing your audience.
A WordPress analytics tool helps you get more traffic to your site
You get a range of features which tell you which acquisition channels are working for you like – social media, search engines, and other websites mentioning you. This helps you make an informed decision on where to focus energies (or spend) to get more of the ideal people coming through to your website.
Example: Looking through your acquisition channels and seeing that Reddit drives a lot of traffic through to your website. Since this channel seems to be working for you, you could then spend more time on Reddit posts to increase traffic.
But getting more traffic isn’t all there is to it. Once they land on your site, you want them to stay for a little longer so they are intrigued by what you’re offering. Be it a product, or awesome content.
Which leads us to …
Increasing engagement by learning about visitor behaviour
When you get a solid number of visitors on your website, it’s good to then learn about how they behave on your site. A WordPress analytics tool helps with engagement since you’re seeing what’s appealing to them, and what isn’t.
Increasing engagement is good for a few reasons.
- You end up speaking the language of your readers.
- You can make a difference with the information you’re putting out.
- You get loyal customers and believers in your organisation.
With more engaged visitors, you can build trust with them and eventually be able to convince them that your product, service, or blog is needed in their lives.
Example: Looking through entry and exit pages to see what first impression is making them stay, and what impression is making them leave. This helps you redirect efforts to give your website a better chance of getting visitors to stay longer.
Improving your content and engagement can lead to more conversions
After you get visitors engaged, it’s time to convert.
Whether you have an ecommerce site or freelance blog, you’ll need to know how to boost conversions. This simply means getting people to achieve more of the actions you’re wanting them to take on your site. Like subscribing to your newsletter or adding items to a cart.
With conversion optimization features, you’re finding out how well your website is designed to get buyers through a journey to conversion.
Example: Say you’ve created a newsletter sign up page, but you’re not getting as many sign ups as you’d like. With a web analytics tool, you can look into it further. A funnels feature could tell you how they’re getting to that page. If people can’t find your page, that could be reason for low conversion rates. Or, maybe you are getting people landing on this page, but you can’t tell why they’re not signing up. Try setting up a heatmap to see how far they’re scrolling down your page to the sign up section. Through these conversion optimization features, you can make tweaks that significantly improve conversions.
So, how does the Matomo Analytics for WordPress plugin help with all of this?
Matomo Analytics for WordPress is a free web analytics plugin that gives you access to all the features mentioned above, right in your own WordPress dashboard. It’s completely free to use and is handy for users of all skill levels. From beginners right through to advanced analysts.
You get to move through all the stages to increase traffic, increase engagement, and convert. By using Matomo for WordPress, you put yourself in a better position to track all the needed data from your WordPress website.
You have this toolkit to improve your website for free, with a few clicks!
By getting useful insights like visitors, acquisitions, bounce rates etc. you gain a new perspective on how to improve your website so it’s better at doing what you created it to do. Getting these insights also means giving yourself the confidence to do what’s best for your website in a data-driven way.
With all this knowledge, you can be competitive, or grow enough that you’re leaving your competitors in the dust.
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Matomo vs WP-Statistics – which web analytics plugin suits you best ?
Due to the endless choices, you may be wondering which web analytics plugin (GA, Slimstat or WP-Statistics) to choose from on the WordPress directory. If the choice is between WP-Statistics and Matomo for WordPress, we’ve got you covered. Have a look at which could be the best option for you. Our team tested the WP-Statistics plugin to see how it compares. It’s hard not to be biased, but we’ll try our best to give you a fair assessment.
The main considerations in this article:
General overview
What’s Matomo Analytics for WordPress?
Matomo for WordPress is a free, privacy-friendly web analytics plugin that lets you understand website visitors and how they behave on your site. With comprehensive insights, you get the opportunity to increase conversions, and the know-how to improve your website. It lets you undertake essential analysis by tracking information, such as, where visitors are coming from, what your most popular pages are, and how visitors are using your site. In addition to the fundamentals, the tool also allows for advanced tracking and analysis with features that give you a full understanding of behavioural patterns and website performance. This enables you to optimise your WordPress website to increase sales or engagement. It offers a complete analytics package with the bonuses of 100% data ownership, no data sampling, and GDPR compliance.What’s WP-Statistics?
WP-Statistics is currently the most used self-hosted WordPress statistics plugin. It provides reports that let you analyse who your visitors are, where they’re coming from, and to an extent what they’re doing on your website. Like Matomo for WordPress, it gives you an understanding of your audience which helps you make decisions on how to improve your website for more conversions. As it’s self-hosted on your own WordPress servers it can be seen as a privacy-friendly choice with a few tweaks (more on this below). Like Matomo for WordPress, it gives you an understanding of your audience which helps you make decisions on how to improve your website for more conversions.General comparison
Let’s compare the installation process and the dashboards that get installed in your WordPress.
Installation
Both Matomo and WP-Statistics are installed directly in your WordPress so you’ll be able to see your analytics reports right in your WordPress dashboard. You can install them both straight from the WordPress Directory.
The installation process for both plugins is beginner-friendly. You simply need to find them on the WordPress directory, click on ‘Install Now’, and tracking should start immediately in your WordPress dashboard.
Dashboard
For the main Matomo platform you’ll see:
- Visitors – Overview, Visits Log, Real-time, Real-time Map, Locations, Devices, Software, Times, User IDs, Custom Variables, User Type
- Behaviour – Pages, Entry Pages, Exit Pages, Page titles, Site Search, Outlinks, Downloads, Events, Contents, Engagement, Transitions, Users Flow, Top Paths, Page Author, Page Location, Page Type, Crawling errors
- Acquisition – Overview, All Channels, Search Engine & Keywords, Websites, Social Networks, Campaigns, Campaign URL Builder, Crawling overview
- Ecommerce – Overview, Ecommerce Log, Products, Sales, Multi Attribution
- Goals – Overview, Multi Attribution, Choose Goals, Manage Goals
- These may be worded differently from WP-Statistics, but they show you all the information you need to know about your traffic, pages, etc.
PreviousNextIn the dashboard for WP-Statistics you’ll see:
- Overview, Hits, Online, Referrers, Search Words, Search Engines, Pages, Visitors, Categories, Tags, Authors, Browsers, Top Visitors Today
- These are the only things you can see in the dashboard. So you can’t click into them for a drop down section to get deeper insights.
Key similarities between Matomo and WP-Statistics
- Free to use
- Self-hosted – All data collected is stored only within your own servers, no third parties have rights over your data, and logs or report data will never be sent to other servers.
- Beginner-friendly – Both offer simple reporting for people who are very much beginners and only want basic insights. With Matomo the advantage is also that you can get more details should you ever want/need to.
Key differences between Matomo and WP-Statistics
The main differences fall in these categories: features, privacy, documentation/support, security, active development, extensibility, price and ads.
Features:
WP-Statistics – On a fundamental level, WP-Statistics is focused on simplicity and the basics. There are fewer reports than Matomo and they function on a level that suits beginners who are interested in seeing only the numbers of visitors on the website, and how often each page is viewed.
Matomo – provides an interface with similar simplicity. However, there is also a more feature-rich and more comprehensive user interface available. In addition to the basics, Matomo offers features like Goals, Ecommerce, in the free version which show a deeper level of insight. WP Statistics does not let you track essentials like Goals or Ecommerce.
Privacy:
WP-Statistics – One of the concerns we wish to raise here is for data privacy. There doesn’t appear to be an opt-out option in WP-Statistics, which could be problematic for some privacy laws such as GDPR. There’s also no documentation on this.
We were a bit concerned to see that WP-Statistics didn’t have IP anonymization enabled by default. Considering the IP address is personal data, it means you are not compliant with privacy laws such as the GDPR when you use this plugin unless you tweak the settings. They mentioned: “In previous versions, there was an option called Hash IP. When Hash IP was activated, the IP addresses wouldn’t be stored in the database, but instead, a unique hash would be used. In this new version, an option has been added to store IPs anonymously. This option is active by default.” However, when we installed this and tested it on multiple WordPress installations, this option was not active by default.
Matomo – has more measures in place to ensure privacy is respected, such as, opt-outs. Due to the stringent privacy features in place, Matomo is well equipped to ensure GDPR compliance. Matomo has an abundance of user guides and FAQs you can follow to configure your platform to fully comply with GDPR. There’s even an 12-step compliant checklist. The most compelling proof is that the leading voice on GDPR – The European Commission uses Matomo Analytics.
Documentation/Support:
WP-Statistics – has little documentation, FAQs, and no support.
Matomo – has thousands of FAQs and user guides, as well as a dedicated support team and forum you can turn to for help. Should you ever run into any issue, this might be something important to consider.
The contrast in support between WP-Statistics and Matomo for WordPress:
WP-Statistics support 
Matomo Analytics support Security:
Matomo takes protecting your data very seriously. We have a security bounty programme giving security researchers money should they find any security issues. Matomo also performs a security review for every new release. We couldn’t find anything similar in WP-Statistics.
Active development:
WP Statistics – doesn’t seem to have active development. The last change in this plugin was over three months ago (source: https://github.com/wp-statistics/wp-statistics/commits/master) and in general, only 10 people really contributed to it (source: https://github.com/wp-statistics/wp-statistics/graphs/contributors, the graphs shows little contributor activity.)
Matomo – has been built by hundreds of contributors (source: https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo/graphs/contributors), and is actively maintained by multiple developers including developers who work on this full time. This means you can rest assured that Matomo will be there for you in the future, it will receive regular improvements.
Extensibility:
WP-Statistics – have a section on their website offering customisation but for a price.
Matomo – should you want any changes and have some developer knowledge or some developers at hand, you can completely customise and extend Matomo for free. There are also one hundred additional plugins available for Matomo for free.
Price:
The main WordPress plugins ‘WP Statistics‘ and ‘Matomo Analytics – Ethical Stats. Powerful Insights.‘ are both free.
WP Statistics and Matomo also sell paid add-ons. However, WP-Statistics’ paid add-ons are ones already integrated in Matomo for free. These basic features are provided as the development team believe they’re necessities to a fully functional analytics platform.
Ads:
WP Statistics shows you ads, whereas Matomo doesn’t.
Three most notable feature category comparisons
Both Matomo and WP-Statistics have basic tracking categories in the WP dashboard. In addition, Matomo has feature categories that can be expanded e.g. when clicked, Visitors drops down to reveal 11 more features.
We’ll compare three feature categories: Visitors, Behaviour, and Acquisitions.
1. Visitors (WP-Statistics) vs Visitors (Matomo)
Let’s dive into how each analytics platform provides insight into the visitors feature category.
WP-Statistics
WP-Statistics – We can see WP-Statistics gives you bare bones tracking capabilities so you don’t get a really detailed picture of your visitors. It allows you to monitor users currently online in real-time, which is useful to look at the most recent activity on your site. WP-Statistics doesn’t offer a dropdown section to see more about your visitor’s behavioural patterns. There is no Visitors category in WP-Statistics, just individual features in the dashboard but we can group three options together to compare with Matomo’s Visitors category, these are: Online, Browsers, Top Visitors Today.
Matomo
Comparison
Matomo – In comparison, Matomo has a Visitors category with a dropdown list that lets you drill deeper into what your visitors are doing. It lets you evaluate every action an individual user has taken on your website which is compiled into a full historical profile. Matomo gives an in-depth view. E.g. you can look at individual visit logs, locations, and devices.
This lets you see what the life-time journey of an active user looks like, or perhaps you want to see what a profile looks like for a user who comes back time-and-time again without ever purchasing; there is no better way to gain insights to these journeys and this is why the Visitor Profiles feature is so widely used by Matomo users.
2. Pages tracking (WP-Statistics) vs Behaviour (Matomo)
For this comparison, WP-Statistics has a few features that can be combined to compare with Matomo’s Behaviour category.
WP-Statistics
The Pages section in WP-Statistics gives a basic look at your most popular pages so you know which pages get more visits and those which aren’t performing. This helps with content improvement. You can also see other features in this Behaviour category like Browsers and Hits – these also provide basic stats to help you get a general sense of visitor behaviour.
Matomo
Comparison:
Matomo on the other hand has stats that go into greater detail. The features under the Behaviour section of the tool let you draw actionable conclusions e.g. seeing that a page has a higher exit rate than it’s supposed to, so you optimise that page to prevent people leaving and help them progress through your website.
Not only can you see popular pages, you can look at: which page people viewed first when they visited your website; which page they left from; what people search for on your site; and see how people are flowing through pages. Most importantly you can see how each of these reports perform over time so you can improve engagement and conversions on your website.
3. Referrers (WP-Statistics) vs Acquisition (Matomo)
For this comparison, WP-Statistics has a few features that can be combined to compare with Matomo’s Acquisition category.
WP-Statistics
WP-Statistics gives you Referrers, Search Words, and Search Engines. Which give a basic understanding of the channels that work best for you. This is helpful to know where to focus more of your attention.
Matomo
Comparison:
With Matomo you see multiple layers of stats to understand how your acquisition channels are performing. So you can see tables of data that drill into visits, downloads, bounce rate, and newsletter sign ups. For example seeing that Facebook is the channel bringing in the most visitors to your site. This gives you a better sense of which acquisition strategy is working for your site.
Who suits WP-Statistics
This is a great starter pack for people who want a lightweight, functional statistics plugin that gives you a basic overview of website hits and visitors. It’s very easy to use, so it’s great for beginners and those who want simple tracking. If you have basic goals for your website or blog’s success then WP-Statistics is enough for you to get numbers on visitors, page views, and hits, but won’t be suitable for a larger-scale business or organisation.
It’s suited for hobby websites, blogs, and freelancers who want simple, effective stats tracking, who don’t need detailed insights on site performance or tracking.
Who suits Matomo
Matomo can be used for the same basic reporting, but has the capability for you to go deeper into more advanced reporting in a different UI if you need it. It’s an option that can work for a wider range of users – from beginners to analysts. There are features to suit all skill levels. This complete suite of features makes it a more comprehensive tool, as you can get more out of it. Ideal not only for bloggers and beginners, but also powerful enough to suit businesses, privacy-respecting organisations, and those who would benefit from conversion optimisation features.
You can draw insights from all stages of the customer journey – you’ll track behavioural patterns as soon as visitors enter your site, to their progression through your site, and ultimately to conversion and exit. It’s also an ethical choice because you get 100% data ownership.
If you’d like to look deeper into your data then Matomo would also be suitable for you. Matomo’s UI is lean, very easy to learn and shouldn’t overwhelm users in the way another tool like Google Analytics might do. If you think Matomo suits you best, you can install it for free now.
Advantages of using Matomo
Truly privacy-respecting
There’s no messing about when it comes to privacy. As a lot of users are based in Europe, Matomo adheres to the strictest privacy laws and can be counted on as a privacy-respecting tool that’s used by many government entities. Needing to comply with major privacy laws (GDPR) in Europe means Matomo can proudly ensure users are making the ethical choice.
GDPR compliance
You mitigate the risks of getting caught out and fined for breaching GDPR regulations. There’s a complete list of documentation, guides, information, and tools to make sure you’re on the right side of GDPR.
All-rounder
Matomo gives you a clearer picture of your visitors which helps you make better decisions for your website overall. The support and documentation is thorough which means you get more out of your Matomo experience.
Conclusion
Both tools will do you justice in terms of fundamental reporting, but Matomo Analytics will outshine if you want a greater understanding of your website and want to carry out deeper levels of analysis.
You can draw useful insights with WP-Statistics so it has to be said that they are doing something right with an entry-level offering. The simplicity is great, but you won’t really get more than a basic idea of how your site is performing.
On the flipside, this simplicity could also be a double-edged sword for WP-Statistics in that it’s too simplistic to draw actionable insights. If you’re wanting to know anything that could increase sales, conversions or subscribers – then you wouldn’t really get the reports to do so.
WP-Statistics also falls short when it comes to updates and support. So a major difference can be seen in support, active development, ads, security, documentation, which many people may think about until they’re in trouble and find they need these resources. Matomo offers support, continuous product development, and extensive documentation. There are also no ads, making it more enjoyable to use.
One thing we’d like to raise awareness about is WP-Statistics’ claims of being privacy-respecting without much documentation to back up those claims. There is a lack of privacy features which could put some website owners at risk of non-compliance. Just be sure to check that you’ve carried out the steps to comply with the privacy laws in your country.
Matomo makes it clear that privacy is essential as is compliance to privacy laws like GDPR. The strength also lies in the peace of mind you get from a tool that’s used by global privacy leaders such as the European Commission.
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Measuring success for your SEO content
20 mars 2020, par Jake Thornton — UncategorizedWith over a billion searches every day in search engines, it’s hard to underestimate the importance of having your business present on page one (ideally in positions 1 – 3) ranking for the keywords that impact your sales and conversions.
"In 2019, Google received nearly 2.3 trillion searches and on page one alone, the first five organic results accounted for 67.60% of all the clicks."
So how is your business performing when it comes to ranking in the crucial top three spots of search for your most important keywords?
Accurately measuring the success of your content
Once you’ve done your keyword research, created compelling content, optimised it to be search-friendly, and hit ‘publish’, you then need to accurately measure the success of your efforts.
4 tips for measuring the success of your SEO content
1. Create a custom segment for "Visitors from Search Engines only"
By creating this custom segment, you’ll be able to analyse the behavioural patterns of the visitors who found your website through a search engine.
This way you can use many of Matomo’s powerful features (Visitors, Behaviour, Acquisition, Ecommerce, Goals etc.) focused entirely on search engine visitors only.
Once you’ve created this segment, you can begin to see key metrics like which entry pages are responsible for referring visitors to your website. For example: Visit Behaviour – Entry Pages, this is a great way to analyse your most effective SEO pages.You may be surprised at what pages currently bring in the most traffic.
As well as discovering which content resonates with your search audience, you will also be able to create more content focused on your targeted audience. Do this by learning which locations your search visitors are from, which device they use, what time of the day they visited your website and much more.
2. Website visits, time on site, pages per session, and bounce rate.
“The top four ranking factors are website visits, time on site, pages per session, and bounce rate.”
These four metrics set the benchmark for your SEO success.
First, you need to get as many of the ‘right’ users to see your content. If you feel you’ve exhausted channels such as social media, email and possibly paid posts; think about who your ideal audience is. Where are they likely to hang out online? Are there community groups or forum sites that are interested in what you’re writing about?
Whatever the case, putting yourself out there and getting more traffic to your website will help show search engines that people are interested in your website. As a result, they’ll likely rank you higher for that.
When we say getting more of the ‘right’ users, we mean users who are generally interested in the topic/subject you’re writing about and interested in the work you do.
This is important for the next three metrics – increasing users time on your website, increasing the amount of pages your users explore on your website, and reducing the overall bounce rate for users who leave your website in a matter of seconds.
To evaluate these metrics, go to Behaviour – Pages in your Matomo and see how these metrics vary on previous posts or pages you’ve created. Which pages are already showing you the best results? Why do they get the results? Can you focus on creating more content like this?
Understanding what content is resonating with your users through these metrics is easy and is the starting point for measuring the success of your SEO content strategy.
3. Row Evolution
The Row Evolution feature embedded within the Search Engine Keywords Performance plugin lets you see how your ranking positions have changed over time for your important keywords. It also lets you see how the incoming traffic, related to your keywords, has changed over time.
This is valuable when measuring the changes you’ve made to your landing pages to see if it has a positive or negative effect on your ranking efforts.
This also lets you see how search engine algorithm changes affect your search rankings over time, and to see if the effects of these algorithm updates are temporary or long lasting.
Row evolution allows you to report on keyword performance with ease. If you only check your insights once a week or once a fortnight, you’ll see how ranking positions for your important keywords have changed daily (or even weekly, monthly or yearly however you prefer.)
4. What results are you getting from the lesser known search engines?
"In 2019 (to date), Google accounted for just over 75% of all global desktop search traffic, followed by Bing at 9.97%, Baidu at 9.34%, and Yahoo at 2.77%."
For most of us, we want to be ranking in the top three spots in Google Search because that’s where the majority of search users are. However, don’t shy away from opportunities you could be missing with lesser known search engines.
If you sell a product aimed at 55-65 year olds who use a PC computer, chances are they are using Bing. If you have customers in China the majority will be using Baidu, or in our case at Matomo, many of our loyal users use a privacy-friendly search engine like DuckDuckGo or Qwant.
Some of your ideal customers might be finding you through these alternative search engines, so be sure to measure the impact that these referrals may have on your conversions.
Strategically including important keywords that impact your business
While search is an important acquisition channel for most businesses, it’s also one of the most competitive.
We recommend analysing your keyword and content performance regularly and alter content that isn’t performing as well as you’d like. You need to continually learn from the content that is successful, and focus on creating more content like this.
The final thing to remember with search keyword performance is to be patient. If you have had little success in the past with attracting customers through search, it can take time to build this reputation with search engines.
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Switch to Matomo for WordPress from Google Analytics
While Google Analytics may seem like a great plugin option on the WordPress directory, we’d like to present a new ethical alternative called Matomo for WordPress, which gives you 100% data ownership and privacy protection.
Firstly what does Google Analytics offer in WordPress?
When you think of getting insights about visitors on your WordPress (WP) sites, the first thing that comes to mind might be Google Analytics. Why not right? Especially when there are good free Google Analytics plugins, like Monster Insights and Site Kit.
These give you access to a great analytics platform, but the downside with Google Analytics is the lack of transparency around privacy and data ownership.
Matomo Analytics for WordPress is an ethical alternative to Google Analytics for WordPress
If you’re more interested in a privacy-respecting, GDPR compliant alternative, there’s now a new option on the WP plugins directory: Matomo Analytics – Ethical Stats. Powerful Insights. It’s free and can be considered the #1 ethical alternative to Google Analytics in terms of features and capabilities. Why is it important to choose a web analytics platform that respects privacy?
Risk facing fines for non-GDPR compliance and privacy/data breaches
In Europe there’s an overarching privacy law called GDPR which provides better privacy protection for EU citizens on the web.
Websites need to be GDPR compliant and follow rules governing how personal data is used or risk facing fines up to 4% of their yearly revenue for data/privacy breaches or non-compliance. Even if your website is based outside of Europe. If you have visitors from Europe, you can still be liable.
In the US, there isn’t one main privacy law, there hundreds on both the federal and state levels to protect the personal data (or personally identifiable information) of US residents – like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). There are also industry-specific statutes related to data privacy like HIPAA.
To protect your website from coming under fire for privacy breaches, best practise is to find platforms that are privacy and GDPR compliant by design.
When you own your own data – as with the case of Matomo – you have control over where data is stored, what you’re doing with it, and can better protect the privacy of your visitors.
At this point you may be asking, “what’s the point of an analytics platform if you have to follow all these rules?”
The importance of analytics for your WordPress site
- Figuring out how your audience behaves to increase conversions
- Setting, tracking and measuring conversion goals
- Being able to find insights to improve and optimize your site
- Making smarter, data-driven decisions so your company can thrive, rather than risk being left behind
Analytics is used to answer questions like:
- Where are your website visitors coming from (location)?
- How many people visit your website?
- Which are the most popular pages on your site?
- What sources of traffic are coming to your site (social, marketing campaigns, search)?
- Is your marketing campaign performing better this month compared to last?
Matomo can answer all of the above questions. BONUS: On top of that, with Matomo you get the peace of mind knowing you’re the only one who has access to those answers.
Matomo Analytics vs Google Analytics on WordPress
The top 5 most useful features in Matomo Analytics that’s comparable to GA
- Campaign measurement – traffic. Matomo also has a URL builder that lets you track which campaigns are working effectively
- Tracking goals. Matomo empowers you to set goals you can track. Being able to see this means you can accurately measure your return on investment (ROI)
- Audience reports to learn about visitors. Matomo’s powerful visitors feature lets you learn who is visiting your site, what their journey is and the steps they take to conversion.
- In depth view of behaviour with Funnels in Matomo. This tracks the journey of your visitors from the moment they enter your site, to when they leave. Giving you insight into where and why you lose your visitors.
- Custom reports. Where you create your unique reports to fit your business goals.
Other benefits of using Matomo:
- No data sampling which means you get 100% accurate reporting
- 100% data ownership
- Free Tag Manager
- Search engine keyword rankings
- Unlimited websites
- Unlimited team members
- GDPR manager
- API access
- Hosted on your own servers so you have full control over where your data is stored
Learn more about the differences in this comprehensive table.
Matomo Analytics for WordPress is free!
Matomo Analytics is the best free Google Analytics alternative on the WordPress Directory. In addition to having comparable features where you can do pretty much do everything you wanted to do in GA. Matomo Analytics for WordPress makes for an ethical choice because you can respect your visitor’s privacy, can become GDPR compliant, and maintain control over your own data.
Google Analytics leads the market for good reasons. It’s a great free tool for those who want analytics, but there’s no clarity when it comes to grey areas like privacy and data ownership. If these are major concerns for you, Matomo offers complete peace of mind that you’re doing the best you can to stay ethical while growing your business and website.
It’s just as easy to install in a few click!
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Your guide to cookies, web analytics, and GDPR compliance
It’s been almost two years since the GDPR came into effect and turned the online world on its head. Confusion around cookies/cookie consent/cookie compliance remains till today. So we’d like to take this chance to talk more about the supposed “big bad” of the latest century.
Online cookies seem to have a bad reputation, but are they as bad as they seem?
To start, what are cookies on the internet?
An internet cookie a.k.a. an HTTP cookie, is a small piece of data sent from websites that is stored on your computer or mobile when you visit that site.
Are all cookies bad?
No. Cookies themselves are usually harmless as they can’t infect computers with malware.
They can also be helpful for both websites who use them and individuals visiting those websites. For example, when online shopping, cookies on ecommerce sites keep track of what you’re shopping for. If you didn’t have that tracking, your cart would be empty every time you moved away from that site.
For businesses/websites, cookies can be used for authentication (logins) and tracking website user experience. For example, tracking multiple visits to the same site in order to provide better experiences to customers visiting their website.
The not-so-sweet types of cookies:
Cookies that contain personal data
Another example of a bad cookie is when cookies contain personal data directly in the cookie itself. For example, when websites store demographics or your name in a cookie; or when a website stores survey results in a cookie. Use of cookies in these ways is considered bad practice nowadays.
Third-party cookies
They can be used by websites to learn about your visit and activity across multiple websites. Cookies can enter harmful territory when employed for “big brother” types of tracking i.e. when they’re used to build a virtual fingerprint of individuals after their activity is tracked from website to website. For example most advertising networks create third party cookies in your browser when you view an ad, which lets these advertisers track users across these websites and let companies buy more targeted ads.
Why does Matomo use cookies?
For accurate reporting of new and returning visitors. Matomo uses cookies to store some information about visitors between visits. We also use cookies to remember if someone gave consent to tracking, or opted out of tracking.
Types of cookies Matomo uses:
- Matomo by default uses first-party cookies, set on the domain of your site.
- Cookies created by Matomo start with:
_pk_ref,_pk_cvar,_pk_id,_pk_ses. See a list of all Matomo cookies: https://matomo.org/faq/general/faq_146/
Cookie-less tracking - disable cookies and ensure cookie compliance:
It’s possible to disable tracking cookies in Matomo by adding a line on the javascript code. When cookies are disabled, Matomo data will become slightly less accurate. Also, when cookies are disabled, there may still be a few cookies created in specific cases.
If you disable cookies, Matomo tries to detect unique visitors by a fingerprint based on a few browser attributes: operating system, browser, browser plugins, IP address and browser language.
By disabling tracking cookies, you may also use Matomo without needing to display a cookie consent screen. You can also keep tracking when they reject cookie consent by keeping cookies disabled.
Cookies and the GDPR
In some countries and according to the GDPR, websites need to provide a way for users to opt-out of all tracking, in particular tracking cookies.
The GDPR regulates the use of cookies when they compromise an individual’s privacy. When cookies can identify an individual, it is considered personal data.
Cookie compliance and the GDPR
To be GDPR compliant you must:
- Receive user consent before using any cookies (except strictly necessary cookies). Read more on cookies that are “clearly exempt from consent”.
- Provide accurate and specific information about the data each cookie tracks and its purpose in plain language before consent is received.
- Document and store consent received from users.
- Allow users to access your service even if they refuse to allow the use of certain cookies
- Make it as easy for users to withdraw their consent as it was for them to give their consent in the first place.
Source: https://gdpr.eu/cookies/
When does GDPR require cookie consent?
The purpose of the GDPR is to give individuals control over their personal data. As such this regulation has provisions and requirements which regulate the processing of personal data to protect the privacy of individuals.
This means in order to use cookies, you will sometimes need explicit consent from those individuals.
When does GDPR not require cookie consent?
Then there are many cookies that generally do NOT require consent (Source: https://wikis.ec.europa.eu/display/WEBGUIDE/04.+Cookies).
These are:
- user input cookies, for the duration of a session
- authentication cookies, for the duration of a session
- user-centric security cookies, used to detect authentication abuses and linked to the functionality explicitly requested by the user, for a limited persistent duration
- multimedia content player session cookies, such as flash player cookies, for the duration of a session
- load balancing session cookies and other technical cookies, for the duration of session
- user interface customisation cookies, for a browser session or a few hours, when additional information in a prominent location is provided (e.g. “uses cookies” written next to the customisation feature)
Tracking cookies and consent vs legitimate interest
User consent is not always required:
We understand that whenever you collect and process personal data, you need – almost always – to ask for their consent. However, there are instances where you have to process data under “legitimate interests”. The GDPR states that processing of personal data is lawful “if processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests”. This means if you have “legitimate interests” you can avoid asking for consent for collecting and processing personal information. Learn more: https://cookieinformation.com/resources/blog/what-is-legitimate-interest-under-the-gdpr
A lawful basis for processing personal data (proceeding with caution):
We’ve also written about having a lawful basis for processing personal data under GDPR with Matomo. The caveat here is you need to have a strong argument for legitimate interests. If you are processing personal data which may represent a risk to the final user, then getting consent is, for us, still the right lawful basis. If you are not sure, at the time of writing ICO is providing a tool in order to help you make this decision.
How is Matomo Analytics GDPR compliant?
Matomo can be configured to automatically anonymise data so you don’t process any personal data. This allows you to completely avoid GDPR. If you decide to process personal data, Matomo provides you with 12 steps to easily comply with the GDPR guidelines.
New developments on cookies and the GDPR
In the early days of the GDPR, a spate of cookie management platforms (CMPs) popped up to help websites and people comply with GDPR rules around cookies.
These have become problematic in recent years. Europe’s highest court ruled pre-checked box for cookie boxes does not give enough consent.
As well as that, new research suggests most cookie consent pop-ups in the EU fall short of GDPR. A new study called, ‘Dark Patterns after the GDPR’ from MIT, UCL and Aarhus University found that a vast majority of websites aren’t following GDPR rules around cookies. The study found most cookie consent pop-ups in the EU to be undermining the GDPR by finding sneaky ways to convince website visitors to click ‘accept’.
Disclaimer
We are not lawyers and don’t claim to be. The information provided here is to help give an introduction to issues you may encounter when dealing cookies. 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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