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• Exceeded GA’s 10M hits data limit, now what ?

  21 juin 2019, par Joselyn Khor
  Exceeded GA's 10M hits data limit, now what? Matomo has the answers

  “Your data volume (1XXM hits) exceeds the limit of 10M hits per month as outlined in our Terms of Service. If you continue to exceed the limit, we will stop processing new data on XXX 21, 2019. Learn more about possible solutions.”

  Yikes. Alarm bells were ringing when a Google Analytics free user came to us faced with this notice. Let’s call him ‘Mark’. Mark had reached the limits on the data he could collect through Google Analytics and was shocked by the limited options available to fix the problem, without blowing the budget. The thoughts racing through his head were:

  • “What happens to all my data?”
  • “What if Google starts charging USD150K now?”

  Then he came across Matomo and decided to get in touch with our support team …

  “Can you fix this issue?” he asked us.

  “Absolutely!” we said.

  We’ll get back to helping Mark in a minute. For now let’s go over why this was such a dilemma for him.

  In order to resolve this data limits issue, one of the solutions was for him to upgrade to Google Analytics 360, which meant shelling out USD150,000 per year for their 1 billion hits per month option. Going from free to USD150,000 was too much of a stretch for a growing company.

  “Your data volume (1XXM hits) exceeds the limit of 10M hits per month …”, what did this message mean?

  With the free version, Mark could collect up to 10 million “hits” per month, per account. Going over meant Google Analytics could stop collecting any more data for free as outlined in their Terms.

  Google Analytics’ Terms of Service (2018, sec. 2) states, “Subject to Section 15, the Service is provided without charge to You for up to 10 million Hits per month per account.”[1]

  In general, what's a "hit"?

  Data being sent to Google Analytics. It can be a transaction, event, social interaction or pageview - these all produce what Google calls a “hit”.

  

  And their Analytics Help Data Limits (n.d.) support page makes clear that: “If a property sends more hits per month to Analytics than allowed by the Analytics Terms of Service, there is no assurance that the excess hits will be processed. If the property’s hit volume exceeds this limit, a warning may be displayed in the user interface and you may be prevented from accessing reports.”[2]

  

  Possible solutions

  So the possible solutions given by Google Analytics’ Data Limits support page were (also shown in image below):

  • To pay USD150K to upgrade to Google Analytics 360
  • To send fewer hits by setting up sampling
  • Or choose the slightly less relevant option to upgrade mobile app tracking to Google Analytics for Firebase.

  Without the means to pay, the free version was fast becoming inaccessible for Mark as he was facing a future where he risked no longer having access to up-to-date data used in his business’ reporting.

  Mark was facing a problem that potentially didn’t have a cost-effective solution.

  

  So what can you really do about it?

  This is where we can help provide some assistance. If you’re reading this article, we’ll assume you can relate to Mark and share with you the advice on options we gave him.

  Options:

  One option posed by Google is for you to send fewer hits by auditing your data collection processes

  If you really don’t have the budget, you’ll need to reassess your data collection priorities and go over your strategies to see what is necessary to track, and what isn’t.

  • Make sure you know what you’re tracking and why. Look at what websites are being tracked by Google and into what properties.
  • Go through what data you’re tracking and decide what is or isn’t of value.
  • Set up data sampling, this however, will lead to inaccurate data.

  From here you can start to course correct. If you’ve found data you’re not using for analysis, get rid of these events/pageviews in your Google Analytics.

  But the limitations here are that eventually, you’re going to run out of irrelevant metrics and everything you’re tracking will be essential. So you’ll hit another brick wall and return to the same situation.

  Option 2 – Ignore and continue using the free version of Google Analytics

  With this option, you’ll have to bear the business risks involved by basing decisions off of analytics reports that may or may not be updated. In this case, you may still get contacted about exceeding the limits. As the free service is provided for only up to 10 million hits, once you’ve gone over them, you’re violating what’s stipulated in the Terms of Service. 

  There’s also the warning that “… you may be prevented from accessing reports” (Data limits, n.d.). So while we may not know for certain what Google Analytics will do, in this case it may be better to be safe rather than sorry by acting quickly to resolve it. 

  Option 3 –The Matomo solution. Upgrade to a web analytics platform that can handle your demanding data requirements

  Save money while continuing to gain valuable insights by moving over to Matomo Analytics (recommended)

  This is where you can save up to USD130,000 a year. As well as that, the transition from Google Analytics to the Matomo Cloud is a seamless experience as setup and maintenance is taken care of by our experts.

  For example, you can get up to 15M pageviews for USD1,612.50/month (or USD19,350/year) on the Essentials plan.

  Or even 25M pageviews for USD2400/month (or USD24000/year) on the Business plan – which offers additional web analytics and conversion optimization resources.

  Matomo Cloud is a great option if you’re looking for a secure, cost-effective and powerful analytics solution. You also get what Google Analytics could never offer you: full control and ownership of your own data and privacy. 

  No need to worry about losing your Google Analytics data because …

  Now you can import your historic Google Analytics data directly into your Matomo with the Google Analytics Importer tool. Simply follow the step-by-step guide to get started for free.

  Along with savings you can get:

  • A solution for the data limits issue forever. You choose the right plan to suit your data needs and adapt as you continue growing
  • 100% accurate data (no data sampling)
  • 100% data ownership of all your information without signing away your data to a third party
  • Powerful web analytics and conversion optimization features
  • Matomo Tag Manager
  • Easy setup
  • Support from Matomo’s specialists

  Learn more about Matomo Cloud pricing.

  

  Or go for Matomo On-Premise

  If you have the in-house infrastructure to support self-hosting Matomo on your own servers then there’s also the option of Matomo On-Premise. Here you’ll get full security knowing the data is on your own servers. 

  Setup will also require technical knowledge. There will also be costs associated with acquiring your own servers, and keeping up with regular maintenance and updates. With On-Premise you get maximum flexibility, with no data limits whatsoever. But if you’re coming over from Google Analytics and don’t have the infrastructure and team to host On-Premise, the Matomo Cloud could be right for you.

  Learn more about Matomo On-Premise.

  Where do you go from here?

  Getting 10 millions hits per month is no small feat, it’s actually pretty fantastic. But if it means having to shell out USD150,000 just to be able to continue with Google Analytics, we feel your problem could be fixed with Matomo Cloud. You could then put the rest of the money you save to better use.

  If you choose Matomo, you now have the option to: 

  • Raise your data limits for a fraction of Google Analytics 360’s price
  • Get a comprehensive range of analytics features for the most impactful insights to ensure your website continues excelling
  • Get data that’s not sampled – meaning 100% accuracy in your reports
  • Migrate your data easily with the help of Matomo’s support team

  We’ll have you covered. 

  By sharing with you the options and advice we gave to Mark, we hope you’ll be able to find a solution that makes your life easier and solves the issue of data restrictions forever.

  The team at Matomo is here to help you every step of the way to ensure a stress-free transition from Google Analytics if that is what works best for you.

  For next steps, why not check out our pricing page to see what could suit your needs!

  References:

  [1] Terms of Service. (2018, July 24). In Google Analytics Terms of Service. Retrieved June 12, 2019, from  https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html

  [2] Data limits. (n.d.). In Analytics Help Data limits. Retrieved June 12, 2019, from https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1070983?hl=en

• Easily track Events within Matomo Analytics thanks to Matomo Tag Manager

  7 juin 2019, par Matomo Core Team — Analytics Tips

  Easily track Events within Matomo Analytics thanks to Matomo Tag Manager

  Introduction

  In this article we’ll cover what events in Matomo Analytics are; and how you can easily set them up thanks to Matomo Tag Manager.

  Key concepts within this article

  • Events
  • Quick definition of the Tag Management System
  • Matomo config
  • Creating triggers
  • Variables

  What are events in Matomo Analytics and why are they useful?

  Events allow you to measure interactions on your website which are not defined by default. With them you can measure clicks on some elements of a page, such as, how visitors are interacting with dropdown menus, media players, scrolling behaviours etc. You can also use them to define goals which make them a key feature in Matomo Analytics. Learn more about tracking events in Matomo.

  You can easily access the Events report in Matomo Analytics by clicking on the Behaviour category:

  

  And you may read the following message and feel a bit frustrated:

  

  “There is no data for this report” is a nice way to say, “Hey, you are tracking just a tiny part of what Matomo Analytics can do for you.”

  Matomo is a great software, but it can’t guess what you want to track.

  In order for Matomo to register those event tracking interactions, you’ll need to explain it by adding a line of code similar to this one when the interaction happens:

   

  _paq.push(['trackEvent', 'Here you enter whatever you want', 'Here too', 'and here also']);

   

  Let’s imagine you want to track a click on an HTML button, your code will look something similar to this at the moment of the interaction:

  Click Me!

  As you can imagine, two main challenges will arise for non developers:

  1. How to access the source code?
  2. How to define the interaction?

  Luckily, Matomo Tag Manager makes those steps easy for you. Let’s see how the same tracking is implemented with Matomo Tag Manager.

  A quick definition of what Matomo Tag Manager is

  Matomo Tag Manager lets you manage all your tracking and marketing tags in one easy-to-access place. Please visit this page to learn more about Matomo Tag Manager. In order to start using it, you’ll need to copy/paste a tracking code, named a “container”, within the section of your pages.

  Once the container is on your website, all you need to do is to follow these simple steps:

  1. Add a Matomo Tag.
  2. Assign the condition to fire the tag (what we call the trigger).
  3. Publish your work.
  4. And enjoy

  1 – Add a Matomo Event tracking code

  All you have to do here is click on “CREATE NEW TAG”

  

  Once selected, just mention how you’d like this tag to be named (it is for your internal purpose here so always use an explicit tag name) and the Matomo configuration (the default configuration setting will be fine in most of the cases):

  

  Then Matomo Tag Manager will ask you the type of tracking you’d like to deploy, in this case, this is an event so select “Event”:

  

  Then all you need is to indicate the values you’d like to push through your event:

  

  To put it in perspective, all we did here through Matomo Tag Manager was implement the equivalent of the following line of code:

  _paq.push(['trackEvent', 'Element interactions', 'Click button', 'Click Me']);

  Let’s now see how can we do this on click code part which we call a trigger.

  2 – Assign the condition to fire the tag

  In order to execute the event we’ll need to define when it will happen. You do this by clicking on Create a new trigger now:

  

  As the interaction we’d like to track is happening when a click occurs, it will be a click trigger, and as our button is not a link, we’ll select All Elements Click:

  

  Once selected you’ll need to be precise on the condition in which the event will be triggered. In this case we do not want to have events pushed every time someone is clicking on something on our website. We only want to track when they click on this specific button. That’s the reason why our trigger is set to fire only when the click occurs on an element which has an id and has the value “cta”:

  Once you click on the green button named CREATE NEW TRIGGER, you validate the tag by clicking on CREATE NEW TAG:

  

  

  Then you can move to the last part.

  3 – Publish your work

  Tag Managers are very powerful as they allow you to easily execute any JavaScript code, CSS or even text content on your websites.

  That’s why when you create your tag it doesn’t go live straight away on your website. In order to do this you need to publish your tag and this is what the “Publish” category is designed for:

  

  After that, click on the second button if you’re confident your tag and trigger are both ready to go live:

  

  4 – Enjoy

  Well done. As your tag is now live, every click made on this button will now be pushed to your Matomo Analytics account within:
  

  1. The visitor log report:

  

  2. The events report:

  

  You may now be asking, “That’s great, but can I collect something more exciting than clicks?” 

  Of course you can! This is what the Matomo Tag Manager is all about.

  As long as you can express it through a trigger you can really push whatever you want to Matomo Analytics. You can track scrolling patterns, an element visible on the page like an image, an ad or the time spent on the page. The options are now open to you with Tag Manager.

  Give them a try! Change the triggers, start playing around with variables and discover that the possibilities are endless.

  Happy analytics,
  Matomo team

• Today we celebrate Data Privacy Day 2019

  28 janvier 2019, par Jake Thornton — Privacy
  Today we celebrate Data Privacy Day 2019!!!

  What is Data Privacy Day?

  Wikipedia tells us that : The purpose of Data Privacy Day is to raise awareness and promote privacy and data protection best practices.

  Our personal data is our online identity. When you think what personal data means – our phone records, credit card transactions, GPS position, IP addresses, browsing history and so much more. All so valuable and personal to us as human beings.

  That’s why we cannot take our personal data online for granted. We have a right to know which websites collect our data and how it’s then used, something that’s often not visible or easily recognisable when browsing.

  What Data Privacy Day means to Matomo

  Every year the team at Matomo uses this day as a chance to reflect on how far the Matomo (formerly Piwik) project has come. But then also reflect how far we still have to go in spreading the message that our data and personal information online matters.

  2018 saw the introduction of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to protect people’s data online. As a team, Matomo was at the forefront of this development in the analytics space and have since built a GDPR Manager to ensure our users can be fully compliant with the GDPR.

  With every new release of Matomo, we are ensuring that security continues to be at the highest standard and we will continue to be committed to our bug bounty program. Our most recent release of Matomo 3.8.0 alone added a Two Factor Authentication (2FA) feature and a password brute force prevention.

  What next for Matomo and data privacy?

  As always, security is a top priority for every new release of Matomo and continues to only get better and better. We have a duty to spread our message further that the protection of personal data matters and today is a vital reminder of that. We are, and forever will be, the #1 open-source (and free to use) web analytics platform in the world that fully respects user privacy and gives our users 100% data ownership.

  In 2018 we changed our name, we updated our logo and website, and advanced our platform to compete with the most powerful web analytics tools in the world, all so we can spread our message further and continue our mission.

  Come with us on this exciting journey. Now is the time to take back control of your data and let’s continue creating a safer web for everyone.

  Please help us spread this message.

• Why Matomo is a serious alternative to Google Analytics 360

  12 décembre 2018, par Jake Thornton — Marketing
  There’s no doubt about it, the free version of Google Analytics offers great value when it comes to making data-driven decisions for your business. But as your business starts to grow, so does the need for a more powerful web analytics tool.
  
  Why would I need to use a different web analytics tool? It’s because Google Analytics (free version) is very limited when it comes to meeting the needs of a fast growing business whose website plays a pivotal role in converting its customers.
  
  This is where the Google Analytics 360 suite comes in, which is designed to meet the needs of businesses looking to get more accurate and insightful metrics.

  So what’s holding a growing business back from using Google Analytics 360?

  While GA360 sounds like a great option when upgrading your web analytics platform, we have found there are three core reasons holding businesses back from taking the leap:

  • Businesses can’t bear to swallow the US$150,000+ price tag (per year!) that comes with upgrading
  • Businesses can’t rely on GA360 to give them all the insights they need
  • Businesses want more control and ownership of their data

  Thankfully there are (only a few) alternatives and as the leading open-source alternative to Google Analytics, we hope to share insights on why Matomo Analytics can be the perfect solution for anyone at this crossroads in their web analytics journey.

  First, what does Google Analytics 360 offer that Google Analytics (free) doesn’t?

  There’s no doubt about it, the GA360 suite is designed for larger sized businesses with demanding data limits, big budgets to use across the Google Marketing Platform (Google Adwords, DoubleClick etc.) and to get more advanced reporting visualisations and options.
  

  Data Sampling

  Data sampling is the elephant in the room when it comes to comparing GA360 with the freemium version. This is an entire article in its own right but at a basic level, Google Analytics samples your data (makes assumptions based on patterns) once the number of traffic visiting your website reaches a certain limit.

  Google Analytics provides the following information:

  Ad-hoc queries of your data are subject to the following general thresholds for sampling: Analytics Standard: 500k sessions at the property level for the date range you are using Analytics 360: 100M sessions at the view level for the date range you are using

  In short, sampled data means inaccurate data. This is why as businesses grow, GA360 becomes a more attractive prospect because there’s no point making data-driven business decisions based on inaccurate data. This is a key weapon Google uses when selling to large businesses, however, this may not seem as concerning if you’re a small business within the sampled data range. For small businesses though, make sure you know the full extent of how this can affect your metrics, for example, your ecommerce data could be sampled, hence your GA reporting not matching your CRM/Ecommerce store data.
  
  Benefit of using Matomo: There is no data sampling anywhere in Matomo Analytics, that’s why we say 100% Accurate Data reporting across all plans.

  

  Integration with the Google Marketing Platform

  Yes ok, we’ll admit it, GA does a great job at integrating seamlessly with its own products like Google Ads, Google Optimize etc. with a touch of Salesforce integration; while GA360 takes this to another level compared to it’s freemium version (integration with Google Search 360, Google Display & Video 360 etc.)
  
  But… what about non-Google advertising platforms? Well with Google being a dominant leader as a search engine, web browser, email provider, social media channel; sometimes Google needs to keep its best interests at heart.
  
  Google is an online advertising giant and a bonus of Google Search 360 is that you can integrate your Bing Ads, Baidu and Yahoo Japan Search campaigns but that’s about it when it comes to integrations from its direct competitors. 
  
  Benefit of using Matomo: No biased treatment. You can integrate your Google, Yahoo and Bing search consoles for accurate search engine reporting, and in early 2019, Matomo will be releasing a Google Ads, Bing Ads and Facebook Ads Manager integration feature.

  Roll-Up Reporting
  

  Roll-up reporting lets you combine multiple accounts and properties into one view. This is a great benefit when upgrading from GA freemium to GA360. For example, if you’re a digital agency with multiple clients or you manage multiple websites under the one account, the roll-up reporting feature is wonderful when you need to combine data and reporting, instantly.
  
  Benefit of using Matomo: Matomo’s got this covered! Roll-up reporting is available in the Matomo Business package (starting at $29 per month) for cloud hosting or you can purchase as a Premium Feature for On-Premise starting at $99 per year.

  Staying in full control of your data

  Who would have thought that one of biggest reasons people choose Matomo isn’t because of anything that leads to a higher ROI, but for the fact that users want more control of their data.
  

  Matomo’s philosophy around data ownership is simple, you own your data, no one else. If you choose to host Matomo Analytics On-Premise then you are in complete control because your data is stored on your own servers where no one can gain access to it in whichever country you choose.
  
  So what about when you cloud host Matomo? For users who don’t have the technical knowledge to host Matomo On-Premise, you can still have 100% data ownership and fully respect your user’s privacy when choosing to host Matomo Analytics through our cloud service.
  
  The difference between cloud hosting Matomo Analytics vs Google Analytics is that when you choose Matomo, we acknowledge you own the data and we have no right to access it. This means we can’t on-sell it to third-parties, we can’t claim ownership of it, you can export your data at anytime (how awesome is that!) and you can migrate between cloud hosting and hosting on-premise for ultimate flexibility whenever you want.
  
  Matomo also prides itself in allowing its users to be GDPR compliant with ease with a powerful GDPR Manager.

  Businesses can’t rely on Google Analytics 360 to give them all the insights they need

  Unlike Google Analytics 360, Matomo blends its Premium Web Analytics platform with Conversion Optimization features to allow its users to fully evaluate the user-experience on your website.

  Matomo is designed to be a complete analytics platform, meaning you have everything you need all in the one place which gives you greater insights and better business outcomes.
  
  
  These features include:

  Premium Web Analytics – You can still (accurately) measure all the basic metrics you love and are familiar with in Google Analytics like Location, Referrer traffic, Multi Attribution, Campaign Tracking and Ecommerce etc.

  Conversion Optimization – Eliminate the need for multiple analytics tools to get what Google Analytics doesn’t offer. These features include Heatmaps, Session Recordings, Form Analytics and more – giving you the best chance possible to convert more traffic by evaluating the user-experience.

  By having one tool for all your features you can integrate metrics, have one single view for all your data and it’s easy to use.

  Enhanced SEO – Get more insights into the performance of your search campaigns with unbiased search engine reporting, keyword ranking positions, integration with multiple search consoles and crawling stats. Google Analytics offers limited features to help with your SEO campaigns and only integrates with Google products.

  Visitor Profiles – Get a detailed life-time evaluation of every user who visits your website.

  Tag Manager – A powerful open-source Tag Manager tool to embed your third-party marketing tags. By being open-source and with our commitment to giving you 100% data ownership, you can always ensure you are in full control.

  Full Matomo vs Google Analytics 360 Comparison Table

  Just putting it out there ...

  Google leads the market with its freemium tool which offers great insights for businesses (fyi – Matomo has a forever free analytics tool too!), but when it comes to upgrading to get accurate reporting (kind of a big deal), owning your own data (a huge deal!) and having a complete range of features to excel ROI for your business, Matomo Analytics is often a preferred option to the Google Analytics 360 suite.

  Matomo is designed to be easy to use, is fully flexible and gives users full peace of mind by respecting user privacy. Want to learn more about the benefits of Matomo?

• Matomo Tag Manager out of beta, now available !

  11 décembre 2018, par Matomo Core Team — Community, Development

  Matomo’s free open-source Tag Manager is out of beta and now available in Matomo 3.7.0! ⟎