Piwik

Les articles publiés sur le site

• How to configure and validate a Funnel in Piwik Analytics

  16 janvier 2017, par InnoCraft — Community

  In the last blog post we have covered how the conversion Funnel plugin enriches your Piwik experience. This post will focus on how to configure and validate your funnel in Piwik so you get the correct data when you view the funnel reports. When you set up a funnel, it is crucial to have it configured correctly as the funnel report will be only as good as its configuration. When we built this Funnel feature, we focused on making the configuration and validation real simple because it is so important to get it right.

  To recap quickly: A Funnel defines a series of steps that you expect your visitors to take on their way to converting a goal or a sale. Funnels, a premium feature for Piwik developed by InnoCraft, lets you define funnels so you can improve your websites and mobile apps based on this data. Learn more about Funnel.

  Configuring a funnel

  As you will notice Funnels integrates nicely into the Piwik Goals management. You can configure a funnel whenever you create or update a goal. You can access the Goals Management either via “Administration => Goals” or via the reporting menu “Goals => Manage”. Then click on either “Add a new goal” or select an existing goal to edit it. At the bottom of the goal form, you will see a new row letting you configure a funnel. As with all our premium features we focused on displaying lots of inline help and explain directly in the UI what a funnel is about, what the steps are in order to configure a funnel, how a funnel helps you and more. This lets you use the Funnel feature even if you have never created or analyzed a funnel before.

  Preparing your Funnel configuration

  Before starting to configure a Funnel we usually have a brainstorm session identifying the funnels on a website or app and the paths we expect users to take there. Once we have identified each step, we click through those identified pages in our website and we note the URLs for each page as the URLs will be needed when you configure a funnel.

  Setting up a Goal

  Once we have finished the planning phase it is time to log into Piwik. We start by either adding a new goal or selecting an existing goal. If you are unfamiliar with setting up goals, have a look at the Piwik Goals user guide. At the bottom of a goal form when you create or update a goal, you can configure your funnel. The UI will first explain you everything about Funnels, what they are, how they help you and which steps you need to take in order to configure it.

  Configuring Funnel steps

  We start by configuring the steps we have identified in the planning phase. Those are the steps we expect our users to take when they convert a goal or purchase something. Now we need to add a step for each page we expect users to take, each step consists of a name and a pattern.

  The name will be shown to you in the funnel reporting so think of a good name that describes each step best, for example “Product”, “Cart”, “Checkout” and “Order”.

  The pattern is needed to define when a visitor will enter this step. Here it comes in handy to have already notes for each URL from the planning phase. You can select lots of different patterns based on “URL Path”, “URL” and “URL parameter”. For example “URL starts with”, “Path ends with”, “URL contains”, “URL matches the regular expression”, and more. Most tools make this configuration unnecessarily hard because they only allow you to choose from one or two patterns (only complicated pattern like regular expressions) and they don’t let you validate whether the URL you have in mind actually matches the pattern. There are three ways to validate your step configurations.

  

  Validating funnel steps

  When we configure a funnel, we validate our steps in the following three ways.

  1. Via the help icon next to the step configuration

  When you click on the help icon, you will receive valuable tips about configuring steps, what “required” means and how to match popular pages. It will also show you a list of all URLs that were tracked in your Piwik in the past and match your specified pattern. For example say you specify a pattern “Path starts with /products”, then Piwik will list all URLs that were tracked in the past matching this pattern. This lets you validate whether your pattern actually matches the URLs you had in mind. It will also show you if the pattern doesn’t match any known URL which can indicate that your configuration may be wrong.

  

  2. Via the URL validator

  Below the steps configuration you find a form field that lets you enter any URL.

  

  We recommend to enter each URL that you have noted before in the planning phase. Once you enter a URL, the configurations will be validated immediately and the result will be shown to you in the step configuration. When a step matches your specified URL, the background will become green, when a step does not match the URL, the background will be red.

  

  If the URL does not match the expected step, simply change your step configuration and the steps will be re-validated as you change the configuration. This way you will see instantly as soon as you got the configuration right.

  What you don’t want is that either all of your steps don’t match (red background) or that several steps match a certain URL (green background). When several step match one URL, then one visitor might enter several funnel steps on just one page. This usually indicates a problem with the step configuration.

  3. Manual funnel validation

  After we have created or updated the goal (more about this soon), we always test a funnel configuration manually. This means we now open our website and click through the pages that we hand in mind and check afterwards whether the steps we took actually appear in the funnel report as expected. This is just another safety net to make sure your funnel configuration is right.

  It is really crucial to have a correct funnel configuration as otherwise the shown data in the funnel reports might not be as helpful. That’s why we focused so much on making the validation part real easy.

  Activating and saving the funnel

  Once you are happy with your configuration, it is time to activate your funnel. As soon as you activate your funnel, a report for this funnel will be generated and the links and reports for this funnel will be visible in the UI. If you are later no longer interested in the funnel, simply deactivate the funnel so it won’t appear in the reporting UI anymore.

  

  To save your funnel configuration simply click on either “Add goal” or “Update goal”. The funnel will be automatically saved whenever you update your goal.

  Goals Management

  The funnel plugin also enriches the list of goals in the Piwik goal management. At a glance you can see whether a funnel for a goal is configured and activated (green tick in the funnel column), whether a funnel is configured but not activated (grey tick in the funnel column) or whether no funnel is configured for a goal (no tick at all).

  

  How to get Funnels and related features

  You can get Funnels on the Piwik Marketplace. If you want to learn more about Funnels you might be also interested in the Funnel User Guide and the Funnel FAQ.

  Similar to Funnels we also offer Users Flow which lets you visualize the flow of your users and visitors across several interactions.

• How Funnel for Piwik Analytics enriches your Piwik experience giving you ultimate insights and debugging capabilities

  13 janvier 2017, par InnoCraft — Community

  No matter what type of website or app you have, whether you are trying to get your users to sign up for something or sell products, there is a certain number of steps your visitors have to go through. On every step you lose visitors and therefore potential revenue and conversions. Therefore it is critical to know where your visitors actually follow those steps in your website or app, where you lose them and where your visitors maybe get confused. By defining a funnel, you can improve your conversion rates, sales and revenue as you can exactly determine where you lose your visitors in converting your goal or a sale.

  A Funnel defines a series of steps that you expect your visitors to take on their way to converting a goal. Funnels, a premium feature for Piwik developed by InnoCraft, lets you create funnels to get the data you need to improve your websites and mobile apps. Learn more about Funnel.

  In this blog post we will cover the reports the Funnel plugin provides. The next blog post shows you how to configure and validate your funnel in Piwik.

  

  Integration in Goal reports

  At Piwik and InnoCraft, we usually start looking into our goal reports. Funnel integrates directly into each goal reporting page giving you a quick overview how your funnel is doing. This saves us a lot of time as we don’t have to separately look into each funnel page and only takes us maybe an additional second to keep an eye on our funnels. By clicking on the headline or “View funnel report” link, you can directly go to the funnel report to get a more detailed report if you notice any spike in the evolution of the conversions or conversion rate.

  

  Getting an overall Funnel overview

  Next we usually go to the “Funnel Overview” page where it shows a list of all activated Funnels and their performance over time. You will find the look familiar as it is similar to the “Goals Overview” page. If we find something unusual there, for example any spikes, we usually directly click on the headline of the Funnel to go to the detailed Funnel report. You can also choose a funnel from the left reporting menu or search for a funnel by entering the shortcut “f”.

  

  Viewing a funnel report

  A funnel reporting page looks very similar to a Goal reporting page. It starts with an evolution graph and sparklines showing you the performance of your funnel over time.

  

  In the evolution graph you can select the metrics you want to plot. We usually have an eye on the funnel conversion rate and the number of “Funnel entries” or the number of “Funnel conversions”. The conversion rate alone does not show you how your funnel is performing. Imagine the rate is always stable at around 20% and you might think everything is alright, but if the number of visitors that take part in your funnel goes down, you might have a problem as the number of funnel conversions actually decreases even though the rate is the same. So we recommend to not only have a look at the conversion rate. The report will remember the metrics you want to plot each time you open it so you don’t have to re-select them over and over again.

  

  The funnel overview

  In the funnel overview we are giving you more details about the funnel and goal related conversion metrics so you don’t have to switch between the goal and funnel report and compare them easily.

  When you analyze a funnel report, you might not always remember how the funnel is configured. Even though you specify names for each step you sometimes need to know on which pages a certain step will be activated. By clicking on the funnel summary link you can quickly look into the funnel configuration and also see all important metrics at a glance in a simple table without having to scroll.

  

  You might also notice the Visitor Log link which will show you all actions for all visitors that have entered this funnel. This lets you really understand how your visitors navigate through your website and how they proceeded, exited or converted your funnel on a visitor level.

  

  The Funnel visualization

  Below the funnel overview you can visually see where your visitors entered, proceeded, converted and exited your funnel. We kept the UI clean so you can focus on the important things.

  Most tools only give you the pages where visitors have entered your funnel but we do better and also show you the list of external referrers used by visitors to enter your funnel directly (marketing campaigns, search engines or other websites). Also we do not only show only the top 5 pages but up to 100 pages and 50 referrers (more can be configured if needed). When you hover a row, you will not only see the number of hits but also the percentage each row has contributed to the entries. Here you want to look and understand how your visitors enter your funnel and based on the data maybe invest in successful referrers, campaigns and pages. If the pages or referrers you expect to see there don’t show up, your users might not understand the path you had in mind for them.

  

  Next you may notice how many visits have gone through each step, in this case 3487 visits. The green and red bar lets you quickly identify how many of your visitors have proceeded to the next step (green) compared to how many have exited the funnel at this step (red). Ideally, most of the bar is green and not red indicating that more visitors proceed to the next step than they exit.

  

  Now the next feature is really valuable. When you hover the step title or the number of visits, you will notice that two icons appear:

  

  Those two little icons are really powerful and give you even more insights to really dig into all the data. The left icon shows you the visitor log showing all actions of each visitor that have participated in this particular funnel step. This means for each step you get to see all the details and actions of each visitor. This lets you really debug and understand problems in your funnel.

  At InnoCraft, we understand that plain numbers are often not so valuable. Only the evolution over time, when you put the numbers in relation to something else you can really understand how your website is doing. The icon to the right lets you do exactly this, it lets you view the row evolution for each funnel step. We are sure you will enjoy this feature. It lets you explore how each funnel step is doing over time. For example the number of entries for a step or how many proceeded to the next step from here over time. Here you ideally want to see that the “Proceeded Rate” increases over time, meaning more and more visitors actually proceed to the next step instead of exiting it.

  

  We are sure you will really love those features that give you just those extra insights that other tools don’t give you.

  On the right you can find out where your visitors went to, if they did not proceed any further in the funnel. This lets you better understand why they left the funnel and did not proceed any further.

  

  At the end of the funnel report you find again the number of conversions and the conversion rate. Here we recommend looking into the visitor log when you hover the name of the last step as you can analyze how each visitor converted this funnel in detail.

  

  Applying segments

  Funnels lets you apply any Piwik segment to the Funnel report allowing you to dice your visitors multiplying the value you get out of Funnel. For example you may want to apply a segment and analyze the funnel for visitors that have visited your website or mobile app for the first time vs. recurring visitors. Sometimes it may be interesting how visitors from different countries go through your funnel, the possibilities are endless. We really recommend to take advantage of segments to understand your different target groups even better.

  The plugin also adds some new segments to your Piwik letting you segment any Piwik report by visitors that have participated in a funnel or participated in a particular funnel step. For example you could go to the “Visitors => Locations” report and apply a segment for your funnel to see which countries have participated or converted most in your funnel.

  Widgets, Scheduled Reports, and more.

  This is not where the fun ends. Funnels defines new widgets that you can add to your dashboard or export it into a third party website. You can set up scheduled reports to receive the Funnel report automatically via email or sms or download the report to share it with your colleagues. It works also very well with Custom Alerts and you can view the Funnel report in the Piwik Mobile app. You can manage Funnels via HTTP API and also fetch all Funnel reports via the HTTP Reporting API. The plugin is really nicely integrated into Piwik we will need some more blog posts to show you all the ways Funnels advances your Piwik experience and how it lets you dig into all the data so you can increase your conversions and sales based on this data.

  How to get Funnels and related features

  You can get Funnels on the Piwik Marketplace. If you want to learn more about Funnels you might be also interested in the Funnel User Guide and the Funnel FAQ.

  Similar to Funnels we also offer Users Flow which lets you visualize the flow of your users and visitors across several interactions.

• New proposed ePrivacy Regulation and why Piwik might not need tracking consent compared to Google Analytics & co

  11 janvier 2017, par InnoCraft — Community

  The EU is proposing new ePrivacy Regulations. The proposed Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications will increase the protection of people’s private life and open up new opportunities for business.

  

  The new ePrivacy Regulation proposal

  The proposal mentions several changes for example to the “Cookie Law” where no longer a cookie consent will be needed when the cookies improve the user’s internet experience, for example to remember the shopping cart history or when completing a form over several pages.

  However, consent to track a user’s behaviour may be needed in the future, unless the analytics data collection is hosted on the first-party website.

  From TheRegister: O’Neil noted a minor change in which visitors to a website for analytics purposes do not require consent, as long as any personal data collected is only processed by the first party.

  

  First party Analytics respecting privacy

  Piwik is an open-source analytics platform that is used on more than 1 million websites and apps in over 150 countries, and available in more than 50 languages. The difference with other analytics solutions is that you can download and install Piwik on your own infrastructure. Websites and mobile apps tracking users with their own Piwik very likely won’t require a consent from their users if these regulations become reality.

  We have regularly written about why privacy matters, or more recently 11 ways Piwik Analytics helps you to protect your visitors privacy.

  Besides the standard Piwik features, there are Premium Features that let businesses and organizations further maximize their success based on the tracked data. Need help in hosting Piwik on premise? InnoCraft are THE Piwik experts and know it best as it is the company of the makers of Piwik. InnoCraft provides support subscriptions and enterprise packages to help you setting up, configuring and maintaining Piwik on your infrastructure as well as offer training and custom development.

  

  We’re excited to be building the best digital analytics platform which respects our privacy on the Internet.

  Thank you for being a valued member of the Piwik community!

• 11 ways Piwik Analytics helps you to protect your visitors privacy

  11 janvier 2017, par InnoCraft — Community

  At Piwik and at InnoCraft, we think Privacy matters. From the beginning, Piwik has had a strong focus on privacy and ensures the privacy of your visitors and analytics data. As a result, Piwik has been recommended as a privacy-compliant analytics tool for example by the Independent Center for Privacy Protection in Germany (ULD) and by the Center for Data Privacy Protection in France (CNIL). In France, Piwik is the only web analytics tool that does not require Cookie Consent.

  Here are some ways how you can ensure your users and visitors privacy by using Piwik.

  1. You own the data

  Whether you host Piwik on premise yourself, managed on premise by InnoCraft, or whether you use our Piwik cloud, when you use Piwik, YOU keep control of your data and nobody else. This also means you can decide where your data should be located physically.

  2. Anonymized IP addresses

  For better privacy by default, Piwik will not record the full IP address of your visitors because otherwise the browsing history could be easily tracked across several days and even across websites within the same Piwik server. Some countries even require to anonymize the IP address, considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

  To change the IP anonymization settings go to “Administration > Privacy”. Optionally, you can use the full IP to still get for example accurate location data.

  

  3. Delete old visitor logs

  The visitor logs contain information all the collected raw data about every visitor and every action. You can configure Piwik to automatically delete logs from the database. When you delete old logs, only the real time and visitor log reports will no longer work for this old time period, all other aggregated reports will still work.

  For privacy reasons, we highly recommend that you keep the detailed Piwik logs for only 3 to 6 months and delete older log data. This has one other nice side effect: it will free significant database space, which will, in turn, slightly increase performance!

  

  4. Support Do Not Track preference

  Do Not Track enables users to opt out of any tracking by websites they do not visit, including analytics services, advertising networks, and social platforms. By default, Piwik respects users preference and will not track visitors which have specified “I do not want to be tracked” in their web browsers. Get more information about DoNotTrack.

  To make sure Do Not Track is respected, go to “Administration => Privacy”.

  5. Include an Opt-Out Feature on your website or app

  By embedding the Opt-Out feature in your website, you give your visitors the possibility to opt-out of the tracking. When you go to “Administration > Privacy”, you will be able to copy and paste an HTML Iframe code to embed the opt-out feature for example into your privacy policy page or in your ‘Legal’ page. Your users can then click on a link to opt-out.

  On the Piwik Marketplace there are also some plugins available to customize the Opt-Out experience. For example AjaxOptOut and CustomOptOut.

  

  6. Disable Live features

  The Real-Time, Visitor Log and Visitor Profile features give you insights into the tracked raw data by showing you details about every visitor and every action they performed. To protect the privacy of your visitors you may decide to prevent access to such features by disabling the “Live” plugin in “Administration => Plugins”. This way only aggregated reports will be shown in your Piwik.

  7. Disable fingerprinting across websites

  By default, when one of your visitors visits several of your websites, Piwik will create a fingerprint for this user that will be different across the websites to increase the visitors’ privacy. You can make sure that this feature is disabled by going to “Administration => Config file” and verifying that the value of “enable_fingerprinting_across_websites” is set to zero.

  8. Disable tracking cookies

  Piwik uses cookies to store some information about visitors between visits. In some countries, the legislation requires websites to provide a way for users to opt-out of all tracking, in particular tracking cookies. You can disable cookies by adding one line in the Piwik Javascript code.

  9. Custom development

  Piwik is an open platform that lets you extend and customize the tracking, the reporting and the Piwik user interface to your needs and to protect your visitors’ privacy the way you want or need it. Learn more in the Piwik Developer Zone. You may also have a look at our Piwik Marketplace where you can find several free and premium features to extend your Piwik.

  10. Transparency

  By default, all information and all collected data in your Piwik server are protected and nobody can access it. However, Piwik allows you to optionally make your collected data public and you can export any Piwik report including the whole dashboard to embed it into your website. This way you can show your users exactly which information you track. When you decide to make reports public, we do our best to protect privacy and automatically hide any Personally Identifiable Information such as the Visitor Profile and we make sure to not show any Visitor IP address and the Visitor ID.

  11. Privacy policy

  When you use Piwik to track your visitors, we recommend to update your Privacy Policy to explain how Piwik is used and what data it gathers. We provide a Privacy Policy template for Piwik users that you can copy on your site.

  Continuous privacy improvements

  We are always interested in improving the privacy. If you miss any feature or have an idea on how to improve the privacy, please let us know.

  More information about all the Piwik features

  If you want to learn more about all the features in Piwik, have a look at our User Guides and FAQ entries.

• 3 million downloads for Piwik Analytics

  11 janvier 2017, par Matthieu Aubry — Community

  A testament to the power of our mission statement…

  “To create, as a community, the leading international open source digital analytics platform, that gives every user full control of their data.”

  … Piwik has been downloaded more than 3 million times!

  

  Piwik is the most popular open analytics platform

  Piwik is the number one most popular open analytics platform, used on more than 1 million websites in 200 different countries, and the 7th overall most popular analytics tool.

  Together we can make Piwik even better!

  Piwik is a community project. We are so proud of what we have created and would love your help too! Help us by filling in our community survey (takes just 5 minutes!), by getting involved or becoming a sponsor.

  Thank you so much for using Piwik and respecting privacy while keeping control of your data.

  Happy Analytics!