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Discovering our premium on-premise features
In our latest release (Matomo 4.16), we’ve enhanced visibility to the premium On-Premise features within Matomo. Now, it’s easier to maximise the potential of your Matomo On-Premise setup while also supporting our open-source project.
By default, Matomo On-Premise instances will now display available premium features in the left-menu navigation bar. If you prefer, we’ve made it easy to hide or disable the menu items (steps provided below). Note that no features were removed and you still have full access to the same features as before.
We would encourage you to check out our premium features, as thousands of users already find them powerful additions to their analytics.
How to hide or disable menu items
We understand that not everyone will need these premium features listed in their left-menu navigation. That’s why we’ve made it very easy to remove them.
- If you prefer not to see these features listed, each user can hide them by clicking the link “hide this section”. This option is available in each of the new feature pages.
- Alternatively, for administrators wanting to disable these features at an organisational level and for all users at once, you simply need to follow these steps:
- Login as Super User (to your On-Premise Matomo instance)
- Go to Administration > System > Plugins
- Scroll down to the “ProfessionalServices” plugin, and click “Deactivate”
The revenue from premium features helps us innovate and improve Matomo, fueling our strong commitment to the open-source ethos that’s at the heart of everything we do.
Explore the complete range of Matomo On-Premise premium features, developed by Matomo and our passionate community, available in our marketplace. Start a 30-day free trial today and unlock a new level of analytics excellence.
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Conversion Rate Optimisation Statistics for 2024 and Beyond
21 novembre 2023, par Erin — Analytics TipsDriving traffic to your website is only half the battle. The real challenge — once you’ve used a web analytics solution to understand how users behave — is turning more of those visitors into customers.
That doesn’t happen by accident. You need to employ conversion rate optimisation strategies and tools to see even a small lift in conversion rates. The good news is that it doesn’t take much to see massive results. Raising your conversion rate from 1% to 3% can triple your revenue.
In even better news, you don’t have to guess at the best ways to improve your conversion rate. We’ve done the hard work and collected the most recent and relevant conversion rate optimisation statistics to help you.
General conversion rate optimisation statistics
It appears the popularity of conversion rate optimisation is soaring. According to data collected by Google Trends, there were more people searching for the term “conversion rate optimization” in September 2023 than ever before.
As you can see from the chart below, the term’s popularity is on a clear upward trajectory, meaning even more people could be searching for it in the near future. (Source)
Do you want to know what the average landing page conversion rate is? According to research by WordStream, the average website conversion rate across all industries is 2.35%.
That doesn’t paint the whole picture, however. Better-performing websites have significantly higher conversion rates. The top 25% of websites across all industries convert at a rate of 5.31% or higher. (Source)
Let’s break things down by industry now. The Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report offers a detailed analysis of how landing pages convert across various industries.
First, we have the Finance and Insurance industry, which boasts a conversion rate of 15.6%.
On the other end, agencies appears to be one of the worst-performing. Agencies’ landing pages convert at a rate of 8.8%. (Source)
What about the size of the conversion rate optimisation industry? Given the growth in popularity of the term in Google, surely the industry is experiencing growth, right?
You’d be correct in that assumption. The conversion rate optimisation software market was valued at $771.2 million in 2018 and is projected to reach $1.932 billion by 2026 — a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.6%.
Statistics on the importance of conversion rate optimisation
If you’re reading this article, you probably think conversion rate optimisation is pretty important. But do you know its importance and where it ranks in your competitors’ priorities? Read on to find out.
Bounce rate — the number of people who leave your website without visiting another page or taking action — is the scourge of conversion rate optimisation efforts. Every time someone bounces from your site, you lose the chance to convert them.
The questions, then, are: how often do people bounce on average and how does your bounce rate compare?
Siege Media analysed over 1.3 billion sessions from a range of traffic sources, including 700 million bounces, to calculate an average bounce rate of 50.9%. (Source)
Bounce rates vary massively from website to website and industry to industry, however. Siege Media’s study unveils an array of average bounce rates across industries:
- Travel – 82.58%
- B2B – 65.17%
- Lifestyle – 64.26%
- Business and Finance – 63.51%
- Healthcare – 59.50%
- eCommerce – 54.54%
- Insurance – 45.96%
- Real Estate – 40.78%
It won’t come as much of a surprise to learn that marketers are determined to reduce bounce rates and improve lead conversion. Today’s marketers are highly performance-based. When asked about their priorities for the coming year, 79% of marketers said their priority was generating quality qualified leads — the most popular answer in the survey. (Source)
Just because it is a priority for marketers doesn’t mean that everyone has their stuff together. If you have a conversion rate optimisation process in place, you’re in the minority. According to research by HubSpot, less than one in five marketers (17%) use landing page A/B tests to improve their conversion rates. (Source)
When it comes to personalisation strategies – a common and effective tool to increase conversion rates — the picture isn’t any rosier. Research by Salesforce found just over one-quarter of markets are confident their organisation has a successful strategy for personalisation. (Source)
Conversion rate optimisation tactics statistics
There are hundreds of ways to improve your website’s conversion rates. From changing the color of buttons to the structure of your landing page to your entire conversion funnel, in this section, we’ll look at the most important statistics you need to know when choosing tactics and building your own CRO experiments.
If you are looking for the best method to convert visitors, then email lead generation forms are the way to go, according to HubSpot. This inoffensive and low-barrier data collection method boasts a 15% conversion rate, according to the marketing automation company’s research. (Source)
Where possible, make your call-to-actions personalised. Marketing personalisation, whether through behavioral segmentation or another strategy, is an incredibly powerful way of showing users that you care about their specific needs. It’s no great surprise, then, that HubSpot found personalised calls-to-actions perform a whopping 202% better than basic CTAs. (Source)
If you want to boost conversion rates, then it’s just as important to focus on quantity as well as quality. Yes, a great-looking, well-written landing page will go a long way to improving your conversion rate, but having a dozen of these pages will do even more.
Research by HubSpot found companies see a 55% increase in leads when they increase the number of landing pages from 10 to 15. What’s more, companies with over 40 landing pages increase conversion by more than 500%. (Source)
User-generated content (UGC) should also be high on your priority list to boost conversion rates. Several statistics show how powerful, impactful and persuasive social proof like user reviews can be.
Research shows that visitors who scroll to the point where they encounter user-generated content increase the likelihood they convert by a staggering 102.4%. (Source)
Other trust signs can be just as impactful. Research by Trustpilot found that the following four trust signals make consumers more likely to make a purchase when shown on a product page:
- Positive star rating and reviews (85% more likely to make a purchase)
- Positive star rating (78%)
- Positive customer testimonials (82%)
- Approved or authorised seller badge (76%)
(Source)
Showing ratings and reviews has also increased conversion rates by 38% on home appliances and electronics stores. (Source)
And no wonder, given that consumers are more likely to buy from brands they trust than brands they love, according to the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report. (Source)
A lack of trust is also one of the top four reasons consumers abandon their shopping cart at checkout. (Source)
Traffic source conversion rate statistics
What type of traffic works the best when it comes to conversions, or how often you should be signing up users to your mailing list? Let’s look at the stats to find out.
Email opt-ins are one of the most popular methods for collecting customer information — and an area where digital marketers spend a lot of time and effort when it comes to conversion rate optimisation. So, what is the average conversion rate of an email opt-in box?
According to research by Sumo — based on 3.2 billion users who have seen their opt-in boxes — the average email opt-in rate is 1.95%. (Source)
Search advertising is an effective way of driving website traffic, but how often do those users click on these ads?
WordStream’s research puts the average conversion of search advertising for all industries at 6.11%. (Source)
The arts and entertainment industry enjoys the highest clickthrough rates (11.78%), followed by sports and recreation (10.53%) and travel (10.03%). Legal services and the home improvement industry have the lowest clickthrough rates at 4.76% and 4.8%, respectively.
(Source) If you’re spending money on Google ads, then you’d better hope a significant amount of users convert after clicking them.
Unfortunately, conversion rates from Google ads decreased year-on-year for most industries in 2023, according to research by WordStream — in some cases, those decreases were significant. The only two industries that didn’t see a decrease in conversion rates were beauty and personal care and education and instruction. (Source)
The average conversion rate for search ads across all industries is 7.04%. The animal and pet niche has the highest conversion rate (13.41%), while apparel, fashion and jewelry have the lowest conversion rate (1.57%). (Source)
What about other forms of traffic? Well, there’s good reason to try running interstitial ads on smartphone apps if you aren’t already. Ads on the iOS app see a 14.3 percent conversion rate on average. (Source)
E-commerce conversion rate optimisation statistics (400 words)
Conversion rate optimisation can be the difference between a store that sets new annual sales records and one struggling to get by.
The good news is that the conversion rate among US shoppers was the highest it’s ever been in 2021, with users converting at 2.6%. (Source)
If you have a Shopify store, then you may find conversion rates a little lower. A survey by Littledata found the average conversion rate for Shopify was 1.4% in September 2022. (Source)
What about specific e-commerce categories? According to data provided by Dynamic Yield, the consumer goods category converted at the highest rate in September 2023 (4.22%), a spike of 0.34% from August.
Generally, the food and beverage niche boasts the highest conversion rate (4.87%), and the home and furniture niche has the lowest conversion rate (1.44%). (Source)
If you’re serious about driving sales, don’t focus on mobile devices at the expense of consumers who shop on desktop devices. The conversion rate among US shoppers tends to be higher for desktop users than for mobile users.
In the second quarter of 2022, for instance, desktop shoppers converted at a rate of 3% on average compared to smartphone users who converted at an average rate of 2%. (Source)
Increase your conversions with Matomo
Conversion rate optimisation can help you grow your subscriber list, build your customer base and increase your revenue. Now, it’s time to put what you’ve learned into practice.
Use the advice above to guide your experiments and track everything with Matomo. Achieve unparalleled data accuracy while harnessing an all-in-one solution packed with essential conversion optimisation features, including Heatmaps, Session Recordings and A/B Testing. Matomo makes it easier than ever to analyse conversion-focused experiments.
Get more from your conversion rate optimisations by trying Matomo free for 21 days. No credit card required.
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What is Audience Segmentation ? The 5 Main Types & Examples
16 novembre 2023, par Erin — Analytics TipsThe days of mass marketing with the same message for millions are long gone. Today, savvy marketers instead focus on delivering the most relevant message to the right person at the right time.
They do this at scale by segmenting their audiences based on various data points. This isn’t an easy process because there are many types of audience segmentation. If you take the wrong approach, you risk delivering irrelevant messages to your audience — or breaking their trust with poor data management.
In this article, we’ll break down the most common types of audience segmentation, share examples highlighting their usefulness and cover how you can segment campaigns without breaking data regulations.
What is audience segmentation?
Audience segmentation is when you divide your audience into multiple smaller specific audiences based on various factors. The goal is to deliver a more targeted marketing message or to glean unique insights from analytics.
It can be as broad as dividing a marketing campaign by location or as specific as separating audiences by their interests, hobbies and behaviour.
Audience segmentation inherently makes a lot of sense. Consider this: an urban office worker and a rural farmer have vastly different needs. By targeting your marketing efforts towards agriculture workers in rural areas, you’re honing in on a group more likely to be interested in farm equipment.
Audience segmentation has existed since the beginning of marketing. Advertisers used to select magazines and placements based on who typically read them. They would run a golf club ad in a golf magazine, not in the national newspaper.
How narrow you can make your audience segments by leveraging multiple data points has changed.
Why audience segmentation matters
In a survey by McKinsey, 71% of consumers said they expected personalisation, and 76% get frustrated when a vendor doesn’t deliver.
These numbers reflect expectations from consumers who have actively engaged with a brand — created an account, signed up for an email list or purchased a product.
They expect you to take that data and give them relevant product recommendations — like a shoe polishing kit if you bought nice leather loafers.
If you don’t do any sort of audience segmentation, you’re likely to frustrate your customers with post-sale campaigns. If, for example, you just send the same follow-up email to all customers, you’d damage many relationships. Some might ask: “What? Why would you think I need that?” Then they’d promptly opt out of your email marketing campaigns.
To avoid that, you need to segment your audience so you can deliver relevant content at all stages of the customer journey.
5 key types of audience segmentation
To help you deliver the right content to the right person or identify crucial insights in analytics, you can use five types of audience segmentation: demographic, behavioural, psychographic, technographic and transactional.
Demographic segmentation
Demographic segmentation is when you segment a larger audience based on demographic data points like location, age or other factors.
The most basic demographic segmentation factor is location, which is easy to leverage in marketing efforts. For example, geographic segmentation can use IP addresses and separate marketing efforts by country.
But more advanced demographic data points are becoming increasingly sensitive to handle. Especially in Europe, GDPR makes advanced demographics a more tentative subject. Using age, education level and employment to target marketing campaigns is possible. But you need to navigate this terrain thoughtfully and responsibly, ensuring meticulous adherence to privacy regulations.
Potential data points:
- Location
- Age
- Marital status
- Income
- Employment
- Education
Example of effective demographic segmentation:
A clothing brand targeting diverse locations needs to account for the varying weather conditions. In colder regions, showcasing winter collections or insulated clothing might resonate more with the audience. Conversely, in warmer climates, promoting lightweight or summer attire could be more effective.
Here are two ads run by North Face on Facebook and Instagram to different audiences to highlight different collections:
Each collection is featured differently and uses a different approach with its copy and even the media. With social media ads, targeting people based on advanced demographics is simple enough — you can just single out the factors when making your campaign. But if you don’t want to rely on these data-mining companies, that doesn’t mean you have no options for segmentation.
Consider allowing people to self-select their interests or preferences by incorporating a short survey within your email sign-up form. This simple addition can enhance engagement, decrease bounce rates, and ultimately improve conversion rates, offering valuable insights into audience preferences.
This is a great way to segment ethically and without the need of data-mining companies.
Behavioural segmentation
Behavioural segmentation segments audiences based on their interaction with your website or app.
You use various data points to segment your target audience based on their actions.
Potential data points:
- Page visits
- Referral source
- Clicks
- Downloads
- Video plays
- Goal completion (e.g., signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product)
Example of using behavioural segmentation to improve campaign efficiency:
One effective method involves using a web analytics tool such as Matomo to uncover patterns. By segmenting actions like specific clicks and downloads, pinpoint valuable trends—identifying actions that significantly enhance visitor conversions.
For instance, if a case study video substantially boosts conversion rates, elevate its prominence to capitalise on this success.
Then, you can set up a conditional CTA within the video player. Make it pop up after the user has watched the entire video. Use a specific form and sign them up to a specific segment for each case study. This way, you know the prospect’s ideal use case without surveying them.
This is an example of behavioural segmentation that doesn’t rely on third-party cookies.
Psychographic segmentation
Psychographic segmentation is when you segment audiences based on your interpretation of their personality or preferences.
Potential data points:
- Social media patterns
- Follows
- Hobbies
- Interests
Example of effective psychographic segmentation:
Here, Adidas segments its audience based on whether they like cycling or rugby. It makes no sense to show a rugby ad to someone who’s into cycling and vice versa. But to rugby athletes, the ad is very relevant.
If you want to avoid social platforms, you can use surveys about hobbies and interests to segment your target audience in an ethical way.
Technographic segmentation
Technographic segmentation is when you single out specific parts of your audience based on which hardware or software they use.
Potential data points:
- Type of device used
- Device model or brand
- Browser used
Example of segmenting by device type to improve user experience:
Upon noticing a considerable influx of tablet users accessing their platform, a leading news outlet decided to optimise their tablet browsing experience. They overhauled the website interface, focusing on smoother navigation and better readability for tablet users. These changes offered tablet users a seamless and enjoyable reading experience tailored precisely to their device.
Transactional segmentation
Transactional segmentation is when you use your customers’ purchase history to better target your marketing message to their needs.
When consumers prefer personalisation, they typically mean based on their actual transactions, not their social media profiles.
Potential data points:
- Average order value
- Product categories purchased within X months
- X days since the last purchase of a consumable product
Example of effective transactional segmentation:
A pet supply store identifies a segment of customers consistently purchasing cat food but not other pet products. They create targeted email campaigns offering discounts or loyalty rewards specifically for cat-related items to encourage repeat purchases within this segment.
If you want to improve customer loyalty and increase revenue, the last thing you should do is send generic marketing emails. Relevant product recommendations or coupons are the best way to use transactional segmentation.
B2B-specific: Firmographic segmentation
Beyond the five main segmentation types, B2B marketers often use “firmographic” factors when segmenting their campaigns. It’s a way to segment campaigns that go beyond the considerations of the individual.
Potential data points:
- Company size
- Number of employees
- Company industry
- Geographic location (office)
Example of effective firmographic segmentation:
Companies of different sizes won’t need the same solution — so segmenting leads by company size is one of the most common and effective examples of B2B audience segmentation.
The difference here is that B2B campaigns are often segmented through manual research. With an account-based marketing approach, you start by researching your potential customers. You then separate the target audience into smaller segments (or even a one-to-one campaign).
Start segmenting and analysing your audience more deeply with Matomo
Segmentation is a great place to start if you want to level up your marketing efforts. Modern consumers expect to get relevant content, and you must give it to them.
But doing so in a privacy-sensitive way is not always easy. You need the right approach to segment your customer base without alienating them or breaking regulations.
That’s where Matomo comes in. Matomo champions privacy compliance while offering comprehensive insights and segmentation capabilities. With robust privacy controls and cookieless configuration, it ensures GDPR and other regulations are met, empowering data-driven decisions without compromising user privacy.
Take advantage of our 21-day free trial to get insights that can help you improve your marketing strategy and better reach your target audience. No credit card required.
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A Comprehensive Guide to Robust Digital Marketing Analytics
15 novembre 2023, par Erin — Analytics TipsFirst impressions are everything. This is not only true for dating and job interviews but also for your digital marketing strategy. Like a poorly planned job application getting tossed in the “no thank you” pile, 38% of visitors to your website will stop engaging with your content if they find the layout unpleasant. Thankfully, digital marketers can access data that can be harnessed to optimise websites and turn those “no thank you’s” into “absolutely’s.”
So, how can we transform raw data into valuable insights that pay off? The key is web analytics tools that can help you make sense of it all while collecting data ethically. In this article, we’ll equip you with ways to take your digital marketing strategy to the next level with the power of web analytics.
What are the different types of digital marketing analytics?
Digital marketing analytics are like a cipher into the complex behaviour of your buyers. Digital marketing analytics help collect, analyse and interpret data from any touchpoint you interact with your buyers online. Whether you’re trying to gauge the effectiveness of a new email marketing campaign or improve your mobile app layout, there’s a way for you to make use of the insights you gain.
As we go through the eight commonly known types of digital marketing analytics, please note we’ll primarily focus on what falls under the umbrella of web analytics.
- Web analytics help you better understand how users interact with your website. Good web analytics tools will help you understand user behaviour while securely handling user data.
- Learn more about the effectiveness of your organisation’s social media platforms with social media analytics. Social media analytics include user engagement, post reach and audience demographics.
- Email marketing analytics help you see how email campaigns are being engaged with.
- Search engine optimisation (SEO) analytics help you understand your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
- Pay-per-click (PPC) or campaign analytics measure the performance of paid advertising campaigns.
- Content marketing analytics focus on how your content is performing with your audience.
- Customer analytics helps organisations identify and examine buyer behaviour to retain the biggest spenders.
- Mobile app analytics track user interactions within mobile applications.
Choosing which digital marketing analytics tools are the best fit for your organisation is not an easy task. When making these decisions, it’s critical to remember the ethical implications of data collection. Although data insights can be invaluable to your organisation, they won’t be of much use if you lose the trust of your users.
Tips and best practices for developing robust digital marketing analytics
So, what separates top-notch, robust digital marketing analytics from the rest? We’ve already touched on it, but a big part involves respecting user privacy and ethically handling data. Data security should be on your list of priorities, alongside conversion rate optimisation when developing a digital marketing strategy. In this section, we will examine best practices for using digital marketing analytics while retaining user trust.
Clear objectives
Before comparing digital marketing analytics tools, you should define clear and measurable goals. Try asking yourself what you need your digital marketing analytics strategy to accomplish. Do you want to improve conversion rates while remaining data compliant? Maybe you’ve noticed users are not engaging with your platform and want to fix that. Save yourself time and energy by focusing on the most relevant pain points and areas of improvement.
Choose the right tools for the job
Don’t just base your decision on what other people tell you. Take the tool for a test drive — free trials allow you to test features and user interfaces and learn more about the platform before committing. When choosing digital marketing analytics tools, look for ones that ensure data accuracy as well as compliance with privacy laws like GDPR.
Don’t overlook data compliance
GDPR ensures organisations prioritise data protection and privacy. You could be fined up to €20 million, or 4% of the previous year’s revenue for violations. Without data compliance practices, you can say goodbye to the time and money spent on digital marketing strategies.
Don’t sacrifice data quality and accuracy
Inaccurate and low-quality data can taint your analysis, making it hard to glean valuable insights from your digital marketing analytics efforts. Many analytics tools only show sampled data or use AI and ML to fill data gaps, potentially compromising the accuracy and completeness of your analytics.
When your analytics are based on incomplete or inaccurate data, it’s like trying to assemble a puzzle with missing pieces—you might get a glimpse of the whole picture, but it’s never quite clear. Accurate data isn’t just helpful—it’s the backbone of smart marketing strategies. It lets you make confident decisions and enables precise targeting for greater impact.
Communicate your findings
Having insights is one thing; effectively communicating complex data findings is just as important. Customise dashboards to display key metrics aligned with your objectives. Make sure to automate reports, allowing stakeholders to stay updated without manual intervention.
Understand the user journey
To optimise your conversion rates, you need to understand the user journey. Start by analysing visitors interactions with your website — this will help you identify conversion bottlenecks in your sales or lead generation processes. Implement A/B testing for landing page optimisation, refining elements like call-to-action buttons or copy, and leverage Form Analytics to make informed, data-driven improvements to your forms.
Continuous improvement
Learn from the data insights you gain, and iterate your marketing strategies based on the findings. Stay updated with evolving web analytics trends and technologies to leverage new growth opportunities.
Why you need web analytics to support your digital marketing analytics toolbox
You wouldn’t set out on a roadtrip without a map, right? Digital marketing analytics without insights into how users interact with your website are just as useless. Used ethically, web analytics tools can be an invaluable addition to your digital marketing analytics toolbox.
The data collected via web analytics reveals user interactions with your website. These could include anything from how long visitors stay on your page to their actions while browsing your website. Web analytics tools help you gather and understand this data so you can better understand buyer preferences. It’s like a domino effect: the more you understand your buyers and user behaviour, the better you can assess the effectiveness of your digital content and campaigns.
Web analytics reveal user behaviour, highlighting navigation patterns and drop-off points. Understanding these patterns helps you refine website layout and content, improving engagement and conversions for a seamless user experience.
Concrete CMS harnessed the power of web analytics, specifically Matomo’s Form Analytics, to uncover crucial insights within their user onboarding process. Their data revealed a significant issue: the “address” input field was causing visitors to drop off and not complete the form, severely impacting the overall onboarding experience and conversion rate.
Armed with these insights, Concrete CMS made targeted optimisations to the form, resulting in a substantial transformation. By addressing the specific issue identified through Form Analytics, they achieved an impressive outcome – a threefold increase in lead generation.
This case is a great example of how web analytics can uncover customer needs and preferences and positively impact conversion rates.
Ethical implications of digital marketing analytics
As we’ve touched on, digital marketing analytics are a powerful tool to help better understand online user behaviour. With great power comes great responsibility, however, and it’s a legal and ethical obligation for organisations to protect individual privacy rights. Let’s get into the benefits of practising ethical digital marketing analytics and the potential risks of not respecting user privacy:
- If someone uses your digital platform and then opens their email one day to find it filled with random targeted ad campaigns, they won’t be happy. Avoid losing user trust — and facing a potential lawsuit — by informing users what their data will be used for. Give them the option to consent to opt-in or opt-out of letting you use their personal information. If users are also assured you’ll safeguard personal information against unauthorised access, they’ll be more likely to trust you to handle their data securely.
- Protecting data against breaches means investing in technology that will let you end-to-end encrypt and securely store data. Other important data-security best practices include access control, backing up data regularly and network and physical security of assets.
A fine line separates digital marketing analytics and misusing user data — many companies have gotten into big trouble for crossing it. (By big trouble, we mean millions of dollars in fines.) When it comes to digital marketing analytics, you should never cut corners when it comes to user privacy and data security. This balance involves understanding what data can be collected and what should be collected and respecting user boundaries and preferences.
Learn more
We discussed a lot of facets of digital marketing analytics, namely how to develop a robust digital marketing strategy while prioritising data compliance. With Matomo, you can protect user data and respect user privacy while gaining invaluable insights into user behaviour with 100% accurate data. Save your organisation time and money by investing in a web analytics solution that gives you the best of both worlds.
If you’re ready to begin using ethical and robust digital marketing analytics on your website, try Matomo. Start your 21-day free trial now — no credit card required.
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Custom Segmentation Guide : How it Works & Segments to Test
Struggling to get the insights you’re looking for with premade reports and audience segments in your analytics?
Custom segmentation can help you better understand your customers, app users or website visitors, but only if you know what you’re doing.
You can derive false insights with the wrong segments, leading your marketing campaigns or product development in the wrong direction.
In this article, we’ll break down what custom segmentation is, useful custom segments to consider, how new privacy laws affect segmentation options and how to create these segments in an analytics platform.
What is custom segmentation?
Custom segmentation is when you divide your audience (customers, users, website visitors) into bespoke segments of your own design, not premade segments designed by the analytics or marketing platform provider.
To do this, you single out “custom segment input” — data points you will use to pinpoint certain users. For example, it could be everyone who has visited a certain page on your site.
Segmentation isn’t just useful for targeting marketing campaigns and also for analysing your customer data. Creating segments is a great way to dive deeper into your data beyond surface-level insights.
You can explore how various factors impact engagement, conversion rates, and customer lifetime value. These insights can help guide your higher-level strategy, not just campaigns.
How custom segments can help your business
As the global business world clamours to become more “data-driven,” even smaller companies collect all sorts of data on visitors, users, and customers.
However, inexperienced organisations often become “data hoarders” without meaningful insights. They have in-house servers full of data or gigabytes stored by Google Analytics and other third-party providers.
One way to leverage this data is with standard customer segmentation models. This can help you get insights into your most valuable customer groups and other standard segments.
Custom segments, in turn, can help you dive deeper. They help you unlock insights into the “why” of certain behaviours. They can help you segment customers and your audience to figure out:
- Why and how someone became a loyal customer
- How high-order-value customers interact with your site before purchases
- Which behaviours indicate audience members are likely to convert
- Which traffic sources drive the most valuable customers
This specific insight’s power led Gartner to predict that 70% of companies will shift focus from “big data” to “small and wide” by 2025. The lateral detail is what helps inform your marketing strategy.
You don’t need the same volume of data if you’re analysing and segmenting it effectively.
Custom segment inputs: 6 data points you can use to create valuable custom segments
To help you get started, here are six useful data points you can use as a basis to create segments — AKA customer segment inputs:
Visits to certain pages
A basic data point that’s great for custom segments is visits to certain pages. Create segments for popular middle-of-funnel pages and compare their engagement and conversion rates.
For example, if a user visits a case study page, you can compare their likelihood to convert vs. other visitors.
This is a type of behavioural segmentation, but it is the easiest custom segment to set up in terms of analysis and marketing efforts.
Visitors who perform certain actions
The other important type of behavioural segment is visitors or users who take certain actions. Think of things like downloading a file, clicking a link, playing a video or scrolling a certain amount.
For instance, you can create a segment of all visitors who have downloaded a white paper. This can help you explore, for example, what drives someone to download a white paper. You can look at the typical user journey and make it easier for them to access the white paper — especially if your sales reps indicate many inbound leads mention it as a key driver of their interest.
User devices
Device-based segmentation lets you compare engagement and conversion rates on mobile, desktop and tablets. You can also get insights into their usage patterns and potential issues with certain mobile elements.
This is one aspect of technographic segmentation, where you segment based on users’ hardware or software. You can also create segments based on browser software or even specific versions.
Loyal or high-value customers
The best way to get more loyal or high-value customers is to explore their journey in more detail. These types of segments can help you better understand your ideal customers and how they act on your site.
You can then use this insight to alter your campaigns or how you communicate with your target audience.
For example, you might notice that high-value customers tend to come from a certain source. You can then focus your marketing efforts on this source to reach more of your ideal customers.
Visitor or customer source
You need to track the results if you’re investing in marketing (like an influencer campaign or a sponsored post) outside platforms with their own analytics.
Before you can create a reliable segment, you need to make sure that you use campaign tracking parameters to reliably track the source. You can use our free campaign tracking URL builder for that.
Demographic segments — location (country, state) and more
Web analytics tools, such as Matomo, use visitors’ IP addresses to pinpoint their location more accurately by cross-referencing with a database of known and estimated IP locations. In addition, these tools can detect a visitor’s location through the language settings in their browser.
This can help create segments based on location or language. By exploring these trends, you can identify patterns in behaviour, tailor your content to specific audiences, and adapt your overall strategy to better meet the preferences and needs of your diverse visitor base.
How new privacy laws affect segmentation options
Over the past few years, new legislation regarding privacy and customer data has been passed globally. The most notable privacy laws are the GDPR in the EU, the CCPA in California and the VCDPA in Virginia.
For most companies, it can save a lot of work and future headaches to choose a GDPR-compliant web analytics solution not only streamlines operations, saving considerable effort and preventing future headaches, but also ensures peace of mind by guaranteeing the collection of compliant and accurate data. This approach allows companies to maintain compliance with privacy regulations while remaining firmly committed to a data-driven strategy.
Create your very own custom segments in Matomo (while ensuring compliance and data accuracy)
Crafting precise marketing messages and optimising ROI is crucial, but it becomes challenging without the right tools, especially when it comes to maintaining accurate data.
That’s where Matomo comes in. Our privacy-friendly web analytics platform is GDPR-compliant and ensures accurate data, empowering you to effortlessly create and analyse precise custom segments.
If you want to improve your marketing campaigns while remaining GDPR-compliant, start your 21-day free trial of Matomo. No credit card required.
