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• The Guide to an Ethical Web : With Big Data Comes Big Responsibility

  13 mars, par Alex Carmona

  Roughly two-thirds of Earth’s 8 billion people use the internet for communication, education, entertainment, business and more. We are connected globally in ways previous generations could’ve never dreamed of. It’s been a wild ride, and we’re just starting.

  Many users have learned that experiences online can be a mix of good and bad. Sometimes, the bad can feel like it outweighs the good, particularly when large tech companies use our data shadily, cut corners on accessibility or act in any other way that devalues the human being behind the screen.

  As fellow internet citizens, what responsibility do we have to create a more ethical web for our customers ?

  In this article, we’ll look at ethical principles online and how to act (and not act) to build trust, reach customers regardless of ability, safeguard privacy and stay compliant while improving business outcomes.

  

  What is an “ethical web” ?

  When we talk about the ethical web, we’re talking about the use of the internet in an ethical way. Among other values, it involves transparency, consent and restraint. It applies the Golden Rule to the internet : Treat others (and their data and user experience) how you’d want yourself (and yours) to be treated. 

  With limited oversight, the internet has evolved in ways that often prioritise profit over user rights. While selling data or pushing cookies might seem logical in this context, they can undermine trust and reputation. And the tide is slowly but surely shifting as consumers and legislators push back.

  Consumers no longer want to buy from companies that will use their data in ways they don’t agree to. In 2022, 75% of UK and US consumers surveyed said they were uncomfortable purchasing from businesses with weak data ethics.

  Legislators worldwide have been taking part in this effort for nearly a decade, with laws like GDPR in the EU and LGPD in Brazil, as well as the various state laws in the US, like California’s CCPA and Virginia’s VCDPA. 

  Even tech giants are no longer above the law, like Meta, which was fined over a billion Euros for GDPR violations in 2023.

  

  These changes may make the internet feel less business-friendly at first glance, but ethical choices ultimately build a stronger digital ecosystem for both companies and consumers. 

  Likewise, all internet users alike can make this happen by shunning short-term profit and convenience for healthier, long-term choices and behaviour.

  As we dig into what it takes to build an ethical web, remember that no company or individual is free from mistakes in these areas nor is it an overnight fix. Progress is made one click at a time.

  Ethical SEO : Optimising your content and your ethics

  Content creation and search engine optimisation (SEO) require so much work that it’s hard to fault creators for not always abiding by search engine guidelines and seeking shortcuts – especially when there’s a sea of LinkedIn posts about how copying/pasting ChatGPT responses helped someone rank #1 for several keywords in one week.

  However, users turn to Google and other search engines for something of substance that will guide or entertain them.

  Content meets customer needs and is more likely to lead to sales when it’s well-written, original and optimised just enough to make it easier to find on the first page of results. This doesn’t happen when content teams dilute quality and waste a reader or viewer’s time on posts that will only yield a higher bounce rate.

  Some SEO pros do find success by building backlinks through private blog networks or crafting a million unedited posts with generative AI, but it’s short-lived. Google and other search engines always catch up, and their content plummets or gets penalised and delisted with every new update.

  Content teams can still rank at the top while sticking to ethical SEO principles. Here’s a sample list of dos and don’ts to get started :

  • Do put content quality above all else. Make content that serves the audience, not just a brand or partner ad network.
  • Do apply the E-E-A-T framework. Search engines value content written by authors who bring expertise, experience, authority and trust (E-E-A-T).
  • Don’t keyword stuff. This might have worked in the early days of SEO, but it hurts readability and now harms article performance.
  • Do use alt text as intended. While it can still help SEO, alt text should prioritise accessibility for users with screen readers.

  • Don’t steal content. Whether it’s violating copyright, copying/pasting other people’s content or simply paraphrasing without citation, companies should never steal content.
  • Don’t steal ideas. It’s okay to join in on a current conversation or trends in an industry, but content creators should be sure they have something valuable to add.
  • Do use AI tools as partners, not creators. AI can be an incredible aid in crafting content, but it should never be posted without a human’s touch.

  When we follow ethical SEO guidelines and get more clients with our content, how do we best handle their data ?

  Ethical data governance : Important principles and how to avoid data misuse

  Data governance comprises every aspect of how a company manages data, including storage, security, privacy, lifecycle management, setting policies and maintaining compliance with laws like GDPR and HIPAA.

  Applying data ethics to governance is doing it all in a transparent, restrained way that acknowledges an individual’s right to ownership over their data. 

  For organisations, this translates to getting consent to collect data and clearly spelling out how it will be stored and used — and sticking to it.

  If a user’s birth date is needed for legal reasons, it cannot be sold to a third party or later used for something else without explicit permission. Reusing data in ways that stray from its original purpose is a form of commingling, one of the data misuses that is easy for even well-intentioned teams to do accidentally.

  Ethical data governance also includes the vigilant safeguarding of users’ data and minimising potential privacy issues.

  Failing to implement and adhere to strong security measures leads to situations like the National Public Data (NPD) breach, where cyber criminals expose the addresses, phone numbers and social security numbers of hundreds of millions of people. This was due in large part to a weakness in storing login credentials and a lack of password policy enforcement.

  No one at NPD wanted this to happen, but security likely took a backseat to other business concerns, leading to the company’s filing for bankruptcy.

  More importantly, as a data broker that aggregates information from other sources, the people affected likely had no clue this organisation had been buying and selling their data. The companies originally entrusted with their information helped provide the leaked data, showing a lack of care for privacy.

  Situations like this reinforce the need for strict data protection laws and for companies to refine their data governance approach. 

  Businesses can improve their data governance posturing with managers and other higher-ups setting the right tone at the top. If leadership takes a firm and disciplined approach by setting and adhering to strong policies, the rest of the team will follow and minimise the chances of data misuse and security incidents.

  One way to start is by using tools that make the principles of data ethics easier to follow.

  Ethical web analytics : Drawing insights while respecting privacy

  Web analytics tools are designed to gather data about users and what they do while visiting a site.
  The most popular tool worldwide is Google Analytics (GA). Its brand name and feature set carry a lot of weight, but many former users have switched to alternatives due to dissatisfaction with the changes made in GA4 and reservations about the way Google handles data.

  

  Google is another tech giant that has been slapped with massive GDPR fines for issues over its data processing practices. It has run so afoul of compliance that it was banned in France and Austria for a while. Additionally, in the US Department of Justice’s ongoing antitrust lawsuit against Google, the company’s data tracking has been targeted for both how it affects users and potential rivals.

  Unlike GA, ethical web analytics tools allow websites to get the data they need while respecting user privacy.

  Matomo offers privacy protections like :

  • Providing data anonymisation and IP anonymisation
  • Allowing users the ability to not process personally identifiable information (PII)
  • Disabling the ability to track users across websites by default to make compliance easier
  • Giving users full control over their customer data without the risk of it getting into the hands of third parties
  • Much more

  We’re also fully transparent about how we handle your data on the web and in the Matomo Cloud and in how we build Matomo as an open-source tool. Our openness allows you to be more open with your customers and how you ethically use their data.

  There are other GDPR-compliant tools on the market, but some of them, like Adobe Analytics, require more setup from users for compliance, don’t grant full control over data and don’t offer on-premise options or consent-free tracking.

  Beyond tracking, there are other ways to make a user’s experience more enjoyable and ethical.

  Ethical user experience : User-friendliness, not user-hostility

  When designing a website or application, creating a positive user experience (UX) always comes first. 

  The UI should be simple to navigate, data and privacy policy information should be easy to find and customers should feel welcomed. They must never be tricked into consenting or installing. 

  When businesses resort to user-hostile tactics, the UX becomes a battle between the user and them. What may seem like a clever tactic to increase sign-ups can alienate potential customers and ruin a brand’s image. 

  Here are some best practices for creating a more ethical UX :

  Avoid dark patterns

  Dark patterns are UI designs and strategies that mislead users into paying for, agreeing to or doing something they don’t actually want. These designs are unethical because they’re manipulative and remove transparency and consent from the interaction. 

  In some cases, they’re illegal and can bring lawsuits. 

  In 2023, Italy’s Data Protection Authority (DPA) fined a digital marketing company €300,000 for alleged GDPR violations. They employed dark patterns by asking customers to accept cookies again after rejecting them and placing the option to reject cookies outside the cookie banner. 

  Despite their legality and 56% of surveyed customers losing trust in platforms that employ dark patterns, a review by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that 76% of the websites examined contained at least one dark pattern.

  

  If a company is worried that they may be relying on dark patterns, here are some examples of what to avoid :

  • Pre-ticking boxes to have users agree to third-party cookies, sign up for a newsletter, etc.
  • Complicated cookie banners without a one-click way to reject all unnecessary cookies
  • Hiding important text with text colour, under drop-down menus or requiring hovering over something with a mouse 
  • “Confirm shaming” users with emotionally manipulative language to delay subscription cancellations or opt out of tracking 

  Improve trust centres

  Trust centres are the sections of a website that outline how a company approaches topics like data governance, user privacy and security. 

  They should be easy to find and understand. If a user has a question about a company’s data policy, it should be one click away with language that doesn’t require a law degree to comprehend.

  Additionally, trust centres must cover all relevant details, including where data is stored and who does the subprocessing. This is an area where even some of the best-intentioned companies may miss the mark, but it’s also an easy fix and a great place to start creating a more ethical web.

  Embrace inclusivity

  People want to feel welcomed to the party — and deserve to be — regardless of their race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, orientation or ability. 

  Inclusivity is great for customers and companies alike. 

  A study by the Unstereotype Alliance found that progressive marketing drove up short- and long-term sales, customer loyalty and purchase consideration. A Kantar study reported that 75% of surveyed customers around the world consider a company’s diversity and inclusivity when making a purchasing decision.

  An easy place to start embracing inclusivity is with a website’s blog images. The people in photos and cartoons should reflect a variety of different backgrounds.

  Another area to improve inclusivity is by making your site or app more accessible.

  Accessibility ethics : An internet for everyone

  Accessibility is designing your product in a way that everyone can enjoy or take part in, regardless of ability. Digital accessibility is applying this design to the web and applications by making accommodations like adding descriptive alt text to images for users with visual impairments.

  Just because someone has a hearing, vision, speech, mobility, neurological or other impairment doesn’t mean they have any less of a right to shop online, read silly listicles or get into arguments with strangers in the comment section.

  Beyond being the right thing to do, the Fable team shows there’s a strong business case for accessibility. People with disabilities have money to spend, and the accommodations businesses make for them often benefit people without disabilities, too – as anyone who streams with subtitles can attest.

  Despite being a win-win for greater inclusivity and business, much of the web is still inaccessible. WebAIM, a leader in web accessibility, studied a million web pages and found an average of over 55 accessibility errors per page.

  We must all play a more active role in improving the experience of our users with disabilities, and we can start with accessibility auditing and testing.

  An accessibility audit is an evaluation of how usable a site is for people with disabilities. It may be done in-house by an expert on a company’s team or, for better results, a third-party consultant who can give a fully objective audit.

  Auditing might consist of running an automated tool or manually checking your site, PDFs, emails and other materials for compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines list.

  Accessibility testing is narrower than auditing. It checks how accessibility or its absence looks in action. It can be done after a site, app, email or product is released, but it ideally starts in the development process.

  Testing should be done manually and with automated tools. Manual checks put developers in the position of their users, allowing them to get a better idea of what users are dealing with firsthand. Automated tools can save time and money, but there should always be manual testing in the process.

  Auditing gives teams an idea of where to start with improving accessibility, and testing helps make sure accommodations work as intended.

  Conclusion

  At Matomo, we strive to make the ethical web a reality, starting with web analytics.

  For our users, it means full compliance with stringent policies like GDPR and providing 100% accurate data. For their customers, it’s collecting only the data required to do the job and enabling cookieless configurations to get rid of annoying banners. 

  For both parties, it’s knowing that respect for privacy is one of our foundational values, whether it’s the ability to look under Matomo’s hood and read our open-source code, the option to store data on-premise to minimise the chances of it falling into the wrong hands or one of the other ways that we protect privacy.

  If you weren’t 100% ethical before, it’s never too late to change. You can even bring your Google Analytics data with you.

  Join us in our mission to improve the web. We can’t do it alone ! 

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• What is Funnel Analysis ? A Complete Guide for Quick Results

  25 janvier 2024, par Erin

  Your funnel is leaking.

  You’re losing visitors.

  You’re losing conversions and sales.

  But you don’t know how it’s happening, where it’s happening, or what to do about it.

  The reason ? You aren’t properly analysing your funnels.

  If you want to improve conversions and grow your business, you need to understand how to properly assess your sales funnels to set yourself up for success.

  In this guide, we’ll show you what funnel analysis is, why it’s important, and what steps you need to take to leverage it to improve conversions.

  What is funnel analysis ?

  Every business uses sales funnels, whether they know it or not.

  But most people aren’t analysing them, costing them conversions.

  

  Funnel analysis is a marketing method to analyse the events leading to specific conversion points. 

  It aims to look at the entire journey of potential customers from the moment they first touch base with your website or business to the moment they click “buy.”

  It’s assessing what your audience is doing at every step of the journey.

  By assessing what actions are taking place at scale, you can see where you’re falling short in your sales funnel.

  You’ll see :

  1. Where prospects are falling off.
  2. Where people are converting well.

  By gaining this understanding, you’ll better understand the health of your website’s sales funnels and overall marketing strategy.

  With that knowledge, you can optimise your marketing strategy to patch those leaks, improve conversions and grow your business.

  Why funnel analysis is important

  Funnel analysis is critical because your funnel is your business.

  When you analyse your funnel, you’re analysing your business.

  You’re looking at what’s working and what’s not so you can grow revenue and profit margins.

  Funnel analysis lets you monitor user behaviour to show you the motivation and intention behind their decisions.

  Here are five reasons you need to incorporate funnel analysis into your workflow.

  

  1. Gives insights into your funnel problems

  The core purpose of funnel analysis is to look at what’s going on on your website.

  What are the most effective steps to conversion ?

  Where do users drop off in the conversion process ?

  And which pages contribute the most to conversion or drop-offs ?

  Funnel analysis helps you understand what’s going on with your site visitors. Plus, it helps you see what’s wrong with your funnel.

  If you aren’t sure what’s happening with your funnel, you won’t know what to improve to grow your revenue.

  2. Improves conversions

  When you know what’s going on with your funnel, you’ll know how to improve it.

  To improve your conversion funnel, you need to close the leaks. These are areas where website visitors are falling off.

  It’s the moment the conversion is lost.

  You need to use funnel analysis to give insight into these problem areas. Once you can see where the issue is, you can patch that leak and improve the percentage of visitors who convert.

  For example, if your conversion rate on your flagship product page has plateaued and you can’t figure out how to increase conversions, implementing a funnel analysis tactic like heatmaps will show you that visitors are spending time reading your product description. Still, they’re not spending much time near your call to action.

  

  This might tell you that you need to update your description copy or adjust your button (i.e. colour, size, copy). You can increase conversions by making those changes in your funnel analysis insights.

  3. Improves the customer experience

  Funnel analysis helps you see where visitors spend their time, what elements they interact with and where they fall off.

  One of the key benefits of analysing your funnel is you’ll be able to help improve the experience your visitors have on your website.

  For example, if you have informational videos on a specific web page to educate your visitors, you might use the Media Analytics feature in your web analytics solution to find out that they’re not spending much time watching them.

  This could lead you to believe that the content itself isn’t good or relevant to them.

  But, after implementing session recordings within your funnel analysis, you see people clicking a ton near the play button. This might tell you that they’re having trouble clicking the actual button on the video player due to poor UX.

  In this scenario, you could update the UX on your web page so the videos are easy to click and watch, no matter what device someone uses.

  With more video viewers, you can provide value to your visitors instead of leaving them frustrated trying to watch your videos.

  4. Grows revenue

  This is what you’re likely after : more revenue.

  More often than not, this means you need to focus on improving your conversion rate.

  Funnel analysis helps you find those areas where visitors are exiting so you can patch those leaks up and turn more visitors into customers.

  Let’s say you have a conversion rate of 1.7%.

  You get 50,000 visitors per month.

  Your average order is $82.

  Even if you increase your conversion rate by 10% (to 1.87%) through funnel analysis, here’s the monthly difference in revenue :

  Before : $69,700
  After : $76,670

  In one year, you’ll make nearly $80,000 in additional revenue from funnel analysis alone.

  Different types of funnel analysis

  There are a few different types of funnel analysis.

  How you define success in your funnel all comes down to one of these four pillars.

  Depending on your goals, business and industry, you may want to assess the different funnel analyses at different times.

  1. Pageview funnel analysis

  Pageview funnel analysis is about understanding how well your website content is performing. 

  It helps you enhance user experience, making visitors stay longer on your site. By identifying poor performing pages (pages with high exit rates), you can pinpoint areas that need optimisation for better engagement.

  2. Conversion funnel analysis

  Next up, we’re looking at conversion funnel analysis.

  This type of funnel analysis is crucial for marketers aiming to turn website visitors into action-takers. This involves tracking and optimising conversion goals, such as signing up for newsletters, downloading ebooks, submitting forms or signing up for free trials. 

  The primary goal of conversion funnel analysis is to boost your website’s overall conversion rates.

  3. E-commerce funnel analysis

  For businesses selling products online, e-commerce funnel analysis is essential. 

  It involves measuring whether your products are being purchased and finding drop-off points in the purchasing process. 

  By optimising the e-commerce funnel, you can enhance revenue and improve the overall efficiency of your sales process.

  How to conduct funnel analysis

  Now that you understand what funnel analysis is, why it’s important, and the different types of analysis, it’s time to show you how to do it yourself.

  To get started with funnel analysis, you need to have the right web analytics solution.

  Here are the most common funnel analysis tools and methods you can use :

  1. Funnel analytics

  If you want to choose a single tool to conduct funnel analysis, it’s an all-in-one web analytics tool, like Matomo.

  

  With Matomo’s Funnel Analytics, you can dive into your whole funnel and analyse each step (and each step’s conversion rate).

  

  For instance, if you look at the example above, you can see the proceed rate at each funnel step before the conversion page.

  This means you can improve each proceed rate, to drive more traffic to your conversion page in order to increase conversion rates.

  In the above snapshot from Matomo, it shows visitors starting on the job board overview page, moving on to view specific job listings. The goal is to convert these visitors into job applicants.

  However, a significant issue arises at the job view stage, where 95% of visitors don’t proceed to job application. To increase conversions, we need to first concentrate on improving the job view page.

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  2. Heatmaps

  Heatmaps is a behaviour analytics tool that lets you see different visitor activities, including :

  • Mouse movement
  • How far down visitors scroll
  • Clicks

  You can see which elements were clicked on and which weren’t and how far people scroll down your page.

  

  A heatmap lets you see which parts of a page are getting the most attention and which parts go unnoticed by your users.

  For example, if, during your funnel analysis, you see that a lot of visitors are falling off after they land on the checkout page, then you might want to add a heatmap on your checkout page to see where and why people are exiting.

  3. Session recordings

  Want to see what individual users are doing and how they’re interacting with your site ?

  Then, you’ll want to check out session recordings.

  A session recording is a video playback of a visitor’s time on your website.

  

  It’s the most effective method to observe your visitors’ interactions with your site, eliminating uncertainty when identifying areas for funnel improvement.

  Session recordings instill confidence in your optimisation efforts by providing insights into why and where visitors may be dropping off in the funnel.

  4. A/B testing

  If you want to take the guesswork out of optimising your funnel and increasing your conversions, you need to start A/B testing.

  An A/B test is where you create two versions of a web page to determine which one converts better.

  

  For example, if your heatmaps and session recordings show that your users are dropping off near your call to action, it may be time to test a new version.

  You may find that by simply testing a different colour button, you may increase conversions by 20% or more.

  5. Form analytics

  Are you trying to get more leads to fill out forms on your site ?

  Well, Form Analytics can help you understand how your website visitors interact with your signup forms.

  You can view metrics such as starter rate, conversion rate, average hesitation time and average time spent.

  This information allows you to optimise your forms effectively, ultimately maximising your success.

  Let’s look at the performance of a form using Matomo’s Form Analytics feature below.

  

  In the Matomo example, our starter rate stands at a solid 60.1%, but there’s a significant drop to a submitter rate of 29.3%, resulting in a conversion rate of 16.3%.

  Looking closer, people are hesitating for about 16.2 seconds and taking nearly 1 minute 39 seconds on average to complete our form.

  This could indicate our form is confusing and requesting too much. Simplifying it could help increase sign-ups.

  See first-hand how Concrete CMS tripled their leads using Form Analytics in Matomo.

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  Start optimising your funnels with Matomo today

  If you want to optimise your business, you must optimise your funnels.

  Without information on what’s working and what’s not, you’ll never know if your website changes are making a difference.

  Worse yet, you could have underperforming stages in your funnel, but you won’t know unless you start looking.

  Funnel analysis changes that.

  By analysing your funnels regularly, you’ll be able to see where visitors are leaking out of your funnel. That way, you can get more visitors to convert without generating more traffic.

  If you want to improve conversions and grow revenue today, try Matomo’s Funnel Analytics feature.

  You’ll be able to see conversion rates, drop-offs, and fine-tuned details on each step of your funnel so you can turn more potential customers into paying customers.

  Additionally, Matomo comes equipped with features like heatmaps, session recordings, A/B testing, and form analytics to optimise your funnels with confidence.

  Try Matomo free for 21-days. No credit card required.

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• Clickstream Data : Definition, Use Cases, and More

  15 avril 2024, par Erin

  Gaining a deeper understanding of user behaviour — customers’ different paths, digital footprints, and engagement patterns — is crucial for providing a personalised experience and making informed marketing decisions. 

  In that sense, clickstream data, or a comprehensive record of a user’s online activities, is one of the most valuable sources of actionable insights into users’ behavioural patterns. 

  This article will cover everything marketing teams need to know about clickstream data, from the basic definition and examples to benefits, use cases, and best practices. 

  What is clickstream data ? 

  As a form of web analytics, clickstream data focuses on tracking and analysing a user’s online activity. These digital breadcrumbs offer insights into the websites the user has visited, the pages they viewed, how much time they spent on a page, and where they went next.

  

  Your clickstream pipeline can be viewed as a “roadmap” that can help you recognise consistent patterns in how users navigate your website. 

  With that said, you won’t be able to learn much by analysing clickstream data collected from one user’s session. However, a proper analysis of large clickstream datasets can provide a wealth of information about consumers’ online behaviours and trends — which marketing teams can use to make informed decisions and optimise their digital marketing strategy. 

  Clickstream data collection can serve numerous purposes, but the main goal remains the same — gaining valuable insights into visitors’ behaviours and online activities to deliver a better user experience and improve conversion likelihood. 

  Depending on the specific events you’re tracking, clickstream data can reveal the following : 

  • How visitors reach your website 
  • The terms they type into the search engine
  • The first page they land on
  • The most popular pages and sections of your website
  • The amount of time they spend on a page 
  • Which elements of the page they interact with, and in what sequence
  • The click path they take 
  • When they convert, cancel, or abandon their cart
  • Where the user goes once they leave your website

  As you can tell, once you start collecting this type of data, you’ll learn quite a bit about the user’s online journey and the different ways they engage with your website — all without including any personal details about your visitors.

  Types of clickstream data 

  While all clickstream data keeps a record of the interactions that occur while the user is navigating a website or a mobile application — or any other digital platform — it can be divided into two types : 

  • Aggregated (web traffic) data provides comprehensive insights into the total number of visits and user interactions on a digital platform — such as your website — within a given timeframe 
  • Unaggregated data is broken up into smaller segments, focusing on an individual user’s online behaviour and website interactions 

  One thing to remember is that to gain valuable insights into user behaviour and uncover sequential patterns, you need a powerful tool and access to full clickstream datasets. Matomo’s Event Tracking can provide a comprehensive view of user interactions on your website or mobile app — everything from clicking a button and completing a form to adding (or removing) products from their cart. 

  On that note, based on the specific events you’re tracking when a user visits your website, clickstream data can include : 

  • Web navigation data : referring URL, visited pages, click path, and exit page
  • User interaction data : mouse movements, click rate, scroll depth, and button clicks
  • Conversion data : form submissions, sign-ups, and transactions 
  • Temporal data : page load time, timestamps, and the date and time of day of the user’s last login 
  • Session data : duration, start, and end times and number of pages viewed per session
  • Error data : 404 errors and network or server response issues 

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  Clickstream data benefits and use cases 

  Given the actionable insights that clickstream data collection provides, it can serve a wide range of use cases — from identifying behavioural patterns and trends and examining competitors’ performance to helping marketing teams map out customer journeys and improve ROI.

  

  According to the global Clickstream Analytics Market Report 2024, some key applications of clickstream analytics include click-path optimisation, website and app optimisation, customer analysis, basket analysis, personalisation, and traffic analysis. 

  

  The behavioural patterns and user preferences revealed by clickstream analytics data can have many applications — we’ve outlined the prominent use cases below. 

  Customer journey mapping 

  Clickstream data allows you to analyse the e-commerce customer’s online journey and provides insights into how they navigate your website. With such a comprehensive view of their click path, it becomes easier to understand user behaviour at each stage — from initial awareness to conversion — identify the most effective touchpoints and fine-tune that journey to improve their conversion likelihood. 

  Identifying customer trends 

  Clickstream data analytics can also help you identify trends and behavioural patterns — the most common sequences and similarities in how users reached your website and interacted with it — especially when you can access data from many website visitors. 

  Think about it — there are many ways in which you can use these insights into the sequence of clicks and interactions and recurring patterns to your team’s advantage. 

  Here’s an example : 

  It can reveal that some pieces of content and CTAs are performing well in encouraging visitors to take action — which shows how you should optimise other pages and what you should strive to create in the future, too. 

  Preventing site abandonment 

  Cart abandonment remains a serious issue for online retailers : 

  According to a recent report, the global cart abandonment rate in the fourth quarter of 2023 was at 83%. 

  That means that roughly eight out of ten e-commerce customers will abandon their shopping carts — most commonly due to additional costs, slow website loading times and the requirement to create an account before purchasing. 

  In addition to cart abandonment predictions, clickstream data analytics can reveal the pages where most visitors tend to leave your website. These drop-off points are clear indicators that something’s not working as it should — and once you can pinpoint them, you’ll be able to address the issue and increase conversion likelihood.

  Improving marketing campaign ROI 

  As previously mentioned, clickstream data analysis provides insights into the customer journey. Still, you may not realise that you can also use this data to keep track of your marketing effectiveness. 

  Global digital ad spending continues to grow — and is expected to reach $836 billion by 2026. It’s easy to see why relying on accurate data is crucial when deciding which marketing channels to invest in. 

  You want to ensure you’re allocating your digital marketing and advertising budget to the channels — be it SEO, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, or social media campaigns — that impact driving conversions. 

  When you combine clickstream e-commerce data with conversion rates, you’ll find the latter in Matomo’s goal reports and have a solid, data-driven foundation for making better marketing decisions.

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  Delivering a better user experience (UX) 

  Clickstream data analysis allows you to identify specific “pain points” — areas of the website that are difficult to use and may cause customer frustration. 

  It’s clear how this would be beneficial to your business : 

  Once you’ve identified these pain points, you can make the necessary changes to your website’s layout and address any technical issues that users might face, improving usability and delivering a smoother experience to potential customers. 

  Collecting clickstream data : Tools and legal implications 

  Your team will need a powerful tool capable of handling clickstream analytics to reap the benefits we’ve discussed previously. But at the same time, you need to respect users’ online privacy throughout clickstream data collection.

  

  Generally speaking, there are two ways to collect data about users’ online activity — web analytics tools and server log files.

  Web analytics tools are the more commonly used solution. Specifically designed to collect and analyse website data, these tools rely on JavaScript tags that run in the browser, providing actionable insights about user behaviour. Server log files can be a gold mine of data, too — but that data is raw and unfiltered, making it much more challenging to interpret and analyse. 

  That brings us to one of the major clickstream challenges to keep in mind as you move forward — compliance.

  While Google remains a dominant player in the web analytics market, there’s one area where Matomo has a significant advantage — user privacy. 

  Matomo operates according to privacy laws — including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), making it an ethical alternative to Google Analytics. 

  It should go without saying, but compliance with data privacy laws — the most talked-about one being the GDPR framework introduced by the EU — isn’t something you can afford to overlook. 

  The GDPR was first implemented in the EU in 2018. Since then, several fines have been issued for non-compliance — including the record fine of €1.2 billion that Meta Platforms, Inc. received in 2023 for transferring personal data of EU-based users to the US.

  Clickstream analytics data best practices 

  

  As valuable as it might be, processing large amounts of clickstream analytics data can be a complex — and, at times, overwhelming — process. 

  Here are some best practices to keep in mind when it comes to clickstream analysis : 

  Define your goals 

  It’s essential to take the time to define your goals and objectives. 

  Once you have a clear idea of what you want to learn from a given clickstream dataset and the outcomes you hope to see, it’ll be easier to narrow down your scope — rather than trying to tackle everything at once — before moving further down the clickstream pipeline. 

  Here are a few examples of goals and objectives you can set for clickstream analysis : 

  • Understanding and predicting users’ behavioural patterns 
  • Optimising marketing campaigns and ROI 
  • Attributing conversions to specific marketing touchpoints and channels

  Analyse your data 

  Collecting clickstream analytics data is only part of the equation ; what you do with raw data and how you analyse it matters. You can have the most comprehensive dataset at your disposal — but it’ll be practically worthless if you don’t have the skill set to analyse and interpret it. 

  In short, this is the stage of your clickstream pipeline where you uncover common sequences and consistent patterns in user behaviour. 

  Clickstream data analytics can extract actionable insights from large datasets using various approaches, models, and techniques. 

  Here are a few examples : 

  • If you’re working with clickstream e-commerce data, you should perform funnel or conversion analyses to track conversion rates as users move through your sales funnel. 
  • If you want to group and analyse users based on shared characteristics, you can use Matomo for cohort analysis. 
  • If your goal is to predict future trends and outcomes — conversion and cart abandonment prediction, for example — based on available data, prioritise predictive analytics.

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  Organise and visualise your data

  As you reach the end of your clickstream pipeline, you need to start thinking about how you will present and communicate your data. And what better way to do that than to transform that data into easy-to-understand visualisations ? 

  Here are a few examples of easily digestible formats that facilitate quick decision-making : 

  • User journey maps, which illustrate the exact sequence of interactions and user flow through your website 
  • Heatmaps, which serve as graphical — and typically colour-coded — representations of a website visitor’s activity 
  • Funnel analysis, which are broader at the top but get increasingly narrower towards the bottom as users flow through and drop off at different stages of the pipeline 

  Collect clickstream data with Matomo 

  Clickstream data is hard to beat when tracking the website visitor’s journey — from first to last interaction — and understanding user behaviour. By providing real-time insights, your clickstream pipeline can help you see the big picture, stay ahead of the curve and make informed decisions about your marketing efforts. 

  Matomo accurate data and compliance with GDPR and other data privacy regulations — it’s an all-in-one, ethical platform that can meet all your web analytics needs. That’s why over 1 million websites use Matomo for their web analytics.

  Try Matomo free for 21 days. No credit card required.

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