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• GA360 Sunset : Is Now the Time to Switch ?

  20 mai 2024, par Erin

  Google pushed the sunset date of Universal Analytics 360 to July 2024, giving enterprise users more time to transition to Google Analytics 4. This extension is also seen by some as time to find a suitable alternative. 

  While Google positions GA4 as an upgrade to Universal Analytics, the new platform has faced its fair share of backlash. 

  So before you rush to meet the new sunset deadline, ask yourself this question : Is now the time to switch to a Google Analytics alternative ?

  In this article, we’ll explain what the new GA360 sunset date means and show you what you could gain by choosing a privacy-friendly alternative. 

  What’s happening with the final GA360 sunset ?

  Google has given Universal Analytics 360 properties with a current 360 licence a one-time extension, which will end on 1 July 2024.

  Why did Google extend the sunset ?

  In a blog post on Google, Russell Ketchum, Director of Product Management at Google Analytics, provided more details about the final GA360 sunset. 

  In short, the tech giant realised it would take large enterprise accounts (which typically have complex analytics setups) much longer to transition smoothly. The extension gives them time to migrate to GA4 and check everything is tracking correctly. 

  What’s more, Google is also focused on improving the GA4 experience before more GA360 users migrate :

  “We’re focusing our efforts and investments on Google Analytics 4 to deliver a solution built to adapt to a changing ecosystem. Because of this, throughout 2023 we’ll be shifting support away from Universal Analytics 360 and will move our full focus to Google Analytics 4 in 2024. As a result, performance will likely degrade in Universal Analytics 360 until the new sunset date.”

  Despite the extension, the July sunset is definitive. 

  Starting the week of 1 July 2024, you won’t be able to access any Universal Analytics properties or the API (not even with read-only access), and all data will be deleted.

  In other words, it’s not just data collection that will cease at the start of July. You won’t be able to access the platform, and all your data will be deleted. 

  What GA360 features is Google deprecating, and when ?

  If you’re wondering which GA360 features are being deprecated and when, here is the timeline for Google’s final GA360 sunset :

  • 1 January 2024 : From the beginning of the year, Google doesn’t guarantee all features and functionalities in UA 360 will continue to work as expected. 
  • 29 January 2024 : Google began deprecating a string of advertising and measurement features as it shifts resources to focus on GA4. These features include :
    • Realtime reports
    • Lifetime Value report
    • Model Explorer
    • Cohort Analysis
    • Conversion Probability report
    • GDN Impression Beta
  • Early March 2024 : Google began deprecating more advertising and measurement features. Deprecated advertising features include Demographic and Interest reports, Publisher reporting, Phone Analytics, Event and Salesforce Data Import, and Realtime BigQuery Export. Deprecated measurement features include Universal Analytics property creation, App Views, Unsampled reports, Custom Tables and annotations.
  • Late March 2024 : This is the last recommended date for migration to GA4 to give users three months to validate data and settings. By this date, Google recommends that you migrate your UA’s Google Ads links to GA4, create new Google Ad conversions based on GA4 events, and add GA4 audiences to campaigns and ad groups for retargeting. 
  • 1 July 2024 : From 1 July 2024, you won’t be able to access any UA properties, and all data will be deleted.

  What’s different about GA4 360 ? 

  GA4 comes with a new set of metrics, setups and reports that change how you analyse your data. We highlight the key differences between Universal Analytics and GA4 below. 

  

  New dashboard

  The layout of GA4 is completely different from Universal Analytics, so much so that the UX can be very complex for first-time and experienced GA users alike. Reports or metrics that used to be available in a couple of clicks in UA now take five or more to find. While you can do more in theory with GA4, it takes much more work. 

  New measurements

  The biggest difference between GA4 and UA is how Google measures data. GA4 tracks events — and everything counts as an event. That includes pageviews, scrolls, clicks, file downloads and contact form submissions. 

  The idea is to anonymise data while letting you track complex buyer journeys across multiple devices. However, it can be very confusing, even for experienced marketers and analysts. 

  New metrics

  You won’t be able to track the same metrics in GA4 as in Universal Analytics. Rather than bounce rate, for example, you are forced to track engagement rate, which is the percentage of engaged sessions. These sessions last at least ten seconds, at least two pageviews or at least one conversion event. 

  Confused ? You’re not alone. 

  New reports

  Most reports you’ll be familiar with in Universal Analytics have been replaced in GA4. The new platform also has a completely different reporting interface, with every report grouped under the following five headings : realtime, audience, acquisition, behaviour and conversions. It can be hard for experienced marketers, let alone beginners, to find their way around these new reports. 

  AI insights

  GA4 has machine learning (ML) capabilities that allow you to generate AI insights from your data. Specifically, GA4 has predictive analytics features that let you track three trends : 

  • Purchase probability : the likelihood that a consumer will make a purchase in a given timeframe.
  • Churn probability : the likelihood a customer will churn in a given period.
  • Predictive revenue : the amount of revenue a user is likely to generate over a given period. 

  Google generates these insights using historical data and machine learning algorithms. 

  Cross-platform capabilities

  GA4 also offers cross-platform capabilities, meaning it can track user interactions across websites and mobile apps, giving businesses a holistic view of customer behaviour. This allows for better decision-making throughout the customer journey.

  Does GA4 360 come with other risks ?

  Aside from the poor usability, complexity and steep learning curve, upgrading your GA360 property to GA4 comes with several other risks.

  GA4 has a rocky relationship with privacy regulations, and while you can use it in a GDPR-compliant way at the moment, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to do so in the future. 

  This presents the prospect of fines for non-compliance. A worse risk, however, is regulators forcing you to change web analytics platforms in the future—something that’s already happened in the EU. Migrating to a new application can be incredibly painful and time-consuming, especially when you can choose a privacy-friendly alternative that avoids the possibility of this scenario. 

  If all this wasn’t bad enough, switching to GA4 risks your historical Universal Analytics data. That’s because you can’t import Universal Analytics data into GA4, even if you migrate ahead of the sunset deadline.

  Why you should consider a GA4 360 alternative instead

  With the GA360 sunset on the horizon, what are your options if you don’t want to deal with GA4’s problems ? 

  The easiest solution is to migrate to a GA4 360 alternative instead. And there are plenty of reasons to migrate from Google Analytics to a privacy-friendly alternative like Matomo. 

  Keep historical data

  As we’ve explained, Google isn’t letting users import their Universal Analytics data from GA360 to GA4. The easiest way to keep it is by switching to a Google Analytics alternative like Matomo that lets you import your historical data. 

  Any business using Google Analytics, whether a GA360 user or otherwise, can import data into Matomo using our Google Analytics Importer plugin. It’s the best way to avoid disruption or losing data when moving on from Universal Analytics.

  Collect 100% accurate data

  Google Analytics implements data sampling and machine learning to fill gaps in your data and generate the kind of predictive insights we mentioned earlier. For standard GA4 users, data sampling starts at 10 million events. For GA4 360 users, data sampling starts at one billion events. Nevertheless, Google Analytics data may not accurately reflect your web traffic. 

  You can fix this using a Google Analytics alternative like Matomo that doesn’t use data sampling. That way, you can be confident that your data-driven decisions are being made with 100% accurate user data. 

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  Guarantee user privacy first

  Google has a stormy relationship with the EU-US Data Privacy Framework—being banned and added back to the framework in recent years.

  Currently, organisations governed by GDPR can use Google Analytics to collect data about EU residents, but there’s no guarantee of their ability to do so in the future. Nor does the Framework prevent Google from using EU customer data for ulterior purposes such as marketing and training large language models. 

  By switching to a privacy-focused alternative like Matomo, you don’t have to worry about your user’s data ending up in the wrong hands.

  Upgrade to an all-in-one analytics tool

  Switching from Google Analytics can actually give organisations access to more features. That’s because some GA4 alternatives, like Matomo, offer advanced conversion optimisation features like heatmaps, session recordings, A/B testing, form analytics and more right out of the box. 

  

  This makes Matomo a great choice for marketing teams that want to minimise their tech stack and use one tool for both web and behavioural analytics. 

  Get real-time reports

  GA4 isn’t the best tool for analysing website visitors in real time. That’s because it can take up to 4 hours to process new reports in GA360.

  However, Google Analytics alternatives like Matomo have a range of real-time reports you can leverage.

  

  In Matomo, the Real Time Visitor World Map and other reports are processed every 15 minutes. There is also a Visits in Real-time report, which refreshes every five seconds and shows a wealth of data for each visitor. 

  Matomo makes migration easy

  Whether it’s the poor usability, steep learning curve, inaccurate data or privacy issues, there’s every reason to think twice about migrating your UA360 account to GA4. 

  So why not migrate to a Google Analytics alternative like Matomo instead ? One that doesn’t sample data, guarantees your customers’ privacy, offers all the features GA4 doesn’t and is already used by over 1 million sites worldwide.

  Making the switch is easy. Matomo is one of the few web analytics tools that lets you import historical Google Analytics data. In doing so, you can continue to access your historical data and develop more meaningful insights by not having to start from scratch.

  If you’re ready to start a Google Analytics migration, you can try Matomo free for 21 days — no credit card required. 

  Try Matomo for Free

  21 day free trial. No credit card required.

  
  

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• What Is Ethical SEO & Why Does It Matter ?

  7 mai 2024, par Erin

  Do you want to generate more revenue ?

  Then, you need to ensure you have a steady stream of traffic flowing to your site.

  Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo are powerful mediums you can use to scale your business.

  Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of creating search engine-friendly content to draw in traffic to your website. But, if you aren’t careful, you could be crossing the line of ethical SEO into unethical SEO.

  In this article, we break down what ethical SEO is, why it’s important in business and how you can implement effective SEO into your business while remaining ethical.

  Let’s begin.

  What is ethical SEO ?

  Since the early days of the internet and search engines, business owners and marketers have tried using all kinds of SEO tactics to rank atop the search engines for relevant keywords.

  The problem ?

  Some of these practices are ethical, while others aren’t.

  What exactly is ethical SEO ?

  It’s the practice of optimising your website’s rankings in search engines by following search engine guidelines and prioritising user experience.

  

  Ethical SEO is also referred to as “white hat SEO.”

  On the other hand, businesses that break search engine rules and guidelines to “hack” their way to the top with faulty and questionable practices use unethical SEO, or “black hat SEO.”

  Ethical SEO aims to achieve higher rankings in search engines through sustainable, legitimate and fair methods.

  Black hat, or unethical SEO, aims to manipulate or “game” the system with deceptive strategies to bypass the search engine’s guidelines to rank higher.

  The two core branches of ethical SEO include :

  1. Strategies that align with search engine guidelines.
  2. Accessibility to broad audiences.

  Some examples of ethical SEO principles include :

  • Natural link building
  • Compliance with search engine guidelines
  • Establishing great user experiences
  • Creating reader-focused content

  By sticking to the right guidelines and implementing proper SEO practices, businesses can establish ethical SEO to generate more traffic and grow their brands.

  8 ethical SEO practices to implement

  If you want to grow your organic search traffic, then there’s no doubt you’ll need to have some SEO knowledge.

  While there are dozens of ways to “game” SEO, it’s best to stick to proven, ethical SEO techniques to improve your rankings.

  Stick to these best practices to increase your rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs), increase organic traffic and improve your website conversions.

  

  1. Crafting high-quality content

  The most important piece of any ethical SEO strategy is content.

  Forget about rankings, keywords and links for a second.

  Step back and think about why people go to Google, Bing and Yahoo in the first place.

  They’re there looking for information. They have a question they need answered. That’s where you can come in and give them the answer they want. 

  How ? In the form of content.

  The best long-term ethical SEO strategy is to create the highest-quality content possible. Crafting high-quality content should be where you focus 90% of your SEO efforts.

  2. Following search engine guidelines

  Once you’ve got a solid content creation strategy, where you’re producing in-depth, quality content, you need to ensure you’re following the guidelines and rules put in place by the major search engines.

  This means you need to stay compliant with the best practices and guidelines laid out by the top search engines.

  If you fail to follow these rules, you could be penalised, your content could be downgraded or removed from search engines, and you could even have your entire website flagged, impacting your entire organic search traffic from your site.

  You need to ensure you align with the guidelines so you’re set up for long-term success with your SEO.

  3. Conducting keyword research and optimisation

  Now that we’ve covered content and guidelines, let’s talk about the technical stuff, starting with keywords.

  In the early days of SEO (late 90s), just about anyone could rank a web page high by stuffing keywords all over the page.

  While those black hat techniques used to work to “game” the system, it doesn’t work like that anymore. Google and other major search engines have much more advanced algorithms that can detect keyword stuffing and manipulation.

  Keywords are still a major part of a successful SEO strategy. You can ethically incorporate keywords into your content (and you should) if you want to rank higher. 

  Your main goal with your content is to match it with the search intent. So, incorporating keywords should come naturally throughout your content. If you try to stuff in unnecessary keywords or use spammy techniques, you may not even rank at all and could harm your website’s rankings.

  4. Incorporating natural link building

  After you’ve covered content and keywords, it’s time to dive into links. Backlinks are any links that point back to your website from another website.

  These are a crucial part of the SEO pie. Without them, it’s hard to rank high on Google. They work well because they tell Google your web page or website has authority on a subject matter.

  But you could be penalised if you try to manipulate backlinks by purchasing them or spamming them from other websites.

  Instead, you should aim to draw in natural backlinks by creating content that attracts them.

  How ? There are several options :

  • Content marketing
  • Email outreach
  • Brand mentions
  • Public relations
  • Ethical guest posting

  Get involved in other people’s communities. Get on podcasts. Write guest posts. Connect with other brands. Provide value in your niche and create content worth linking to.

  5. Respecting the intellectual property of other brands

  Content creation is moving at lightspeed in the creator economy and social media era. For better or for worse, content is going viral every day. People share content, place their spin on it, revise it, optimise it, and spread it around the internet.

  Unfortunately, this means the content is sometimes shared without the owner’s permission. Content is one form of intellectual property (IP). 

  If you share copyrighted material, you could face legal consequences.

  6. Ensuring transparency

  Transparency is one of the pillars of ethical marketing.

  If you’re running the SEO in your company or an agency, you should always explain the SEO strategies and tactics you’re implementing to your stakeholders.

  It’s best to lean on transparency and honesty to ensure your team knows you’re running operations ethically.

  7. Implementing a great user experience

  The final pillar of ethical SEO practices is offering a great user experience on your website.

  Major search engines like Google are favouring user experience more and more every year. This means knowing how to track and analyse website metrics like page load times, time on page, pageviews, media plays and event tracking.

  8. Use an ethical web analytics solution

  Last but certainly not least. Tracking your website visitors ethically is key to maintaining SEO ethics.

  You can do this by using an ethical web analytics solution like Matomo, Plausible or Fathom. All three are committed to respecting user privacy and offer ethical tracking of visitors.

  We’re a bit biassed towards Matomo, of course, but for good reasons.

  Matomo offers accurate, unsampled data along with advanced features like heatmaps, session recording, and A/B testing. These features enhance user experience and support ethical SEO practices by providing insights into user behaviour, helping optimise content. 

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  6 unethical SEO practices to avoid

  Now that we’ve covered the ethical SEO best practices let’s talk about what kind of unethical SEO practices you want to avoid.

  Remember, SEO isn’t as easy to manipulate as it once was 20 years ago.

  Algorithms are much more sophisticated now, and search engines are getting better at detecting fraudulent, scammy or unethical SEO practices every year.

  Avoid these eight unethical SEO practices to ensure you can rank high in the long term :

  

  1. Keyword stuffing

  Keyword stuffing is probably the most common unethical SEO practice. This is where someone deliberately stuffs keywords onto a page to manipulate the search engines to rank a web page higher.

  Where this is unethical isn’t always easy to detect, but in some cases, it is. It comes down to whether it’s relevant and natural or intentionally stuffing.

  2. Cloaking

  Cloaking is another unethical SEO practice where someone manipulates the information search engines see on their website.

  For example, someone may show search engines one web page on their website, but when someone clicks on it in Google, they can direct someone to a completely different page. They do this by detecting the incoming request from the user agent and presenting different content.

  3. Deceiving functionality

  Another way companies are unethically implementing SEO tactics is by deceiving people with misleading information. For example, a website may claim to provide a free resource or directory but may intentionally lead visitors to paid products.

  4. Fraudulent redirects

  Another way to deceive or mislead searchers is by creating fraudulent redirects. A redirect is a way to take someone to a different web page when they click on another one. Redirects can be useful if a page is broken or outdated. However, they can be used to deceptively take someone to a website they didn’t intend to view.

  5. Negative SEO

  Negative SEO is the intentional attempt to harm a competitor’s search engine rankings through unethical tactics.

  These tactics include duplicating their content or generating spammy links by creating low quality or irrelevant backlinks to their site.

  6. Hidden text

  Placing hidden text on a website typically has one purpose : keyword stuffing.

  Instead of making it visible to users reading the content, websites will place invisible text or text that’s hard to read on a website to try to rank the content higher and manipulate the search engines.

  3 reasons you need to implement ethical SEO

  So, why should you ensure you only implement ethical SEO in your organic traffic strategy ?

  It’s not just about what’s morally right or wrong. Implementing ethical SEO is the smartest long-term marketing strategy :

  1. Better long-term SEO

  Search engine optimisation is about implementing the “right” tactics to get your website to rank higher.

  The funny thing is many people are trying to get quick fixes by manipulating search engines to see results now.

  However, the ones who implement shady tactics and “hacks” to game the system almost always end up losing their rankings in the long term. 

  The best long-term SEO strategy is to do things ethically. Create content that helps people. Make higher quality content than your competitors. If you do those two things right, you’ll have better search traffic for years.

  2. Great brand reputation

  Not only is ethical SEO a great way to get long-term results, but it’s also a good way to maintain a solid brand reputation.

  Reputation management is a crucial aspect of SEO. All it takes is one bad incident, and your SEO could be negatively impacted.

  3. Lower chance of penalties

  If you play by the rules, you have a lower risk of being penalised by Google.

  The reality is that Google owns the search engine, not you. While we can benefit from the traffic generation of major search engines, you could lose all your rankings if you break their guidelines.

  Track SEO data ethically with Matomo

  Ethical SEO is all about :

  • Serving your audience
  • Getting better traffic in the long run

  If you fail to follow ethical SEO practices, you could be de-ranked or have your reputation on the line.

  However, if you implement ethical SEO, you could reap the rewards of a sustainable marketing strategy that helps you grow your traffic correctly and increase conversions in the long term.

  If you’re ready to start implementing ethical SEO, you need to ensure you depend on an ethical web analytics solution like Matomo.

  Unlike other web analytics solutions, Matomo prioritises user privacy, maintains transparent, ethical data collection practices, and does not sell user data to advertisers. Matomo provides 100% data ownership, ensuring that your data remains yours to own and control.

  As the leading privacy-friendly web analytics solution globally, trusted by over 1 million websites, Matomo ensures :

  • Accurate data without data sampling for confident insights and better results
  • Privacy-friendly and GDPR-compliant web analytics
  • Open-source access for transparency and creating a custom solution tailored to your needs

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

  Try Matomo for Free

  21 day free trial. No credit card required.

  
  

  Your email address
  

  Your website address
  

  Your Analytics subdomain will be .matomo.cloud (change)

  Choose your analytics subdomain
  

  .matomo.cloud

  I accept the terms and conditions and data processing agreement (DPA)

  
  Your information will be used to create an account on our cloud service. For more information please consult our privacy policy.
  
  
  

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• How to Implement Cross-Channel Analytics : A Guide for Marketers

  17 avril 2024, par Erin

  Every modern marketer knows they have to connect with consumers across several channels. But do you know how well Instagram works alongside organic traffic or your email list ? Are you even tracking the impacts of these channels in one place ?

  You need a cross-channel analytics solution if you answered no to either of these questions. 

  In this article, we’ll explain cross-channel analytics, why your company probably needs it and how to set up a cross-channel analytics solution as quickly and easily as possible.

  What is cross-channel analytics ? 

  Cross-channel analytics is a form of marketing analytics that collects and analyses data from every channel and campaign you use.

  The result is a comprehensive view of your customer’s journey and each channel’s role in converting customers. 

  Cross-channel analytics lets you track every channel you use to convert customers, including :

  • Your website
  • Social media profiles
  • Email
  • Paid search
  • E-commerce
  • Retargeting campaigns

  Cross-channel analytics solves one of the most significant issues of cross-channel or multi-channel marketing efforts : measurement. 

  Research shows that only 16% of marketing tech stacks allow for accurate measurement of multi-channel initiatives across channels. 

  That’s a problem, given the staggering number of touchpoints in a typical buyer’s conversion path. However, it can be fixed using a cross-channel analytics approach that lets you measure the performance of every channel and assign a dollar value to its role in every conversion. 

  The difference between cross-channel analytics and multi-channel analytics

  Cross-channel analytics and multi-channel analytics sound very similar, but there’s one key difference you need to know. Multi-channel analytics measures the performance of several channels, but not necessarily all of them, nor the extent to which they work together to drive conversions. Conversely, cross-channel analytics measures the performance of all your marketing channels and how they work together. 

  What are the benefits of cross-channel analytics 

  Cross-channel analytics offers a lot of marketing and business benefits. Here are the ones marketing managers love most.

  Get a complete view of the customer journey

  Implementing a cross-channel analytics solution is the only way to get a complete view of your customer journey. 

  Cross-channel marketing analytics lets you see your customer journey in high definition, allowing you to build comprehensive customer profiles using data from multiple sources across every touchpoint. 

  

  The result ? You get to understand how every customer behaves at every point of the customer journey, why they convert or leave your funnel, and which channels play the biggest role. 

  In short, you get to see why customers convert so you can learn how to convert more of them.

  Personalise the customer experience

  According to a McKinsey study, customers demand personalisation, and brands that excel at it generate 40% more revenue. Deliver the personalisation they desire and reap the benefits with cross-channel analytics. 

  When you understand the customer journey in detail, it becomes much easier to personalise your website and marketing efforts to their preferences and behaviours.

  Identify your most effective marketing channels

  Cross-channel marketing helps you understand your marketing efforts to see how every channel impacts conversions. 

  Take a look at the screenshot from Matomo below. Cross-channel analytics lets you get incredibly granular — we can see the number of conversions of organic search drives and the performance of individual search engines. 

  

  This makes it easy to identify your most effective marketing channels and allocate your resources appropriately. It also allows you to ask (and answer) which channels are the most effective.

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

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  Attribute conversions accurately 

  An attribution model decides how you assign credit for each customer conversion to different touchpoints on the customer journey. Without a cross-channel analytics solution, you’re stuck using a standard attribution model like first or last click. 

  These models will show you how customers first found your brand or which channel finally convinced them to convert, but it doesn’t help you understand the role all your channels played in the conversion. 

  Cross-channel analytics solves this attribution problem. Rather than attributing a conversion to the touchpoint that directly led to the sale, cross-channel data gives you the real picture and allows you to use multi-touch attribution to understand which touchpoints generate the most revenue.

  How to set up cross-channel analytics

  Now that you know what cross-channel analytics is and why you should use it, here’s how to set up your solution. 

  1. Determine your objectives

  Defining your marketing goals will help you build a more relevant and actionable cross-channel analytics solution. 

  If you want to improve marketing attribution, for example, you can choose a platform with that feature built-in. If you care about personalisation, you could choose a platform with A/B testing capabilities to measure the impact of your personalisation efforts. 

  1. Set relevant KPIs

  You’ll want to track relevant KPIs to measure the marketing effectiveness of each channel. Put top-of-the-funnel metrics aside and focus on conversion metrics. 

  These include :

  • Conversion rate
  • Average visit duration
  • Bounce rate

  1. Implement tracking and analytics tools

  Gathering customer data from every channel and centralising it in a single location is one of the biggest challenges of cross-channel analytics. Still, it’s made easier with the right tracking tool or analytics platform. 

  The trick is to choose a platform that lets you measure as many of your channels as possible in a single platform. With Matomo, for example, you can track search, paid search, social and email campaigns and your website analytics.

  1. Set up a multi-touch attribution model

  Now that you have all of your data in one place, you can set up a multi-touch attribution model that lets you understand the extent to which each marketing channel contributes to your overall success. 

  There are several attribution models to choose from, including :

  

  Each model has benefits and drawbacks, so choosing the right model for your organisation can be tricky. Rather than take a wild guess, evaluate each model against your marketing objectives, sales length cycle and data availability.

  For example, if you want to focus on optimising customer acquisition costs, a model that prioritises earlier touchpoints will be better. If you care about conversions, you might try a time decay model. 

  1. Turn data into insights with reports

  One of the big benefits of choosing a tool like Matomo, which consolidates data in one place, is that it significantly speeds up and simplifies reporting.

  When all the data is stored in one platform, you don’t need to spend hours combing through your social media platforms and copying and pasting analytics data into a spreadsheet. It’s all there and ready for you to run reports.

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  1. Take action

  There’s no point implementing a cross-channel analytics system if you aren’t going to take action. 

  But where should you start ?

  Optimising your budgets and prioritising marketing spend is a great starting point. Use your cross-channel insights to find your most effective marketing channels (they’re the ones that convert the most customers or have the highest ROI) and allocate more of your budget to them. 

  You can also optimise the channels that aren’t pulling their weight if social media is letting you down ; for example, experiment with tactics like social commerce that could drive more conversions. Alternatively, you could choose to stop investing entirely in these channels.

  Cross-channel analytics best practices

  If you already have a cross-channel analytics solution, take things to the next level with the following best practices. 

  Use a centralised solution to track everything

  Centralising your data in one analytics tool can streamline your marketing efforts and help you stay on top of your data. It won’t just save you from tabbing between different browsers or copying and pasting everything into a spreadsheet, but it can also make it easier to create reports. 

  Think about consumer privacy 

  If you are looking at a new cross-channel analytics tool, consider how it accounts for data privacy regulations in your area. 

  You’re going to be collecting a lot of data, so it’s important to respect their privacy wishes. 

  It’s best to choose a platform like Matomo that complies with the strictest privacy laws (CCPA, GDPR, etc.).

  Monitor data in real time

  So, you’ve got a holistic view of your marketing efforts by integrating all your channels into a single tool ?

  Great, now go further by monitoring the impact of your marketing efforts in real time.

  

  With a web analytics platform like Matomo, you can see who visits your site, what they do, and where they come from through features like the visits log report, which even lets you view individual user sessions. This lets you measure the impact of posting on a particular social channel or launching a new offer. 

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  Reallocate marketing budgets based on performance

  When you track every channel, you can use a multi-touch attribution model like position-based or time-decay to give every channel the credit it deserves. But don’t just credit each channel ; turn your valuable insights into action. 

  Use cross-channel attribution analytics data to reallocate your marketing budget to the most profitable channels or spend time optimising the channels that aren’t pulling their weight. 

  Cross-channel analytics platforms to get started with 

  The marketing analytics market is huge. Mordor Intelligence valued it at $6.31 billion in 2024 and expects it to reach $11.54 billion by 2029. Many of these platforms offer cross-channel analytics, but few can track the impact of multiple marketing channels in one place. 

  So, rather than force you to trawl through confusing product pages, we’ve shortlisted three of the best cross-channel analytics solutions. 

  Matomo

  

  Matomo is a web analytics platform that lets you collect and centralise your marketing data while giving you 100% accurate data. That includes search, social, e-commerce, campaign tracking data and comprehensive website analytics.

  Better still, you get the necessary tools to turn those insights into action. Custom reporting lets you track and visualise the metrics that matter, while conversion optimisation tools like built-in A/B testing, heatmaps, session recordings and more let you test your theories. 

  Google Analytics

  

  Google Analytics is the most popular and widely used tool on the market. The level of analysis and customisation you can do with it is impressive for a free tool. That includes tracking just about any event and creating reports from scratch. 

  Google Analytics provides some cross-channel marketing features and lets you track the impact of various channels, such as social and search, but there are a couple of drawbacks. 

  Privacy can be a concern because Google Analytics collects data from your customers for its own remarketing purposes. 

  It also uses data sampling to generate wider insights from a small subset of your data. This lack of accurate data reporting can cause you to generate false insights.

  With Google Analytics, you’ll also need to subscribe to additional tools to gain advanced insights into the user experience. So, consider that while this tool is free, you’ll need to pay for heatmaps, session recording and A/B testing tools to optimise effectively.

  Improvado

  

  Improvado is an analytics tool for sales and marketing teams that extracts thousands of metrics from hundreds of sources. It centralises data in data warehouses, from which you can create a range of marketing dashboards.

  While Improvado does have analytics capabilities, it is primarily an ETL (extraction, transform, load) tool for organisations that want to centralise all their data. That means marketers who aren’t familiar with data transformations may struggle to get their heads around the complexity of the platform.

  Make the most of cross-channel analytics with Matomo

  Cross-channel analytics is the only way to get a comprehensive view of your customer journey and understand how your channels work together to drive conversions.

  Then you’re dealing with so many channels and data ; keeping things as simple as possible is the key to success. That’s why over 1 million websites choose Matomo. 

  Our all-in-one analytics solution measures traditional web analytics, behavioural analytics, attribution and SEO, so you have 100% accurate data in one place. 

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

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