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• Top Conversion Metrics to Track in 2024

  22 janvier 2024, par Erin

  2023 boasts  2.64 billion online shoppers worldwide ; that’s more than a third of the global population. With these numbers on an upward trajectory in 2024, conversion metrics are more important than ever to help marketers optimise the online shopping experience. 

  In this article, we’ll provide predictions for the most important conversion metrics you should keep track of in 2024. We’ll also examine how social media can make or break your brand engagement strategy. Keep reading to stay ahead of the competition for 2024 and gain tips and tricks for improving conversion performance.

  What are conversion metrics ?

  In technical terms, conversion metrics are the quantifiable measurements used to track the success of specific outcomes on a website or marketing campaign. Conversion metrics demonstrate how well your website prompts visitors to take desirable actions, like signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or filling out a form, for instance.

  Let’s say you’re running a lemonade stand, and you want to compare the number of cups sold to the number of people who approached your stand (your conversion rate). This ratio of cups sold to the total number of people can help you reassess your sales approach. If the ratio is low, you might reconsider your approach ; if it’s high, you can analyse what makes your technique successful and double down.

  

  In 2023, we saw the average conversion rate for online shopping grow by 5.53% compared to the previous year. An increase in conversion rate typically indicates a higher percentage of website visitors converting to buyers. It can also be a good sign for marketing teams that marketing campaigns are more effective, and website experiences are more user-friendly than the previous year. 

  Conversion metrics are a marketers’ bread and butter. Whether it’s through measuring the efficacy of campaigns, honing in on the most effective marketing channels or understanding customer behaviour — don’t underestimate the power of conversion metrics. 

  Conversion rate vs. conversion value 

  Before we dive into the top conversion metrics to track in 2024, let’s clear up any confusion about the difference between conversion rate and conversion value. Conversion rate is a metric that measures the ratio of website visitors/users who complete a conversion action to the total number of website visitors/users. Conversion rates are communicated as percentages.

  A conversion action can mean many different things depending on your product or service. Some examples of conversion actions that website visitors can take include : 

  • Making a purchase
  • Filling out a form
  • Subscribing to a newsletter
  • Any other predefined goal

  Conversion rate is arguably one of the most valuable conversion metrics if you want to pinpoint areas for improvement in your marketing strategy and user experience (UX).

  A good conversion rate completely depends on the type of conversion being measured. Shopify has reported that the average e-commerce conversion rate will be 2.5%-3% in 2023, so if you fall anywhere in this range, you’re in good shape. Below is a visual aid for how you can calculate conversion rate depending on which conversion actions you decide to track :

  

  Conversion value is also a quantifiable metric, but there’s a key difference : conversion value assigns a numerical value to each conversion based on the monetary value of the completed conversion action. Conversion value is not calculated with a formula but is assigned based on revenue generated from the conversion. Conversion value is important for calculating marketing efforts’ return on investment (ROI) and is often used to allocate marketing budgets better. 

  Both conversion rate and conversion value are vital metrics in digital marketing. When used in tandem, they can provide a holistic perspective on your marketing efforts’ financial impact and success. 

  9 important conversion metrics to track in 2024

  Based on research and results from 2023, we have compiled this list of predictions for the most important metrics to track in 2024. 

  

  1. Conversion rate 

  To start things out strong, we’ve got the timeless and indispensable conversion rate. As we discussed in the previous section, conversion rate measures how successfully your website convinces visitors to take important actions, like making purchases or signing up for newsletters. 

  An easy-to-use web analytics solution like Matomo can help in tracking conversion rates. Matomo automatically calculates conversion rates of individual pages, overall website and on a goal-by-goal basis. So you can compare the conversion rate of your newsletter sign up goal vs a form submission goal on your site and see what is underperforming and requires improvement.

  

  In the example above in Matomo, it’s clear that our goal of getting users to comment is not doing well, with only a 0.03% conversion rate. To improve our website’s overall conversion rate, we should focus our efforts on improving the user commenting experience.

  For 2024, we predict that the conversion rate will be just as important to track as in 2023. 

  2. Average visit duration

  This key metric tracks how long users spend on your website. A session typically starts when a user lands on your website and ends when they close the browser or have been inactive for some time ( 30 minutes). Tracking the average visit duration can help you determine how well your content captures users’ attention or how engaged users are when navigating your website. 

  Average Visit Duration = Total Time Spent / Number of Visits

  

  Web analytics tools like Matomo help in monitoring conversion rate metrics like average visit duration. Timestamps are assigned to each interaction within a visit, so that average visit duration can be calculated. Analysing website visit information like average visit duration allows you to evaluate the relevance of your content with your target audience. 

  3. Starter rate

  If your business relies on getting leads through forms, paying attention to Form Analytics is crucial for improving conversion rates. The “starter rate” metric is particularly important—it indicates the number of who people start filling out the form, after seeing it. 

  When you’re working to increase conversion rates and capture more leads, keeping an eye on the starter rate helps you understand where users might encounter issues or lose interest early in the form-filling process. Addressing these issues can simplify the form-filling experience and increase the likelihood of successful lead captures.

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  Concrete CMS tripled their leads using Form Analytics in Matomo—see how in their case study.

  4. Bounce rate

  Bounce rate reflects the percentage of visitors who exit your site after interacting with a single page. Bounce rate is an important metric for understanding how relevant your content is to visitors or how optimised your user experience is. A high bounce rate can indicate that visitors are having trouble navigating your website or not finding what they’re looking for. 

  Matomo automatically calculates bounce rate on each page and for your overall website.

  

  Bounce Rate = (# of Single-Page Sessions / Total # of Sessions) * 100

  5. Cost-per-conversion

  This metric quantifies the average cost incurred for each conversion action (i.e., sale, acquired lead, sign-up, etc.). Marketers use cost-per-conversion to assess the cost efficiency of a marketing campaign. You want to aim for a lower cost-per-conversion, meaning your advertising efforts aren’t breaking the bank. A high cost-per-conversion could be acceptable in luxury industries, but it often indicates a low marketing ROI. 

  Cost-per-Conversion = Ad Spend / # of Conversions

  By connecting your Matomo with Google Ads through Advertising Conversion Export feature in Matomo, you can keep tabs on your conversions right within the advertising platform. This feature also works with Microsoft Advertising and Yandex Ads.

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  6. Average order value (AOV)

  AOV is a conversion metric that calculates the average monetary value of each order. AOV is crucial for helping e-commerce businesses understand the value of their transactions. A high AOV means buyers spend more per transaction and could be more easily influenced by upselling or cross-selling. Low AOV isn’t necessarily bad — you can compensate for a low AOV by boosting transaction volume. 

  

  AOV = Total Revenue / Total # of Orders 

  Matomo automatically tracks important e-commerce metrics such as AOV, the percentage of visits with abandoned carts and the conversion rate for e-commerce orders.

  7. Exit rate

  Exit rate measures the percentage of visitors who leave a specific webpage after viewing it. Exit rate differs from bounce rate in that it focuses on the last page visitors view before leaving the site. A high exit rate should be examined to identify issues with visitors abandoning the specific page. 

  Exit Rate = (# of Exits from a Page / Total # of Pageviews for that Page) * 100

  

  In the Matomo report above, it’s clear that 77% of visits to the diving page ended after viewing it (exit rate), while 23% continued exploring. 

  On the other hand, our products page shows a lower exit rate at 36%, suggesting that more visitors continue navigating through the site after checking out the products.

  How to improve your conversion performance 

  If you’re curious about improving your conversion performance, this section is designed to guide you through that exact process.

  

  Understand your target audience and their behaviour

  You may need to return to the drawing board if you’re noticing high bounce rates or a lack of brand engagement. In-depth audience analysis can unveil user demographics, preferences and behaviours. This type of user data is crucial for building user personas, segmenting your visitors and targeting marketing campaigns accordingly.

  You can segment your website visitors in a number of web analytics solutions, but for the example below, we’ll look at segmenting in Matomo. 

  

  In this instance, we’ve segmented visitors by mobile users. This helps us see how mobile users are doing with our newsletter signup goal and identify the countries where they convert the most. It also shows how well mobile users are doing with our conversion goal over time.

  It’s clear that our mobile users are converting at a very low rate—just 0.01%. This suggests there’s room for improvement in the mobile experience on our site.

  Optimise website design, landing pages, page loading speed and UX

  A slow page loading speed can result in high exit rates, user dissatisfaction and lost revenue. Advanced web analytics solutions like Matomo, which provides heatmaps and session recordings, can help you find problems in your website design and understand how users interact with it.

  Making a website that focuses on users and has an easy-to-follow layout will make the user experience smooth and enjoyable.

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  Create compelling calls-to-action (CTA)

  Research shows that a strategically placed and relevant CTA can significantly increase your revenue. CTAs guide prospects toward conversion and must have a compelling and clear message. 

  You can optimise CTAs by analysing how users interact with them — this helps you tailor them to better resonate with your target audience. 

  A/B testing

  A/B testing can improve your conversion performance by allowing you to experiment with different versions of a web page. By comparing the impact of different web page elements on conversions, you can optimise your website with confidence. 

  Key conversion metrics takeaways

  Whether understanding user behaviour to develop a more intuitive user experience or guessing which marketing channel is the most effective, conversion metrics can be a marketer’s best friend. Conversion metrics help you save time, money and headaches when making your campaigns and website as effective as possible. 

  Make improving conversion rates easier with Matomo, a user-friendly all-in-one solution. Matomo ensures reliable insights by delivering accurate data while prioritising compliance and privacy.

  Get quality insights from your conversion metrics by trying Matomo free for 21 days. No credit card required.

• 7 Fintech Marketing Strategies to Maximise Profits in 2024

  24 juillet 2024, par Erin

  Fintech investment skyrocketed in 2021, but funding tanked in the following two years. A -63% decline in fintech investment in 2023 saw the worst year in funding since 2017. Luckily, the correction quickly floored, and the fintech industry will recover in 2024, but companies will have to work much harder to secure funds.

  F-Prime’s The 2024 State of Fintech Report called 2023 the year of “regulation on, risk off” amid market pressures and regulatory scrutiny. Funding is rising again, but investors want regulatory compliance and stronger growth performance from fintech ventures.

  Here are seven fintech marketing strategies to generate the growth investors seek in 2024.

  Top fintech marketing challenges in 2024

  Following the worst global investment run since 2017 in 2023, fintech marketers need to readjust their goals to adapt to the current market challenges. The fintech honeymoon is over for Wall Street with regulator scrutiny, closures, and a distinct lack of profitability giving investors cold feet.

  Here are the biggest challenges fintech marketers face in 2024 :

  • Market correction : With fewer rounds and longer times between them, securing funds is a major challenge for fintech businesses. F-Prime’s The 2024 State of Fintech Report warns of “a high probability of significant shutdowns in 2024 and 2025,” highlighting the importance of allocating resources and budgets effectively.
  • Contraction : Aside from VC funding decreasing by 64% in 2023, the payments category now attracts a large majority of fintech investment, meaning there’s a smaller share from a smaller pot to go around for everyone else.
  • Competition : The biggest names in finance have navigated heavy disruption from startups and, for the most part, emerged stronger than ever. Meanwhile, fintech is no longer Wall Street’s hottest commodity as investors turn their attention to AI.
  • Regulations : Regulatory scrutiny of fintech intensified in 2023 – particularly in the US – contributing to the “regulation on, risk off” summary of F-Prime’s report.
  • Investor scrutiny : With market and industry challenges intensifying, investors are putting their money behind “safer” ventures that demonstrate real, sustainable profitability, not short-term growth.
  • Customer loyalty : Even in traditional baking and finance, switching is surging as customers seek providers who better meet their needs. To achieve the sustainable growth investors are looking for, fintech startups need to know their ideal customer profile (ICP), tailor their products/services and fintech marketing campaigns to them, and retain them throughout the customer lifecycle.

  

  The good news for fintech marketers is that the market correction is leveling out in 2024. In The 2024 State of Fintech Report, F-Prime says that “heading into 2024, we see the fintech market amid a rebound,” while McKinsey expects fintech revenue to grow “almost three times faster than those in the traditional banking sector between 2023 and 2028.”

  Winning back investor confidence won’t be easy, though. F-Prime acknowledges that investors are prioritising high-performance fintech ventures, particularly those with high gross margins. Fintech marketers need to abandon the growth-at-all-costs mindset and switch to a data-driven optimisation, growth and revenue system.

  7 fintech marketing strategies

  Given the current state of the fintech industry and relatively low levels of investor confidence, fintech marketers’ priority is building a new culture of sustainable profit. This starts with rethinking priorities and switching up the marketing goals to reflect longer-term ambitions.

  So, here are the fintech marketing strategies that matter most in 2024.

  1. Optimise for profitability over growth at all costs

  To progress from the growth-at-all-cost mindset, fintech marketers need to optimise for different KPIs. Instead of flexing metrics like customer growth rate, fintech companies need to take a more balanced approach to measuring sustainable profitability.

  This means holding on to existing customers – and maximising their value – while they acquire new customers. It also means that, instead of trying to make everyone a target customer, you concentrate on targeting the most valuable prospects, even if it results in a smaller overall user base.

  Optimising for profitability starts with putting vanity metrics in their place and pinpointing the KPIs that represent valuable business growth :

  • Gross profit margin
  • Revenue growth rate
  • Cash flow
  • Monthly active user growth (qualify “active” as completing a transaction)
  • Customer acquisition cost
  • Customer retention rate
  • Customer lifetime value
  • Avg. revenue per user
  • Avg. transactions per month
  • Avg. transaction value

  With a more focused acquisition strategy, you can feed these insights into every company level. For example, you can prioritise customer engagement, revenue, retention, and customer service in product development and customer experience (CX).

  To ensure all marketing efforts are pulling towards these KPIs, you need an attribution system that accurately measures the contribution of each channel.

  Marketing attribution (aka multi-touch attribution) should be used to measure every touchpoint in the customer journey and accurately credit them for driving revenue. This helps you allocate the correct budget to the channels and campaigns, adding real value to the business (e.g., social media marketing vs content marketing).

  Example : Mastercard helps a digital bank acquire 10 million high-value customers

  For example, Mastercard helped a digital bank in Latin America achieve sustainable growth beyond customer acquisition. The fintech company wanted to increase revenue through targeted acquisition and profitable engagement metrics.

  Strategies included :

  • A more targeted acquisition strategy for high-value customers
  • Increasing avg. spend per customer
  • Reducing acquisition cost
  • Customer retention

  As a result, Mastercard’s advisors helped this fintech company acquire 10 million new customers in two years. More importantly, they increased customer spending by 28% while reducing acquisition costs by 13%, creating a more sustainable and profitable growth model.

  2. Use web and app analytics to remotivate users before they disengage

  Engagement is the key to customer retention and lifetime value. To prevent valuable customers from disengaging, you need to intervene when they show early signs of losing interest, but they’re still receptive to your incentivisation tactics (promotions, rewards, milestones, etc.).

  By integrating web and app analytics, you can identify churn patterns and pinpoint the sequences of actions that lead to disengaging. For example, you might determine that customers who only log in once a month, engage with one dashboard, or drop below a certain transaction rate are at high risk for churn.

  Using a tool like Matomo for web and app analytics, you can detect these early signs of disengagement. Once you identify your churn risks, you can create triggers to automatically fire re-engagement campaigns. You can also use CRM and session data to personalize campaigns to directly address the cause of disengagement, e.g., valuable content or incentives to increase transaction rates.

  Example : Dynamic Yield fintech re-engagement case study

  In this Dynamic Yield case study, one leading fintech company uses customer spending patterns to identify those most likely to disengage. The company set up automated campaigns with personalised in-app messaging, offering time-bound incentives to increase transaction rates.

  

  With fully automated re-engagement campaigns, this fintech company increased customer retention through valuable engagement and revenue-driving actions.

  3. Identify the path your most valuable customers take

  Why optimise web experiences for everyone when you can tailor the online journey for your most valuable customers ? Use customer segmentation to identify the shared interests and habits of your most valuable customers. You can learn a lot about customers based on where the pages they visit and the content they engage with before taking action.

  Use these insights to optimise funnels that motivate prospects displaying the same customer behaviours as your most valuable customers.

  Get 20-40% more data with Matomo

  One of the biggest issues with Google Analytics and many similar tools is that they produce inaccurate data due to data sampling. Once you collect a certain amount of data, Google reports estimates instead of giving you complete, accurate insights.

  This means you could be basing important business decisions on inaccurate data. Furthermore, when investors are nervous about the uncertainty surrounding fintech, the last thing they want is inaccurate data.

  Matomo is the reliable, accurate alternative to Google Analytics that uses no data sampling whatsoever. You get 100% access to your web analytics data, so you can base every decision on reliable insights. With Matomo, you can access between 20% and 40% more data compared to Google Analytics.

  

  With Matomo, you can confidently unlock the full picture of your marketing efforts and give potential investors insights they can trust.

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  4. Reduce onboarding dropouts with marketing automation

  Onboarding dropouts kill your chance of getting any return on your customer acquisition cost. You also miss out on developing a long-term relationship with users who fail to complete the onboarding process – a hit on immediate ROI and, potentially, long-term profits.

  The onboarding process also defines the first impression for customers and sets a precedent for their ongoing experience.

  An engaging onboarding experience converts more potential customers into active users and sets them up for repeat engagement and valuable actions.

  Example : Maxio reduces onboarding time by 30% with GUIDEcx

  Onboarding optimisation specialists, GUIDEcx helped Maxio cut six weeks off their onboarding times – a 30% reduction.

  

  With a shorter onboarding schedule, more customers are committing to close the deal during kick-off calls. Meanwhile, by increasing automated tasks by 20%, the company has unlocked a 40% increase in capacity, allowing it to handle more customers at any given time and multiplying its capacity to generate revenue.

  5. Increase the value in TTFV with personalisation

  Time to first value (TTFV) is a key metric for onboarding optimisation, but some actions are more valuable than others. By personalising the experience for new users, you can increase the value of their first action, increasing motivation to continue using your fintech product/service.

  The onboarding process is an opportunity to learn more about new customers and deliver the most rewarding user experience for their particular needs.

  Example : Betterment helps users put their money to work right away

  Betterment has implemented a quick, personalised onboarding system instead of the typical email signup process. The app wants to help new customers put their money to work right away, optimising for the first transaction during onboarding itself.

  

  It personalises the experience by prompting new users to choose their goals, set up the right account for them, and select the best portfolio to achieve their goals. They can complete their first investment within a matter of minutes and professional financial advice is only ever a click away.

  Optimise account signups with Matomo

  If you want to create and optimise a signup process like Betterment, you need an analytics system with a complete conversion rate optimisation (CRO) toolkit. 

  

  Matomo includes all the CRO features you need to optimise user experience and increase signups. With heatmaps, session recordings, form analytics, and A/B testing, you can make data-driven decisions with confidence.

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  6. Use gamification to drive product engagement

  Gamification can create a more engaging experience and increase motivation for customers to continue using a product. The key is to reward valuable actions, engagement time, goal completions, and the small objectives that build up to bigger achievements.

  Gamification is most effective when used to help individuals achieve goals they’ve set for themselves, rather than the goals of others (e.g., an employer). This helps explain why it’s so valuable to fintech experience and how to implement effective gamification into products and services.

  Example : Credit Karma gamifies personal finance

  Credit Karma helps users improve their credit and build their net worth, subtly gamifying the entire experience.

  

  Users can set their financial goals and link all of their accounts to keep track of their assets in one place. The app helps users “see your wealth grow” with assets, debts, and investments all contributing to their next wealth as one easy-to-track figure.

  

  7. Personalise loyalty programs for retention and CLV

  Loyalty programs tap into similar psychology as gamification to motivate and reward engagement. Typically, the key difference is that – rather than earning rewards for themselves – you directly reward customers for their long-term loyalty.

  That being said, you can implement elements of gamification and personalisation into loyalty programs, too. 

  Example : Bank of America’s Preferred Rewards

  Bank of America’s Preferred Rewards program implements a tiered rewards system that rewards customers for their combined spending, saving, and borrowing activity.

  

  The program incentivises all customer activity with the bank and amplifies the rewards for its most active customers. Customers can also set personal finance goals (e.g., saving for retirement) to see which rewards benefit them the most.

  Conclusion

  Fintech marketing needs to catch up with the new priorities of investors in 2024. The pre-pandemic buzz is over, and investors remain cautious as regulatory scrutiny intensifies, security breaches mount up, and the market limps back into recovery.

  To win investor and consumer trust, fintech companies need to drop the growth-at-all-costs mindset and switch to a marketing philosophy of long-term profitability. This is what investors want in an unstable market, and it’s certainly what customers want from a company that handles their money.

  Unlock the full picture of your marketing efforts with Matomo’s robust features and accurate reporting. Trusted by over 1 million websites, Matomo is chosen for its compliance, accuracy, and powerful features that drive actionable insights and improve decision-making.

   Start your free 21-day trial now. No credit card required.

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• A Guide to GDPR Sensitive Personal Data

  13 mai 2024, par Erin

  The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one of the world’s most stringent data protection laws. It provides a legal framework for collection and processing of the personal data of EU individuals.

  The GDPR distinguishes between “special categories of personal data” (also referred to as “sensitive”) and other personal data and imposes stricter requirements on collection and processing of sensitive data. Understanding these differences will help your company comply with the requirements and avoid heavy penalties.

  In this article, we’ll explain what personal data is considered “sensitive” according to the GDPR. We’ll also examine how a web analytics solution like Matomo can help you maintain compliance.

  What is sensitive personal data ?

  The following categories of data are treated as sensitive :

  1. 1. Personal data revealing :
        • Racial or ethnic origin ;
        • Political opinions ;
        • Religious or philosophical beliefs ;
        • Trade union membership ;
     2. Genetic and biometric data ;
     3. Data concerning a person’s :
        • Health ; or
        • Sex life or sexual orientation.

  

  Sensitive vs. non-sensitive personal data : What’s the difference ?

  While both categories include information about an individual, sensitive data is seen as more private, or requiring a greater protection. 

  Sensitive data often carries a higher degree of risk and harm to the data subject, if the data is exposed. For example, a data breach exposing health records could lead to discrimination for the individuals involved. An insurance company could use the information to increase premiums or deny coverage. 

  In contrast, personal data like name or gender is considered less sensitive because it doesn’t carry the same degree of harm as sensitive data. 

  Unauthorised access to someone’s name alone is less likely to harm them or infringe on their fundamental rights and freedoms than an unauthorised access to their health records or biometric data. Note that financial information (e.g. credit card details) does not fall into the special categories of data.

  

  Legality of processing

  Under the GDPR, both sensitive and nonsensitive personal data are protected. However, the rules and conditions for processing sensitive data are more stringent.

  Article 6 deals with processing of non-sensitive data and it states that processing is lawful if one of the six lawful bases for processing applies. 

  In contrast, Art. 9 of the GDPR states that processing of sensitive data is prohibited as a rule, but provides ten exceptions. 

  It is important to note that the lawful bases in Art. 6 are not the same as exceptions in Art. 9. For example, while performance of a contract or legitimate interest of the controller are a lawful basis for processing non-sensitive personal data, they are not included as an exception in Art. 9. What follows is that controllers are not permitted to process sensitive data on the basis of contract or legitimate interest. 

  The exceptions where processing of sensitive personal data is permitted (subject to additional requirements) are : 

  • Explicit consent : The individual has given explicit consent to processing their sensitive personal data for specified purpose(s), except where an EU member state prohibits such consent. See below for more information about explicit consent. 
  • Employment, social security or social protection : Processing sensitive data is necessary to perform tasks under employment, social security or social protection law.
  • Vital interests : Processing sensitive data is necessary to protect the interests of a data subject or if the individual is physically or legally incapable of consenting. 
  • Non-for-profit bodies : Foundations, associations or nonprofits with a political, philosophical, religious or trade union aim may process the sensitive data of their members or those they are in regular contact with, in connection with their purposes (and no disclosure of the data is permitted outside the organisation, without the data subject’s consent).
  • Made public : In some cases, it may be permissible to process the sensitive data of a data subject if the individual has already made it public and accessible. 
  • Legal claims : Processing sensitive data is necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims, including legal or in court proceedings.
  • Public interest : Processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest, like preventing unlawful acts or protecting the public.
  • Health or social care : Processing special category data is necessary for : preventative or occupational medicine, providing health and social care, medical diagnosis or managing healthcare systems.
  • Public health : It is permissible to process sensitive data for public health reasons, like protecting against cross-border threats to health or ensuring the safety of medicinal products or medical devices. 
  • Archiving, research and statistics : You may process sensitive data if it’s done for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes.

  In addition, you must adhere to all data handling requirements set by the GDPR.

  Important : Note that for any data sent that you are processing, you always need to identify a lawful basis under Art. 6. In addition, if the data sent contains sensitive data, you must comply with Art. 9.

  Explicit consent

  While consent is a valid lawful basis for processing non-sensitive personal data, controllers are permitted to process sensitive data only with an “explicit consent” of the data subject.

  The GDPR does not define “explicit” consent, but it is accepted that it must meet all Art. 7 conditions for consent, at a higher threshold. To be “explicit” a consent requires a clear statement (oral or written) of the data subject. Consent inferred from the data subject’s actions does not meet the threshold. 

  The controller must retain records of the explicit consent and provide appropriate consent withdrawal method to allow the data subject to exercise their rights.

  Examples of compliant and non-compliant sensitive data processing

  Here are examples of when you can and can’t process sensitive data :

  • When you can process sensitive data : A doctor logs sensitive data about a patient, including their name, symptoms and medicine prescribed. The hospital can process this data to provide appropriate medical care to their patients. An IoT device and software manufacturer processes their customers’ health data based on explicit consent of each customer. 
  • When you can’t process sensitive data : One example is when you don’t have explicit consent from a data subject. Another is when there’s no lawful basis for processing it or you are collecting personal data you simply do not need. For example, you don’t need your customer’s ethnic origin to fulfil an online order.

  Other implications of processing sensitive data

  If you process sensitive data, especially on a large scale, GDPR imposes additional requirements, such as having Data Privacy Impact Assessments, appointing Data Protection Officers and EU Representatives, if you are a controller based outside the EU.

  Penalties for GDPR non-compliance

  Mishandling sensitive data (or processing it when you’re not allowed to) can result in huge penalties. There are two tiers of GDPR fines :

  • €10 million or 2% of a company’s annual revenue for less severe infringements
  • €20 million or 4% of a company’s annual revenue for more severe infringements

  In the first half of 2023 alone, fines imposed in the EU due to GDPR violations exceeded €1.6 billion, up from €73 million in 2019.

  Examples of high-profile violations in the last few years include :

  • Amazon : The Luxembourg National Commission fined the retail giant with a massive $887 million fine in 2021 for not processing personal data per the GDPR. 
  • Google : The National Data Protection Commission (CNIL) fined Google €50 million for not getting proper consent to display personalised ads.
  • H&M : The Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information hit the multinational clothing company with a €35.3 million fine in 2020 for unlawfully gathering and storing employees’ data in its service centre.

  One of the criteria that affects the severity of a fine is “data category” — the type of personal data being processed. Companies need to take extra precautions with sensitive data, or they risk receiving more severe penalties.

  What’s more, GDPR violations can negatively affect your brand’s reputation and cause you to lose business opportunities from consumers concerned about your data practices. 76% of consumers indicated they wouldn’t buy from companies they don’t trust with their personal data.

  Organisations should lay out their data practices in simple terms and make this information easily accessible so customers know how their data is being handled.

  Get started with GDPR-compliant web analytics

  The GDPR offers a framework for securing and protecting personal data. But it also distinguishes between sensitive and non-sensitive data. Understanding these differences and applying the lawful basis for processing this data type will help ensure compliance.

  Looking for a GDPR-compliant web analytics solution ?

  At Matomo, we take data privacy seriously. 

  Our platform ensures 100% data ownership, putting you in complete control of your data. Unlike other web analytics solutions, your data remains solely yours and isn’t sold or auctioned off to advertisers. 

  Additionally, with Matomo, you can be confident in the accuracy of the insights you receive, as we provide reliable, unsampled data.

  Matomo also fully complies with GDPR and other data privacy laws like CCPA, LGPD and more.

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  Disclaimer

  We are not lawyers and don’t claim to be. The information provided here is to help give an introduction to GDPR. We encourage every business and website to take data privacy seriously and discuss these issues with your lawyer if you have any concerns.

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