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• How to Track Website Visitors : Benefits, Tools and FAQs

  31 août 2023, par Erin — Analytics Tips, Marketing

  Businesses spend a ton of time, money and effort into creating websites that are not only helpful and captivating, but also highly effective at converting visitors. They’ll create content, revise designs, add new pages and change forms, all in the hope of getting visitors to stay on the site and convert into leads or customers.

  When you track website visitors, you can see which of your efforts are moving the needle. While many people are familiar with pageviews as a metric, website visitor tracking can be much more in-depth and insightful.

  In this article, we’ll cover how website visitor tracking works, what you can track, and how this information can improve sales and marketing results. We’ll also explain global privacy concerns and how businesses can choose the right tracking software. 

  What is website visitor tracking ? 

  Website visitor tracking uses software and applications to track and analyse how visitors interact with your website. It’s a vital tool to help businesses understand whether their website design and content are having the desired effect.

  

  Website visitor tracking includes very broad, non-specific data, like how many times visitors have come to your site. But it can also get very specific, with personal information about the user and even recordings of their visit to your site. Site visits, which may include visiting several different pages of the same site, are often referred to as “sessions.”

  Although Google Analytics is the most widely used website visitor tracking software, it isn’t the most comprehensive or powerful. Companies that want a more in-depth understanding of their website may need to consider running a more precise tool alongside Google Analytics, like Matomo.

  As we’ll cover later, website tracking has many important business applications, but it also poses privacy and security concerns, causing some states and countries to impose strict regulations. Privacy laws and your company’s values should also impact what web analytics tool you choose.

  How website tracking works

  Website tracking starts with the collection of data as users interact with the website. Tracking technologies like cookies, JavaScript and pixels are embedded into web pages. These technologies then gather data about user behaviour, session details and user actions, such as pageviews, clicks, form submissions and more.

  More advanced tracking systems assign unique identifiers (such as cookies or visitor IDs) to individual users. This enables tracking of user journeys across multiple sessions and pages. These detailed journeys can often tell a different story and provide different insights than aggregated numbers do. 

  All this collected data is transmitted from the user’s browser to a centralised tracking system, which can be a third-party web analytics tool or a self-hosted solution. The collected data is stored in databases and processed to generate meaningful insights. This process involves organising the data, aggregating metrics, and creating reports.

  Analytics tools process the collected data to generate reports and visualisations that provide insights into user behaviour. Metrics such as pageviews, bounce rates, conversion rates and user paths are analysed. Good web analytics tools are able to present these insights in a user-friendly way. Analysts and marketing professionals then use this knowledge to make informed decisions to improve the user experience (UX).

  Advanced tracking systems allow data segmentation and filtering based on various criteria, such as user demographics, traffic sources, devices and more. This enables deeper analysis of specific user groups. For example, you might find that your conversion rate is much lower when your website is viewed on a mobile device. You can then dig deeper into that segment of data to find out why and experiment with changes that might increase mobile conversions.

  3 types of website tracking and their benefits

  There are three main categories of website tracking, and they each provide different information that can be used by sales, marketing, engineering and others. Here, we cover those three types and how businesses use them to understand customers and create better experiences.

  Website analytics 

  Website analytics is all about understanding the traffic your website receives. This type of tracking allows you to learn how the website performs based on pageviews, real-time traffic, bounce rate and conversions. 

  For example, you would use website analytics to determine how effectively your homepage drives people toward a product or pricing page. You can use pageviews and previous page statistics to learn how many people who land on your homepage read your blog posts. From there, you could use web analytics to determine the conversion rate of the call to action at the end of each article.

  

  User behaviour

  While website analytics focuses on the website’s performance, user behaviour tracking is about monitoring and quantifying user behaviour. One of the most obvious aspects of user behaviour is what they click on, but there are many other actions you can track. 

  The time a user spends on a page can help you determine whether the content on the page is engaging. Some tracking tools can also measure how far down the page a user scrolls, which reveals whether some content is even being seen. 

  Session recordings are another popular tool for analysing user behaviour. They not only show concrete actions, like clicks, but can also show how the user moves throughout the page. Where do they stop ? What do they scroll right past ? This is one example of how user behaviour data can be quantitative or qualitative.

  Visitor information

  Tracking can also include gathering or uncovering information about visitors to your site. This might include demographic information, such as language and location, or details like what device a website visitor is using and on which browser they view your website. 

  This type of data helps your web and marketing teams make better decisions about how to design and format the site. If you know, for example, that the website for your business-to-business (B2B) software is overwhelmingly viewed on desktop computers, that will affect how you structure your pages and choose images. 

  Similarly, if visitor information tells you that you have a significant audience in France, your marketing team might develop new content to appeal to those potential customers.

  Use website visitor tracking to improve marketing, sales and UX 

  Website visitor tracking has various applications for different parts of your business, from marketing to sales and much more. When you understand the impact tracking has on different teams, you can better evaluate your company’s needs and build buy-in among stakeholders.

  Marketing

  At many companies, the marketing team owns and determines what kind of content is on your website. From landing pages to blog posts to the navigation bar, you want to create an experience that drives people toward making a purchase. When marketers can track website visitors, they can get a real look at how visitors respond to and engage with their marketing efforts. Pageviews, conversion rates and time spent on pages help them better understand what your customers care about and what messaging resonates.

  But web analytics can even help marketing teams better understand how their external marketing campaigns are performing. Tracking tools like Matomo reveal your most important traffic sources. The term “traffic source” refers to the content or web property from which someone arrives at your site. 

  For instance, you might notice that an older page got a big boost in traffic this month. You can then check the traffic sources, where you find that an influential LinkedIn user posted a link to the page. This presents an opportunity to adjust the influencer or social media aspects of your marketing strategy.

  

  Beyond traffic sources, Matomo can provide a visual user journey (also known as User Flow), showing which pages visitors tend to view in a session and even in what order they progress. This gives you a bird’s-eye view of the customer journey.

  Sales

  Just like your marketing team, your sales team can benefit from tracking and analysing website visitor information. Data about user behaviour and visitor demographics helps sales representatives better understand the people they’re talking to. Segmented visitor tracking data can even provide clues as to how to appeal to different buyer personas.

  Sales leadership can use web analytics to gauge interest over time, tie visitors to revenue and develop more accurate sales forecasts and goals. 

  

  And it’s not just aggregated website tracking data that your sales team can use to better serve customers. They can also use insights about an individual visitor to tailor their approach. Matomo’s Visits Log report and Visitor Profiles allow you to see which pages a prospect has viewed. This tells your sales team which products and features the prospect is most interested in, leading to more relevant interactions and more effective sales efforts.

  User experience and web development

  The way users interact with and experience your website has a big impact on their impression of your brand and, ultimately, whether they become customers. While marketing often controls much of a website’s content, the backend and technical operation of the site usually falls to a web development or engineering team. Website analytics and tracking inform their work, too.

  Along with data about website traffic and conversion rates, web development teams often monitor bounce rates (the percentage of people who leave your website entirely after landing on a page) and page load time (the time it takes for an individual web page to load for a user). Besides the fact that slow loading times inconvenience visitors, they can also negatively affect your search engine optimization (SEO).

  

  Along with session recordings, user experience teams and web developers may use heatmaps to find out what parts of a page draw a visitor’s attention and where they are most likely to convert or take some other action. They can then use these insights to make a web page more intuitive and useful.

  Visitor tracking and privacy regulations 

  There are different data privacy standards in other parts of the world, which are designed to ensure that businesses collect and use consumer data ethically. The most-discussed of these privacy standards is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was instituted by the European Union (EU) but affects businesses worldwide. However, it’s important to note that individual countries or states can have different privacy laws.

  Many privacy laws govern how websites can use cookies to track visitors. With a user’s consent, cookies can help websites identify and remember visitors. However, many web visitors will reject cookie consent banners. When this happens, analysts and marketers can’t collect information from these visitors and have to work with incomplete tracking data. Incomplete data leads to poor decision-making. What’s more, cookie consent banners can create a poor user experience and often annoy web visitors.

  With Matomo’s industry-leading measures to protect user privacy, France’s data protection agency (CNIL) has confirmed that Matomo is exempt from tracking consent in France. Matomo users have peace of mind knowing they can uphold the GDPR and collect data without needing to collect and track cookie consent. Only in Germany and the UK are cookie consent banners still required.

  Choosing user tracking software

  The benefits and value of tracking website visitors are enormous, but not all tracking software is equal. Different tools have different core functionalities. For instance, some focus on user behaviour over traditional web analytics. Others offer detailed website performance data but offer little in the way of visitor information. It’s a good idea to start by identifying your company’s most important tracking goals.

  Along with core features, look for useful tools to experiment with and optimise your website with. For example, Matomo enables A/B testing while many other tools do not.

  

  Along with users of your website, you also need to think about the employees who will be using the tracking software. The interface can have a big impact on the value you get from a tool. Matomo’s session recording functionality, for example, not only provides you with video but with a colour-coded timeline identifying important user actions.

  

  Privacy standards and compliance should also be a part of the conversation. Different tools use different tracking methods, impacting accuracy and security and can even cause legal trouble. You should consider which data privacy laws you are subject to, as well as the privacy expectations of your users.

  

  Some industries have especially high data security standards. Government and healthcare organisations, for example, may require visitor tracking software that is hosted on their premises. While there are many purely cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) tracking tools, Matomo is available both On-Premise (also known as self-hosted) and in the Cloud.

  Frequently asked questions

  Here are answers to some of people’s most common questions about tracking website visitors.

  Can you track who visited your website ?

  In most cases, tracking your website’s traffic is possible. Still, the extent of the tracking depends on the visitor-tracking technology you use and the privacy settings and precautions the visitor uses. For example, some technologies can pinpoint users by IP address. In other cases, you may only have access to anonymized data.

  Is it legal to track someone’s IP address ?

  It is legal for websites and businesses to track someone’s IP address in the sense that they can identify that someone from the same IP address is visiting a page repeatedly. Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), IP addresses are considered personally identifiable information (PII). The GDPR mandates that websites only log and store a user’s IP address with the user’s consent.

  How do you find where visitors are clicking the most ?

  Heatmap tools are among the most common tools for learning where visitors click the most on your website. Heatmaps use colour-coding to show what parts of a web page users either click on or hover over the most.

  Unique tracking URLs are another way to determine what part of your website gets the most clicks. For example, if you have three links on a page that all go to the same destination, you can use tracking links to determine how many clicks each link generates.

  Matomo also offers a Tag Manager within the platform that lets you manage and unify all your tracking and marketing tags to find out where visitors are clicking.

  What is the best tool for website visitor tracking ?

  Like most tools, the best website visitor tracking tool depends on your needs. Each tool offers different functionalities, user interfaces and different levels of accuracy and privacy. Matomo is a good choice for companies that value privacy, compliance and accuracy.

  Tracking for powerful insights and better performance

  Tracking website visitors is now a well-ingrained part of business operations. From sales reps seeking to understand their leads to marketers honing their ad spend, tracking helps teams do their jobs better.

  Take the time to consider what you want to learn from website tracking and let those priorities guide your choice of visitor tracking software. Whatever your industry or needs, user privacy and compliance must be a priority.

  Find out how much detail and insight Matomo can give you with our free 21-day trial — no credit card required.

• 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

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  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.

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• What Is Data Ethics & Why Is It Important in Business ?

  9 mai 2024, par Erin

  Data is powerful — every business on earth uses data. But some are leveraging it more than others.

  The problem ?

  Not all businesses are using data ethically.

  You need to collect, store, and analyse data to grow your business. But, if you aren’t careful, you could be crossing the line with your data usage into unethical territories.

  In a society where data is more valuable than ever, it’s crucial you perform ethical practices.

  In this article, we break down what data ethics is, why it’s important in business and how you can implement proper data ethics to ensure you stay compliant while growing your business.

  What is data ethics ?

  Data ethics are how a business collects, protects and uses data.

  It’s one field of ethics focused on organisations’ moral obligation to collect, track, analyse and interpret data correctly.

  

  Data ethics analyses multiple ways we use data :

  • Collecting data
  • Generating data
  • Tracking data
  • Analysing data
  • Interpreting data
  • Implementing activities based on data

  Data ethics is a field that asks, “Is this right or wrong ?”

  And it also asks, “Can we use data for good ?”

  If businesses use data unethically, they could get into serious hot water with their customers and even with the law.

  You need to use data to ensure you grow your business to the best of your ability. But, to maintain a clean slate in the eyes of your customers and authorities, you need to ensure you have strong data ethics.

  Why you need to follow data ethics principles

  In 2018, hackers broke into British Airways’ website by inserting harmful code, leading website visitors to a fraudulent site. 

  The result ? 

  British Airways customers gave their information to the hackers without realising it : credit cards, personal information, login information, addresses and more.

  While this was a malicious attack, the reality is that data is an integral part of everyday life. Businesses need to do everything they can to protect their customers’ data and use it ethically.

  Data ethics is crucial to understand as it sets the standard for what’s right and wrong for businesses. Without a clear grasp of data ethics, companies will willingly or neglectfully misuse data.

  With a firm foundation of data ethics, businesses worldwide can make a collective effort to function smoothly, protect their customers, and, of course, protect their own reputation. 

  3 benefits of leaning into data ethics

  We’re currently transitioning to a new world led by artificial intelligence.

  While AI presents endless opportunities for innovation in the business world, there are also countless risks at play, and it’s never been more important to develop trust with your customers and stakeholders.

  With an influx of data being created and tracked daily, you need to ensure your business is prioritising data ethics to ensure you maintain trust with your customers moving forward.

  

  Here are three benefits of data ethics that will help you develop trust, maintain a solid reputation and stay compliant to continue growing your business :

  1. Compliance with data privacy

  Privacy is everything. 

  In a world where our data is being collected nonstop, and we live more public lives than ever with social media, AI and an influx of recording and tracking in everyday life, you need to protect the privacy of your customers.

  One crucial way to protect that privacy is by complying with major data privacy regulations.

  Some of the most common regulations you need to remain compliant with include :

  • General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
  • California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
  • Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
  • General Personal Data Protection Law (LGPD)
  • Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations (PECR)

  While these regulations don’t directly address ethics, there’s a core overlap between privacy requirements like accountability, lawfulness and AI ethics.

  Matomo ensures you protect the privacy of your web and app users so you can track and improve your website performance with peace of mind.

  2. Maintain a good reputation

  While data ethics can help you maintain data privacy compliance, it can also help you maintain a good reputation online and offline.

  All it takes is one bad event like the British Airways breach for your company’s reputation to be ruined.

  If you want to keep a solid reputation and maintain trust with your stakeholders, customers and lawmakers, then you need to focus on developing strong data ethics.

  Businesses that invest time in establishing proper data ethics set the right foundation to protect their reputation, develop trust with stakeholders and create goodwill and loyalty.

  3. Increased trust means greater revenue

  What happens when you establish proper data ethics ?

  You’ll gain the trust of your customers, maintain a solid reputation and increase your brand image.

  Customers who trust you to protect their privacy and data want to keep doing business with you.

  So, what’s the end result for a business that values data ethics ?

  You’ll generate more revenue in the long run. Trust is one thing you should never put on the back burner if you have plans to keep growing your business. By leaning more into data ethics, you’ll be able to build that brand reputation that helps people feel comfortable buying your products and services on repeat.

  While spending time and money on data ethics may seem like an annoyance, the reality is that it’s a business investment that will pay dividends for years to come.

  5 core data ethics principles

  So, what exactly is involved in data ethics ?

  For most people, data ethics is a pretty broad and vague term. If you’re curious about the core pillars of data ethics, then keep reading.

  Here are five core data ethical principles you need to follow to ensure you’re protecting your customers’ data and maintaining trust :

  

  1. Data ownership

  The individual owns the data, not you. This is the first principle of data ethics. You don’t have control over someone else’s data. It’s theirs, and they have full ownership over it.

  Just as stealing a TV from an electronics store is a crime, stealing (or collecting) someone’s personal data without their consent is considered unlawful and unethical.

  Consent is the only way to ethically “own” someone’s data.

  How can you collect someone’s data ethically ?

  • Digital privacy policies
  • Signed, written agreements
  • Popups with checkboxes that allow you to track users’ behaviour

  Essentially, anytime you’re collecting data from your website or app users, you need to ensure you’re asking permission for that data.

  You should never assume a website visitor or customer is okay with you collecting your data automatically. Instead, ask permission to collect, track and use their data to avoid legal and ethical issues.

  2. Transparency

  The second core principle of data ethics within business is transparency. This means you need to be fully transparent on when, where and how you :

  • Collect data
  • Store data
  • Use data

  In other words, you need to allow your customers and website visitors to have a window inside your data activities.

  They need to be able to see exactly how you plan on using the data you’re collecting from them.

  For example, imagine you implemented a new initiative to personalise the website experience for each user based on individual behaviour. To do this, you’ll need to track cookies. In this case, you’d need to write up a new policy stating how this behavioural data is going to be collected, tracked and used.

  It’s within your website visitors’ rights to access this information so they can choose whether or not they want to accept or decline your website’s cookies.

  With any new data collection or tracking, you need to be 100% clear about how you’re going to use the data. You can’t be deceptive, misleading, or withholding any information on how you will use the data, as this is unethical and, in many cases, unlawful.

  3. Privacy

  Another important branch of ethics is privacy. The ethical implications of this should be obvious.

  When your users, visitors, or customers enter your sphere of influence and you begin collecting data on them, you are responsible for keeping that data private.

  When someone accepts the terms of your data usage, they’re not agreeing to have their data released to the public. They’re agreeing to let you leverage that data as their trusted business provider to better serve them. They expect you to maintain privacy.

  You can’t spread private information to third parties. You can’t blast this data to the public. 

  This is especially important if someone allows you to collect and use their personally identifiable information (PII), such as :

  • First and last name
  • Email address
  • Date of birth
  • Home address
  • Phone number

  To protect your audience’s data, you should only store it in a secure database. 

  

  For example, Matomo’s web analytics solution guarantees the privacy of both your users and analytics data.

  With Matomo, you have complete ownership of your data. Unlike other web analytics solutions that exploit your data for advertising purposes, Matomo users can use analytics with confidence, knowing that their data won’t be sold to advertisers.

  Learn more about data privacy with Matomo here.

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  4. Intention

  When you collect and store data, you need to tell your users why you’re collecting their data. But there’s another principle of data ethics that goes beyond the reason you give your customers.

  Intention is the reason you give yourself for collecting and using the data.

  Before you start collecting and storing data, you should ask yourself the following :

  • Why you need it
  • What you’ll gain from it
  • What changes you’ll be able to make after you analyse the data

  If your intention is wrong in any way, it’s unethical to collect the data :

  • You’re collecting data to hurt others
  • You’re collecting data to profit from your users’ weaknesses
  • You’re collecting data for any other malicious reason

  When you collect data, you need to have the right intentions to maintain proper data ethics ; otherwise, you could harm your brand, break trust and ruin your reputation.

  5. Outcomes

  You may have the best intentions, but sometimes, there are negative outcomes from data use.

  For example, British Airways’ intention was not to allow hackers to gain access and harm their users. But the reality is that their customers’ data was stolen and used for malicious purposes. While this isn’t technically unlawful, the outcome of collecting data ended badly.

  To ensure proper data ethics, you must have good standing with your data. This means protecting your users at all costs, maintaining a good reputation and ensuring proper privacy measures are set up.

  How to implement data ethics as a business leader

  As a business leader, CTO or CEO, it’s your responsibility to implement data ethics within your organisation. Here are some tips to implement data ethics based on the size and stage of your organisation :

  Startups

  If you’re a startup, you need to be mindful of which technology and tools you use to collect, store and use data to help you grow your business.

  It can be a real challenge to juggle all the moving parts of a startup since things can change so quickly. However, it’s crucial to establish a leader and allow easy access to ethical analysis resources to maintain proper data ethics early on.

  Small and medium-sized businesses

  As you begin scaling, you’ll likely be using even more technology. With each new business technique you implement, there will be new ways you’ll be collecting user data. 

  One of the key processes involved in managing data as you grow is to hire engineers who build out different technologies. You must have protocols, best practices and management overseeing the new technologies being built to ensure proper data ethics.

  Global businesses

  Have you scaled internationally ?

  There will be even more rules, laws, regulations and organisations to answer to if you start managing data unethically.

  You should have established teams or departments to ensure you follow proper privacy and data protocols worldwide. When you have a large organisation, you have more money and vast amounts of data. This makes you a bigger target for leaks, ransomware and hackers.

  You should ensure you have cross-departmental groups working to establish ongoing protocols and training to keep your data management in good standing.

  Leverage data ethically with Matomo

  Data is powerful.

  It’s a crucial point of leverage that’s required to stay competitive.

  However, improper use and management of data can give you a bad reputation, break trust and even cause you legal trouble.

  That’s why you must maintain good data ethics within your organisation.

  One of the most important places to set up proper data ethics and privacy measures is with your website analytics.

  Matomo is the leading, privacy-friendly web analytics solution in the world. It automatically collects, stores, and tracks data across your website ethically.

  With over 1 million websites using Matomo, you get to take full control over your website performance with :

  • Accurate data (no data sampling)
  • Privacy-friendly and GDPR-compliant analytics
  • Open-source for transparency and to create a custom solution for you

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

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