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• Multivariate Testing vs A/B Testing (Quick-Start Guide)

  7 mars 2024, par Erin

  Traditional advertising (think Mad Men) was all about slogans, taglines and coming up with a one-liner that was meant to change the world.

  But that type of advertising was extremely challenging to test, so it was hard to know if it worked. Most of the time, nobody knew if they were being effective with their advertising.

  Enter modern marketing : the world of data-driven advertising.

  Thanks to the internet and web analytics tools like Matomo, you can quickly test almost anything and improve your site.

  The question is, should you do multivariate testing or A/B testing ?

  While both have their advantages, each has a specific use case.

  In this guide, we’ll break down the differences between multivariate and A/B testing, offer some pros and cons of each and show you some examples so you can decide which one is best for you.

  What is A/B testing ?

  A/B testing, or split testing, is testing an individual element in a medium against another version of the same element to see which produces better results.

  

  A/B tests are conducted by creating two different versions of a digital landmark : a website, landing page, email, or advertisement.

  The goal ? Figure out which version performs better.

  Let’s say, for example, you want to drive more sales on your core product page.

  You test two call-to-action buttons : “Buy Now” and “Add to Cart.”

  After running the test for two weeks, you see that “Buy Now” produced 1.2% conversions while “Add to Cart” produced 7.6%.

  In this scenario, you’ve found your winner : version B, “Add to Cart.”

  By conducting A/B tests regularly, you can optimise your site, increase engagement and convert more visitors into customers.

  Keep in mind that A/B testing isn’t perfect ; it doesn’t always produce a win.

  According to Noah Kagan, founder of AppSumo, only 1 out of 8 A/B tests his company conducts produces significant change.

  Advantages of A/B testing

  A/B testing is great when you need to get an accurate result fast on a specific element of your marketing efforts.

  Whether it’s a landing page or product page, you can get quick results without needing a lot of traffic.

  A/B testing is one of the most widely accepted and used testing methods for marketers and business owners.

  When you limit the number of tracked variables used in a test, you can quickly deliver reliable data, allowing you to iterate and pivot quickly if necessary.

  This is a great way to test your marketing methods, especially if you’re a newer business or you don’t have substantial traffic yet.

  Splitting up your traffic into a few segments (like with multivariate testing) will be very challenging to gain accurate results if you have lower daily traffic.

  One final advantage of A/B testing is that it’s a relatively easy way to introduce testing and optimising to a team, decision-maker, or stakeholder since it’s easy to implement. You can quickly demonstrate the value with a simple change and tangible evidence.

  Disadvantages of A/B testing

  So, what are the downsides to A/B testing ?

  Although A/B testing can get you quick results on small changes, it has limitations.

  A/B testing is all about measuring one element against another.

  This means you’re immediately limited in how many elements you can test. If you have to test out different variables, then A/B testing isn’t your best option since you’ll have to run test after test to get your result.

  If you need specific information on how different combinations of elements interact with one another on a web page, then multivariate is your best option.

  What is multivariate testing ?

  If you want to take your testing to the next level, you’ll want to try multivariate testing.

  Multivariate testing relies on the same foundational mechanism of A/B testing, but instead of matching up two elements against one another, it compares a higher number of variables at once.

  Multiple + variations = multivariate.

  Multivariate testing looks at how combinations of elements and variables interact.

  Like A/B testing, traffic to a page is split between different web page versions. Multivariate testing aims to measure each version’s effectiveness against the other versions.

  Ultimately, it’s about finding the winning combination.

  

  When to use multivariate testing

  The quick answer on when to use multivariate testing is if you have enough traffic.

  Just how much traffic, though ?

  While there’s no set number, you should aim to have 10,000 visitors per month or more, to ensure that each variant receives enough traffic to produce meaningful results within a reasonable time frame.

  Once you meet the traffic requirement, let’s talk about use cases.

  Let’s say you want to introduce a new email signup.

  But you want to create it from scratch and aren’t sure what will make your audience take action.

  So, you create a page with a signup form, a header, and an image.

  To run a multivariate test, you create two lengths of signup forms, four headlines, and two images.

  Next, you would create a test to split traffic between these sixteen combinations.

  Advantages of multivariate testing

  If you have enough traffic, multivariate testing can be an incredible way to speed up your A/B testing by testing dozens of combinations of your web page.

  This is handy when creating a new landing page and you want to determine if specific parts of your design are winners — which you can then use in future campaigns.

  Disadvantages of multivariate testing

  The main disadvantage of multivariate testing is that you need a lot of traffic to get started.

  If you try to do a multivariate analysis but you’re not getting much traffic, your results won’t be accurate (and it will take a long time to see accurate data).

  Additionally, multivariate tests are more complicated. They’re best suited for advanced marketers since more moving parts are at play.

  Key differences between multivariate and A/B testing

  Now that we’ve covered what A/B and multivariate tests are, let’s look at some key differences to help clarify which is best for you.

  

  1. Variation of combinations

  The major difference between A/B and multivariate testing is the number of combinations involved.

  With A/B testing, you only look at one element (no combinations). You simply take one part of your page (i.e., your headline copy) and make two versions.

  With multivariate testing, you’re looking at combinations of different elements (i.e., headline copy, form length, images).

  2. Number of pages to test

  The next difference lies in how many pages you will test.

  With an A/B test, you are splitting traffic on your website to two different pages : A and B.

  However, with multivariate testing, you will likely have 4-16 different test pages.

  This is because dozens of combinations can be created when you start testing a handful of elements at once.

  For example, if you want to test two headlines, two form buttons and two images on a signup form, then you have several combinations :

  • Headline A, Button A, Image A
  • Headline A, Button A, Image B
  • Headline A, Button B, Image A
  • Headline A, Button B, Image B
  • Headline B, Button A, Image A
  • Headline B, Button A, Image B
  • Headline B, Button B, Image A
  • Headline B, Button B, Image B

  In this scenario, you must create eight pages to send traffic to.

  3. Traffic requirements

  The next major difference between the two testing types is the traffic requirements.

  With A/B testing, you don’t need much traffic at all.

  Since you’re only testing two pages, you can split your traffic in half between the two types.

  However, if you plan on implementing a multivariate test, you will likely be splitting your traffic at least four or more ways.

  This means you need to have significantly more traffic coming in to get accurate data from your test. If you try to do this when your traffic is too low, you won’t have a large enough sample size.

  4. Time requirements

  Next up, just like traffic, there’s also a time requirement.

  A/B testing only tests two versions of a page against each other (while testing a single element). This means you’ll get accurate results faster than a multivariate test — usually within days.

  However, for a multivariate test, you might need to wait weeks. This is because you’re splitting your traffic by 4, 8, 12, or more web page variations. This could take months since you need a large enough sample size for accuracy.

  5. Big vs. small changes

  Another difference between A/B testing and multivariate testing is the magnitude of changes.

  With an A/B test, you’re looking at one element of a page, which means changing that element to the winning version isn’t a major overhaul of your design.

  But, with multivariate testing, you may find that the winning combination is drastically different than your control page, which could lead to a significant design change.

  6. Accuracy of results

  A/B tests are easier to decipher than multivariate testing since you only look at two versions of a single element on a page.

  You have a clear winner if one headline yields a 5% conversion rate and another yields a 1.2% conversion rate.

  But multivariate testing looks at so many combinations of a page that it can be a bit trickier to decipher what’s moving the needle.

  Pros and cons : Multivariate vs. A/B testing

  Before picking your testing method of choice, let’s look at some quick pros and cons.

  

  A/B testing pros and cons

  Here are the pros and cons of A/B testing :

  Pros

  • Get results quickly
  • Results are easier to interpret
  • Lower traffic requirement
  • Easy to get started

  Cons

  • You need to be hyper-focused on the right testing element
  • Requires performing test after test to optimise a web page

  Multivariate testing pros and cons

  Here are the pros and cons of multivariate testing :

  Pros

  • Handy when redesigning an entire web page
  • You can test multiple variables at once
  • Significant results (since traffic is higher)
  • Gather multiple data insights at once

  Cons

  • Requires substantial traffic
  • Harder to accurately decipher results
  • Not as easy to get started (more advanced)

  Use Matomo to start testing and improving your site

  

  You need to optimise your website if you want to get more leads, land more conversions and grow your business.

  A/B testing and multivariate testing are proven testing methods you can lean on to improve your website and create a better user experience.

  You may prefer one testing method now over the other, and that’s okay.

  The main thing is you’re starting to test. The best marketers and analysts in the world find what works through testing and double down on their winning tactics.

  If you want to start improving your website with testing today, get started with Matomo for free.

  With Matomo, you can conduct A/B tests and multivariate tests easily, accurately, and ethically. Unlike other web analytics tools, Matomo prioritises privacy, providing
  100% accurate data without sampling, and eliminates the need for cookie consent
  banners (except in the UK and Germany).

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

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• 16 Website Metrics to Track If You Want to Grow Your Business

  9 avril 2024, par Erin

  Conversion rate.

  Bounce rate.

  Sessions.

  There are dozens of metrics to keep up with in web analytics. It can be confusing at times trying to keep up with everything.

  But, if you want to improve your website performance and grow your business, you need to know what they are and how they work.

  Why ?

  Because what you measure gets managed. This is true in your personal life and business. You must track various website metrics to help your business reach new heights.

  In this guide, you’ll learn about the most important website metrics, why they’re important and how to track them to grow your brand.

  What are website metrics ?

  Your website is your digital headquarters.

  It’s not a static place. Instead, it’s a vibrant, interactive hub your visitors and customers can engage with daily.

  Every time a user interacts with your website, you can track what’s happening.

  Website metrics help you measure how much your visitors and customers interact with your website. 

  These engagement metrics help you understand what your visitors are doing, where they’re coming from, how they’re moving on your website and how long they stay. They can even give you insights into what their goals are.

  

  If you aren’t tracking your website metrics, you won’t know how effective your website is.

  By paying close attention to your key metrics within a web analytics platform like Matomo, you’ll be able to see how well your marketing is doing and how your visitors are engaging so you can improve the user experience and increase conversions.

  16 website metrics to track

  Here are the top 16 website metrics you need to be tracking if you want to grow your business :

  1. Pageviews

  A pageview is the number of times a web page has been viewed. 

  Many pageviews can indicate a successful search engine optimisation (SEO) or marketing campaign — it can be used to show positive results for these initiatives.

  It can also help you determine various issues on individual pages. For instance, performance issues or poor website structure can cause visitors to get lost or confused while navigating your website.

  

  2. Average time on page

  Average time on a page is simply the time visitors spend on a specific page (not the entire website) ; tracking users’ time on various pages throughout your website can give you insights that can help you improve certain pages.

  If you get tons of traffic to a particular page, but the average time a visitor stays on that page is minimal, the content may need some work.

  Tracking this data can help determine if your website is engaging for your visitors or if you need to modify certain aspects to increase your visitors’ stay. Increasing the average time on the page will help boost your conversions and search engine rankings.

  3. Actions per visit

  Actions per visit is a key metric that tracks the average number of actions a visitor takes every time they visit your website. This data can help you track your audience engagement and the effectiveness of your content across your entire website.

  An action is any activity performed by your visitors on your website like :

  • Outlinks
  • Downloads
  • Page views
  • Internal site searches

  The higher your actions per visit, the more engaging your audience finds your website content. A side effect of increased actions is staying longer on the site and more likely to convert to your email list as a subscriber or pay for products as a customer.

  4. Bounce rate

  Like a bouncy ball, your website’s bounce rate measures how many users entered your site and “bounced” out without clicking on another page. This metric can be extremely helpful in determining user interest in your content. 

  You might be getting many visitors to your website, but if they “bounce” after visiting the first page they land on, that’s a great indicator that your content is not resonating with your audience.

  Remember, this metric should be taken with a grain of salt. 

  Your bounce rate may indicate that visitors are finding the exact information that they wanted and leaving pleased, so it’s not a black-and-white metric.

  For example, if you have a landing page with a high bounce rate, then that’s likely not a sign of a good user experience. But, if you have a knowledge base article and they just need to find some quick information, then it could be a good indicator.

  5. Conversions

  The first step in tracking conversions is defining what a conversion is for your website. 

  Do you want your audience to :

  • View a blog post
  • Purchase a product
  • Download an eBook
  • Sign up for a consultation call

  Determine what that conversion is and track how often users take that action on your website.

  This helps you understand if your marketing and content strategies are working toward your pre-defined conversion goal.

  

  6. Conversion rate

  A conversion rate is the percentage of visits that triggered a conversion. Knowing this metric lets you plan, budget, and forecast future growth.

  For example, 5% of your website visitors take action and convert to customers. With this information, you can make better informed financial decisions regarding your marketing efforts on your website to help increase traffic and future conversions.

  While there are basic conversion rate benchmarks to strive toward, it ultimately depends on your goals and the specific conversions you decide to track that are best for your business. 

  That being said, Matomo has some best practices to help you optimise your conversion rates, no matter what conversion metric you are tracking.

  7. Exit rate

  While “bounce rate” and “exit rate” are similar, “exit rate” is the percentage of visits to a website that ended on a particular page.

  Knowing which pages have the highest percentage of visitors exiting your website gives you key information on the pages that may need to be improved.

  If you see that your “exit rate” is highest on pages before the checkout (or other CTA’s you have established), you will want to dive into what’s causing visitors to leave from that page. For example, maybe it’s the content, the copy or even a broken link.

  This is a great metric to help determine where you have breakdowns between you and your visitors. Improving your exit rate can help guide visitors through your website funnel more easily and boost your conversion rates. 

  

  8. Top pages

  The top pages on your website are the pages that receive the most visits. Understanding what your top pages are can be crucial in planning and guiding your marketing strategies moving forward.

  Your top pages can help you determine the most engaging content for your audience. This can be extremely helpful in guiding your visitors to certain pages that other users find more valuable.

  It also helps you determine if you need to focus more attention on different parts of your website to increase user engagement in those areas.

  For example, maybe your most-viewed pages have less copy and more photos or videos. Understanding this lets you know that incorporating more media into other pages will boost future engagement.

  9. Traffic sources

  Your traffic sources are the channels that are driving visitors to your website. The four most common traffic sources are :

  • Direct Entry : Typing your website URL into their browser or visiting via a bookmark they saved
  • Websites/Referral : Clicking on a link to your site from another website
  • Search Engines : Using search engines (Google, Bing or Yahoo) to find your website
  • Campaigns : Visitors directed to your website through specific marketing campaigns, such as email newsletters, Google Ads, promotional links, etc.
  • Social Networks : Visitors accessing your website by clicking on links shared on social media platforms like Facebook, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, etc.

  Understanding where your visitors are coming from can help you focus your marketing efforts on the traffic sources with the highest conversion rates. 

  Suppose your email marketing campaign isn’t driving any traffic to your website, but your ad campaign is responsible for over 25% of your conversions. In that case, you might consider doubling your advertising efforts.

  10. Form average time spent

  Forms are a crucial part of your website’s marketing strategy. Forms can help you :

  • Learn more about your visitors
  • Gather feedback from your audience
  • Convert visitors into email subscribers
  • And more

  Form average time spent is the average amount of time a visitor spends on a specific form on your website. The time is calculated as the difference between the first interaction with a form field (for example, a field focus) and the last interaction with a form.

  Want to convert more visitors into leads ? Then, you need to understand your form analytics better. Learn more here.

  11. Play rate

  If you want to keep your audience engaged (and convert more visitors), you need to publish different types of media.

  But if your video or audio content isn’t performing well, then you’re wasting your time.

  That’s where play rate comes in. It’s calculated by analysing visitors who watched or listened to a specific media after they have visited a web page.

  With play rate, you can track any video, podcast, or audiobook plays.

  You can easily track it within Matomo’s Media Analytics. The best part ? This feature works out of the box, so you don’t need to configure it to start leveraging the analytics.

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  12. Returning visitors

  Returning visitors are users who visit your website more than once over a specific time.

  You will want to measure the number of returning visitors to your website, as this information can give you additional insights into your marketing strategies, company branding and content.

  It can also help you better understand your customer base, giving you a clearer sense of their top desires and pain points.

  13. Device type

  Device type tracks the different devices visitors use to visit your website. These could be :

  • Tablets
  • Mobile phones
  • Desktop computers

  Knowing what your visitors are using to access your website can help you improve the overall user experience.

  For example, if 80% of your visitors use mobile phones, you could think about optimising your web pages to format with mobile devices. 

  

  14. Top exit pages

  Top exit pages are the pages that a visitor leaves your website from the most.

  Each web page will have a specific exit rate percentage based on how many people leave the website on a particular page.

  This can be quite helpful in understanding how visitors interact with your website. It can also help you uncover and fix any issues with your website you may not be aware of.

  For instance, one of your product pages has the highest exit rate on your website. By looking into why that is, you discover that your “Add to Cart” button isn’t functioning correctly, and your visitors can’t buy that particular product, so they exit out of frustration.

  15. Marketing attribution

  Marketing attribution (multi-touch attribution) helps you see which touchpoints have the greatest impact on conversions.

  Within Matomo, revenue attribution involves assigning credit for revenue across multiple touchpoints that contribute to a conversion.

  Matomo’s multi-touch attribution models use different weighting factors, like linear or time decay, to allocate credit to each touchpoint based on its influence.

  Matomo’s multi-touch attribution reports provide insights into how revenue is distributed across different touchpoints, marketing channels, campaigns, and actions. These reports allow you to analyse the contribution of each touchpoint to revenue generation and identify the most influential interactions in the customer journey.

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  16. Event tracking

  Every website has multiple actions a user can perform called “events”. These could be downloading a template, submitting contact information, signing up for a newsletter or clicking a link.

  Tracking events can give you additional context into what your visitors are interested in or don’t care about. This allows you to target them better through those events, potentially creating new, unique conversions and boosting the growth of your business.

  It can also lead to discovering potential issues within your website if you notice visitors aren’t taking action on certain CTAs, such as broken links or lack of content on certain pages. By uncovering these issues, you can quickly fix them to increase your conversions.

  

  Start tracking your website metrics with Matomo today

  There’s much to consider when creating and running your website, such as the design, copy and flow. 

  While these are necessary, tracking your website’s data is one of the most important aspects of running a site. It’s crucial in helping you optimise your site’s performance and create a great experience for your visitors.

  Every interaction a visitor has on your site is unique and leaves valuable clues you can use to improve all aspects of your site experience. 

  Understanding what your visitors like, what website performance issues they’re running into and how they interact across your website is crucial to improving your marketing and sales efforts.

  While tracking this much data can feel overwhelming, having all your key metrics in one place and broken down into easy-to-understand benchmarks can help alleviate the stress and headache of data tracking. 

  That’s where a web analytics platform like Matomo comes in.

  With Matomo, you can easily track, store and analyse every piece of data on your website automatically to improve your site performance and user experience and drive conversions. 

  With Matomo, you can take back control with a platform that gives you 100% data ownership.

  Used on over 1 million websites in over 190 countries, Matomo gives you :

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

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

  Try Matomo for Free

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• Clickstream Data : Definition, Use Cases, and More

  15 avril 2024, par Erin

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

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

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

  What is clickstream data ? 

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Types of clickstream data 

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

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

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

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

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

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  Clickstream data benefits and use cases 

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

  

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

  

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

  Customer journey mapping 

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

  Identifying customer trends 

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

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

  Here’s an example : 

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

  Preventing site abandonment 

  Cart abandonment remains a serious issue for online retailers : 

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

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

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

  Improving marketing campaign ROI 

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

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

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

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

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  Delivering a better user experience (UX) 

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

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

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

  Collecting clickstream data : Tools and legal implications 

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Clickstream analytics data best practices 

  

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

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

  Define your goals 

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

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

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

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

  Analyse your data 

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

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

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

  Here are a few examples : 

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

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  Organise and visualise your data

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

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

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

  Collect clickstream data with Matomo 

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

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

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

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