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• 7 Ecommerce Metrics to Track and Improve in 2024

  12 April 2024, by Erin

  You can invest hours into market research, create the best ads you’ve ever seen and fine-tune your budgets. But the only way to really know if your digital marketing campaigns move the needle is to track ecommerce metrics.

  It’s time to put your hopes and gut feelings aside and focus on the data. Ecommerce metrics are key performance indicators that can tell you a lot about the performance of a single campaign, a traffic source or your entire marketing efforts. 

  That’s why it’s essential to understand what ecommerce metrics are, key metrics to track and how to improve them. 

  Ready to do all of the above? Then, let’s get started.

  What are ecommerce metrics? 

  An ecommerce metric is any metric that helps you understand the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts and the extent to which users are taking a desired action. Most ecommerce metrics focus on conversions, which could be anything from making a purchase to subscribing to your email list.

  You need to track ecommerce metrics to understand how well your marketing efforts are working. They are essential to helping you run a cost-effective marketing campaign that delivers a return on investment. 

  For example, tracking ecommerce metrics will help you identify whether your digital marketing campaigns are generating a return on investment or whether they are actually losing money. They also help you identify your most effective campaigns and traffic sources. 

  Ecommerce metrics also help you spot opportunities for improvement both in terms of your marketing campaigns and your site’s UX. 

  For instance, you can use ecommerce metrics to track the impact on revenue of A/B tests on your marketing campaigns. Or you can use them to understand how users interact with your website and what, if anything, you can do to make it more engaging.

  What’s the difference between conversion rate and conversion value?

  The difference between a conversion rate and a conversion value is that the former is a percentage while the latter is a monetary value. 

  There can be confusion between the terms conversion rate and conversion value. Since conversions are core metrics in ecommerce, it’s worth taking a minute to clarify. 

  Conversion rates measure the percentage of people who take a desired action on your website compared to the total number of visitors. If you have 100 visitors and one of them converts, then your conversion rate is 1%. 

  Here’s the formula for calculating your conversion rate:

  Conversion Rate (%) = (Number of conversions / Total number of visitors) × 100

  

  Using the example above:

  Conversion Rate = (1 / 100) × 100 = 1%

  Conversion value is a monetary amount you assign to each conversion. In some cases, this is the price of the product a user purchases. In other conversion events, such as signing up for a free trial, you may wish to assign a hypothetical conversion value. 

  To calculate a hypothetical conversion value, let’s consider that you have estimated the average revenue generated from a paying customer is $300. If the conversion rate from free trial to paying customer is 20%, then the hypothetical conversion value for each free trial signup would be $300 multiplied by 20%, which equals $60. This takes into account the number of free trial users who eventually become paying customers.

  So the formula for hypothetical conversion value looks like this:

  

  Hypothetical conversion value = (Average revenue per paying customer) × (Conversion rate)

  Using the values from our example:

  Hypothetical conversion value = $300 × 20% = $60

  The most important ecommerce metrics and how to track them

  There are dozens of ecommerce metrics you could track, but here are seven of the most important. 

  Conversion rate

  Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take a desired action. It is arguably one of the most important ecommerce metrics and a great top-level indicator of the success of your marketing efforts. 

  You can measure the conversion rate of anything, including newsletter signups, ebook downloads, and product purchases, using the following formula:

  

  Conversion rate = (Number of people who took action / Total number of visitors) × 100

  You usually won’t have to manually calculate your conversion rate, though. Almost every web analytics or ad platform will track the conversion rate automatically.

  Matomo, for instance, automatically tracks any conversion you set in the Goals report.

  

  As you can see in the screenshot, your site’s conversions are plotted over a period of time and the conversion rate is tracked below the graph. You can change the time period to see how your conversion rate fluctuates.

  If you want to go even further, track your new visitor conversion rate to see how engaging your site is to first-time visitors. 

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  Cost per acquisition

  Cost per acquisition (CPA) is the average cost of acquiring a new user. You can calculate your overall CPA or you can break CPA down by email campaign, traffic source, or any other criteria. 

  Calculate CPA by dividing your total marketing cost by the number of new users you acquire.

  

  CPA = Total marketing cost​ / Number of new users acquired 

  So if your Google Ads campaign costs €1,000 and you acquire 100 new users, your CPA is €10 (1000/100=10).

  It’s important to note that CPA is not the same as customer acquisition cost. Customer acquisition cost considers the number of paying customers. CPA looks at the number of users taking a certain action, like subscribing to a newsletter, making a purchase, or signing up for a free trial.

  Cost per acquisition is a direct measure of your marketing efforts’ effectiveness, especially when comparing CPA to average customer spend and return on ad spend. 

  If your CPA is higher than the average customer spend, your marketing campaign is profitable. If not, then you can look at ways to either increase customer spend or decrease your cost per acquisition.

  Customer lifetime value

  Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the average amount of money a customer will spend with your ecommerce brand over their lifetime. 

  Customer value is the total worth of a customer to your brand based on their purchasing behaviour. To calculate it, multiply the average purchase value by the average number of purchases. For instance, if the average purchase value is €50 and customers make 5 purchases on average, the customer value would be €250.

  Use this formula to calculate customer value:

  

  Customer value = Average purchase value × Average number of purchases

  Then you can calculate customer lifetime value using the following formula:

  

  CLV = Customer value × Average customer lifespan

  In another example, let’s say you have a software company and customers pay you €500 per year for an annual subscription. If the average customer lifespan is 5 years, then the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) would be €2,500.

  Customer lifetime value = €500 × 5 = €2,500

  Knowing how much potential customers are likely to spend helps you set accurate marketing budgets and optimise the price of your products. 

  Return on investment

  Return on investment (ROI) is the amount of revenue your marketing efforts generate compared to total spend. 

  It’s usually calculated as a percentage using the following formula:

  

  ROI = (Revenue / Total spend) × 100

  If you spend €1,000 on a paid ad campaign and your efforts bring in €5,000, then your ROI is 500% (5,000/1,000 × 100).

  With a web analytics tool like Matomo, you can quickly see the revenue generated from each traffic source and you can drill down further to compare different social media channels, search engines, referral websites and campaigns to get more granular view. 

  

  In the example above in Matomo’s Marketing Attribution feature, we can see that social networks are generating the highest amount of revenue in the year. To calculate ROI, we would need to compare the amount of investment to each channel. 

  Let’s say we invested $1,000 per year in search engine optimisation and content marketing, the return on investment (ROI) stands at approximately 2576%, based on a revenue of $26,763.48 per year. 

  Conversely, for organic social media campaigns, where $5,000 was invested and revenue amounted to $71,180.22 per year, the ROI is approximately 1323%. 

  Despite differences in revenue generation, both channels exhibit significant returns on investment, with SEO and content marketing demonstrating a much higher ROI compared to organic social media campaigns. 

  With that in mind, we might want to consider shifting our marketing budget to focus more on search engine optimisation and content marketing as it’s a greater return on investment.

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  Return on ad spend

  Return on ad spend (ROAS) is similar to return on investment, but it measures the profitability of a specific ad or campaign.

  Calculate ROAS using the following formula:

  

  ROAS = Revenue / Ad cost 

  A positive ROAS means you are making money. If you generate €3 for every €1 you spend on advertising, for example, there’s no reason to turn off that campaign. If you only make €1 for every €2 you spend, however, then you need to shut down the campaign or optimise it. 

  Bounce rate

  Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site without taking another action. Calculate it using the following formula:

  

  Bounce rate = (Number of visitors who bounce / Total number of visitors) × 100

  Some portion of users will always leave your site immediately, but you should aim to make your bounce rate as low as possible. After all, every customer that bounces is a missed opportunity that you may never get again. 

  You can check the bounce rate for each one of your site’s pages using Matomo’s page analytics report. Web analytics tools like Google Analytics can track bounce rates for online stores also. 

  

  Bounce rate is calculated automatically. You can sort the list of pages by bounce rate allowing you to prioritise your optimisation efforts. 

  Don’t stop there, though. Explore bounce rate further by comparing your mobile bounce rate vs. desktop bounce rate by segmenting your traffic. This will highlight whether your mobile site needs improving. 

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  Click-through rate

  Your clickthrough rate (CTR) tells you the number of people who click on your ads as a percentage of total impressions. You can calculate it by dividing the number of clicks your ad gets by the total number of times people see it. 

  So the formula looks like this:

  

  CTR (%) = (Number of clicks / Total impressions​) × 100

  If an ad gets 1,000 impressions and 10 people click on it, then the CTR will be 10/1,000 × 100 = 1%

  You don’t usually need to calculate your clickthrough rate manually, however. Most ad platforms like Google Ads will automatically calculate CTR.

  What is considered a good ecommerce sales conversion rate?

  This question is so broad it’s almost impossible to answer. The thing is, sales conversion rates vary massively depending on the conversion event and the industry. A good conversion rate in one industry might be terrible in another. 

  That being said, research shows that the average website conversion rate across all industries is 2.35%. Of course, some websites convert much better than this. The same study found that the top 25% of websites across all industries have a conversion rate of 5.31% or higher. 

  How can you improve your conversion rate?

  Ecommerce metrics don’t just let you track your campaign’s ROI, they help you identify ways to improve your campaign. 

  Use these five tips to start improving your marketing campaign’s conversion rates today:

  Run A/B tests

  The most effective way to improve almost all of the ecommerce metrics you track is to test, test, and test again.

  A/B testing or multivariate testing compares two different versions of the same content, such as a landing page or blog post. Seeing which version performs better can help you squeeze as many conversions as possible from your website and ad campaigns. But only if you test as many things as possible. This should include:

  • Ad placement
  • Ad copy
  • CTAs
  • Headlines
  • Straplines
  • Colours
  • Design

  To create and analyse tests and their results effectively, you’ll need either an A/B testing platform or a web analytics solution like Matomo, which offers one out of the box.

  

  Matomo’s A/B Testing feature makes it easy to create and track tests over time, breaking down each test’s variations by the metrics that matter. It automatically calculates statistical significance, too, meaning you can be sure you’re making a change for the better. 

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• What Are Website KPIs (10 KPIs and Best Ways to Track Them)

  3 May 2024, by Erin

  Trying to improve your website’s performance?

  Have you ever heard the phrase, “What gets measured gets managed?”

  To improve, you need to start crunching your numbers.

  The question is, what numbers are you supposed to track?

  If you want to improve your conversions, then you need to track your website KPIs.

  In this guide, we’ll break down the top website KPIs you need to be tracking and how you can track them so you can double down on what’s working with your website (and ditch what’s not).

  Let’s begin.

  What are website KPIs?

  Before we dive into website KPIs, let’s define “KPI.”

  A KPI is a key performance indicator.

  You can use this measurable metric to track progress toward a specific objective.

  A website KPI is a metric to track progress towards a specific website performance objective.

  

  Website KPIs help your business identify strengths and weaknesses on your website, activities you’re doing well (and those you’re struggling with).

  Web KPIs can give you and your team a target to reach with simple checkpoints to show you whether you’re on the right track toward your goals.

  By tracking website KPIs regularly, you can ensure your organisation performs consistently at a high level.

  Whether you’re looking to improve your traffic, leads or revenue, keeping a close eye on your website KPIs can help you reach your goals.

  10 Website KPIs to track

  If you want to improve your site’s performance, you need to track the right KPIs.

  While there are plenty of web analytics solutions on the market today, below we’ll cover KPIs that are automatically tracked in Matomo (and don’t require any configuration).

  Here are the top 10 website KPIs you need to track to improve site performance and grow your brand:

  1. Pageviews

  Website pageviews are one of the most important KPIs to track.

  What is it exactly?

  It’s simply the number of times a specific web page has been viewed on your site in a specific time period.

  For example, your homepage might have had 327 pageviews last month, and only 252 this month. 

  This is a drop of 23%. 

  A drop in pageviews could mean your search engine optimisation or traffic campaigns are weakening. Alternatively, if you see pageviews rise, it could mean your marketing initiatives are performing well.

  High or low pageviews could also indicate potential issues on specific pages. For example, your visitors might have trouble finding specific pages if you have poor website structure.

  

  2. Average time on page

  Now that you understand pageviews, let’s talk about average time on page.

  This is simple: it’s the average amount of time your visitors spend on a particular web page on your site.

  This isn’t the average time they spend on your website but on a specific page.

  If you’re finding that you’re getting steady traffic to a specific web page, but the average time on the page is low, it may mean the content on the page needs to be updated or optimised.

  Tracking your average time on page is important, as the longer someone stays on a page, the better the experience.

  This isn’t a hard and fast rule, though. For specific types of content like knowledge base articles, you may want a shorter period of time on page to ensure someone gets their answer quickly.

  3. Bounce rate

  Bounce rate sounds fun, right?

  Well, it’s not usually a good thing for your website.

  A bounce rate is how many users entered your website but “bounced” away without clicking through to another page.

  Your bounce rate is a key KPI that helps you determine the quality of your content and the user experience on individual pages.

  You could be getting plenty of traffic to your site, but if the majority are bouncing out before heading to new pages, it could mean that your content isn’t engaging enough for your visitors.

  Remember, like average time on page, your bounce rate isn’t a black-and-white KPI.

  A higher bounce rate may mean your site visitors got exactly what they needed and are pleased.

  But, if you have a high bounce rate on a product page or a landing page, that is a sign you need to optimise the page.

  4. Exit rate

  Bounce rate is the percentage of people who left the website after visiting one page.

  Exit rate, on the other hand, is the percentage of website visits that ended on a specific page.

  For example, you may find that a blog post you wrote has a 19% exit rate and received 1,000 visits that month. This means out of the 1,000 people who viewed this page, 190 exited after visiting it.

  On the other hand, you may find that a second blog post has 1,000 pageviews, but a 10% exit rate, with only 100 people leaving the site after visiting this page.

  What could this mean?

  This means the second page did a better job keeping the person on your website longer. This could be because:

  • It had more engaging content, keeping the visitors’ interest high
  • It had better internal links to other relevant pieces of content
  • It had a better call to action, taking someone to another web page

  If you’re an e-commerce store and notice that your exit rate is higher on your product, cart or checkout pages, you may need to adjust those pages for better conversions.

  

  5. Average page load time

  Want to know another reason you may have a high exit rate or bounce rate on a page?

  Your page load time.

  The average page load time is the average time it takes (in seconds) from the moment you click through to a page until it has fully rendered within your browser.

  In other words, it’s the time it takes after you click on a page for it to be fully functional.

  Your average load time is a crucial website KPI because it significantly impacts page performance and the user experience.

  How important is your page load time?

  Nearly 53% of website visitors expect e-commerce pages to load in 3 seconds or less.

  You will likely lose visitors if your pages take too long to load.

  You could have the best content on a web page, but if it takes too long to load, your visitors will bounce, exit, or simply be frustrated.

  6. Conversions

  

  Conversions.

  It’s one of the most popular words in digital marketing circles.

  But what does it mean?

  A conversion is simply the number of times someone takes a specific action on your website.

  For example, it could be wanting someone to:

  • Read a blog post
  • Click an external link
  • Download a PDF guide
  • Sign up to your email list
  • Comment on your blog post
  • Watch a new video you uploaded
  • Purchase a limited-edition product
  • Sign up for a free trial of your software

  To start tracking conversions, you need to first decide what your business goals are for your website.

  With Matomo, you can set up conversions easily through the Goals feature. Simply set up your website goals, and Matomo will automatically track the conversions towards that objective (as a goal completion).

  Simply choose what conversion you want to track, and you can analyse when conversions occur through the Matomo platform.

  7. Conversion rate

  

  Now that you know what a conversion is, it’s time to talk about conversion rate.

  This key website KPI will help you analyse your performance towards your goals.

  Conversion rate is simply the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, like completing a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a form, out of the total number of visitors to your website or landing page.

  Understanding this percentage can help you plan your marketing strategy to improve your website and business performance.

  For instance, let’s say that 2% of your website visitors purchase a product on your digital storefront.

  Knowing this, you could tweak different levers to increase your sales.

  If your average order value is $50 and you get 100,000 visits monthly, you make about $100,000.

  Let’s say you want to increase your revenue.

  One option is to increase your traffic by implementing campaigns to increase different traffic sources, such as social media ads, search ads, organic social traffic, and SEO.

  If you can get your traffic to 120,000 visitors monthly, you can increase your revenue to $120,000 — an additional $20,000 monthly for the extra 20,000 visits.

  Or, if you wanted to increase revenue, you could ignore traffic growth and simply improve your website with conversion rate optimisation (CRO).

  CRO is the practice of making changes to your website or landing page to encourage more visitors to take the desired action.

  If you can get your conversion rate up to 2.5%, the calculation looks like this:

  100,000 visits x $50 average order value x 2.5% = $125,000/month.

  8. Average time spent on forms

  If you want more conversions, you need to analyse forms.

  Why?

  Form analysis is crucial because it helps you pinpoint where users might be facing obstacles. 

  By identifying these pain points, you can refine the form’s layout and fields to enhance the user experience, leading to higher conversion rates.

  In particular, you should track the average time spent on your forms to understand which ones might be causing frustration or confusion. 

  The average time a visitor spends on a form is calculated by measuring the duration between their first interaction with a form field (such as when they focus on it) and their final interaction.

  Find out how Concrete CMS tripled their leads using Form Analytics.

  9. Play rate

  One often overlooked website KPI you need to be tracking is play rate.

  What is it exactly?

  The percentage of visitors who click “play” on a video or audio media format on a specific web page.

  For example, if you have a video on your homepage, and 50 people watched it out of the 1,000 people who visited your website today, you have a play rate of 5%.

  Play rate lets you track whenever someone consumes a particular piece of audio or video content on your website, like a video, podcast, or audiobook.

  Not all web analytics solutions offer media analytics. However, Matomo lets you track your media like audio and video without the need for configuration, saving you time and upkeep.

  10. Actions per visit

  Another crucial website KPI is actions per visit.

  This is the average number of interactions a visitor has with your website during a single visit.

  For example, someone may visit your website, resulting in a variety of actions:

  • Downloading content
  • Clicking external links
  • Visiting a number of pages
  • Conducting specific site searches

  Actions per visit is a core KPI that indicates how engaging your website and content are.

  The higher the actions per visit, the more engaged your visitors typically are, which can help them stay longer and eventually convert to paying customers.

  Track your website KPIs with Matomo today

  Running a website is no easy task.

  There are dozens of factors to consider and manage:

  • Copy
  • Design
  • Performance
  • Tech integrations
  • And more

  But, to improve your website and grow your business, you must also dive into your web analytics by tracking key website KPIs.

  Managing these metrics can be challenging, but Matomo simplifies the process by consolidating all your core KPIs into one easy-to-use platform.

  As a privacy-friendly and GDPR-compliant web analytics solution, Matomo tracks 20-40% more data than other solutions. So you gain access to 100% accurate, unsampled insights, enabling confident decision-making.

  Join over 1 million websites that trust Matomo as their web analytics solution. Try it free for 21 days — no credit card required.

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• Top 5 Web Analytics Tools for Your Site

  11 August 2023, by Erin — Analytics Tips

  At the start of July 2023, Universal Analytics (UA) users had to say goodbye to their preferred web analytics tool as Google discontinued it. While some find Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can do what they need, many GA4 users are starting to realise GA4 doesn’t meet all the needs UA once fulfilled. Consequently, they are actively seeking another web analytics tool to complement GA4 and address those unmet requirements effectively.

  In this article, we’ll break down five of the top web analytics tools on the market. You’ll find details about their core capabilities, pricing structures and some noteworthy pros and cons to help you decide which tool is the right fit for you. We’ve also included some key features a good web analytics tool should have to give you a baseline for comparison.

  Whether you’re a marketing manager focused on ROI of campaigns, a web analyst focused on conversions or simply interested in learning more about web analytics, there’s something for you on this list.

  What is a web analytics tool?

  Web analytics tools collect and analyse information about your website’s visitors, their behaviour and the technical performance of your site. A web analytics tool compiles, measures and analyses website data to give you the information you need to improve site performance, boost conversions and increase your ROI.

  What makes a web analytics tool good?

  Before we get into tool specifics, let’s go over some of the core features you can expect from a web analytics tool.

  For a web analytics tool to be worth your time (and money), it needs to cover the basics. For example:

  • Visitor reports: The number of visitors, whether they were unique or repeat visitors, the source of traffic (where they found your website), device information (if they’re using a desktop or mobile device) and demographic information like geographic location

  • Behaviour reports: What your visitors did while on your site, conversion rates (e.g., if they signed up for or purchased something), the pages they entered and exited from, average session duration, total time spent on a page and bounce rates (if they left without interacting with anything)

  • Technical information: Page loading speed and event tracking — where users are clicking, what they’re downloading or sharing from your site, if they’re engaging with the media on it and how far down the page they’re scrolling

  • Marketing campaign information: Breakdowns of ad campaigns by provider, showing if ads resulted in traffic to your site and lead to an eventual sale or conversion

  • Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) information: Which keywords on which pages are driving traffic to your site, and what search engines are they coming from

  • Real-time data tracking: Visitor, behaviour and technical information available in real-time, or close to it — allowing you to address to issues as they occur

  • Data visualisation: Charts and graphs illustrating the above information in an easily-readable format — helping identify opportunities and providing valuable insights you can leverage to improve site performance, conversion rates and the amount of time visitors spend on a page

  • Custom reporting: Create custom reports detailing the desired metrics and time frame you’re interested in

  • Security: User access controls and management tools to limit who can see and interact with user data

  • Resources: Official user guides, technical documentation, troubleshooting materials, customer support and community forums

  

  Pros and Cons of Google Analytics 4

  Despite many users’ dissatisfaction, GA4 isn’t going away anytime soon. It’s still a powerful tool with all the standard features you’d expect. It’s the most popular choice for web analytics for a few other reasons, too, including:

  • It’s free to use
  • It’s easy to set up
  • It has a convenient mobile app
  • It has a wealth of user documentation and technical resources online
  • Its machine-learning capabilities help predict user behaviour and offer insights on how to grow your site
  • It integrates easily with other Google tools, like Google Search Console, Google Ads and Google Cloud

  That said, it comes with some serious drawbacks. Many users accustomed to UA have reported being unhappy with the differences between it and GA4. Their reasons range from changes to the user interface and bounce rate calculations, as well as Google’s switch from pageview-focused metrics to event-based ones. 

  Let’s take a look at some of the other cons:

  • Lack of privacy, as Google uses data from Google Analytics for advertising purposes.
  • Cookie consent banners can frustrate visitors, and with 40-60% of web visitors rejecting consent, relying on them can lead to inaccurate data and an incomplete view of your web traffic and campaign outcomes.
  • Can’t import data from UA to GA4 
  • Missing features like heatmaps and session recording
  • Google Analytics 360, the GA for enterprises, costs $150,000/year

  Now that you know GA4’s strengths and weaknesses, it’s time to explore other tools that can help fill in GA4’s gaps.

  Top 5 web analytics tools (that aren’t Google)

  Below is a list of popular web analytics tools that, unless otherwise stated, have all the features a good tool should have.

  Adobe Analytics

  

  Adobe is a trusted name in software, with tools that have shaped the technological landscape for decades, like Photoshop and Illustrator. With web design and UX tools Dreamweaver and XD, it makes sense that they’d offer a web analytics platform as well.

  Adobe Analytics provides not just web analytics but marketing analytics that tell you about customer acquisition and retention, ROI and ad campaign performance metrics. Its machine learning (ML) and AI-powered analytics predict future customer behaviour based on previously collected data.

  Key features: 

  • Multichannel data collection that covers computers, mobile devices and IoT devices
  • Adobe Sensei (AI/ML) for marketing attribution and anomaly detection
  • Tag management through Adobe Experience Platform Launch simplifies the tag creation and maintenance process to help you track how users interact with your site

  Pros:

  • User-friendly and simple to learn with a drag-and-drop interface
  • When integrated with other Adobe software, it becomes a powerful solution for enterprises
  • Saves your team a lot of time with the recommendations and insights automatically generated by Adobe’s AI/ML

  Cons:

  • No free version
  • Adobe Sensei and tag manager limited to premium version
  • Expensive, especially when combined with the company’s other software
  • Steep learning curve for both setup and use

  Mobile app: Yes

  Integrations: Integrates with Adobe Experience Manager Sites, the company’s CMS. Adobe Target, a CRO tool and part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud subscription, integrates with Analytics.

  Pricing: Available upon request

  Matomo

  

  Matomo is the leading open-source web analytics solution designed to help you make more informed decisions and enhance your customer experience while ensuring GDPR compliance and user privacy. With Matomo Cloud, your data is stored in Europe, while Matomo On-Premise allows you to host your data on your own servers.

  Matomo is used on over 1 million websites, in over 190 countries, and in over 50 languages. Additionally, Matomo is an all-in-one solution, with traditional web analytics (visits, acquisition, etc.) alongside behavioural analytics (heatmaps, session recordings and more), plus a tag manager. No more inefficiently jumping back and forth between tabs in a huge tech stack. It’s all in Matomo, for one consistent, seamless and efficient experience. 

  Key features: 

  • Heatmaps and session recording to display what users are clicking on and how individual users interacted with your site 
  • A/B testing to compare different versions of the same content and see which gets better results
  • Robust API that lets you get insights by connecting your data to other platforms, like data visualisation or business intelligence tools

  Pros: 

  • Open-source, reviewed by experts to ensure that it’s secure
  • Offers On-Premise or Cloud-hosted options
  • Fully compliant with GDPR, so you can be data-driven without worrying. 
  • Option to run without cookies, meaning in most countries you can use Matomo without annoying cookie consent banners and while getting more accurate data
  • You retain complete ownership of your data, with no third parties using it for advertising or unspecified “own purposes”

  Cons: 

  • On-Premise is free, but that means an additional cost for advanced features (A/B testing, heatmaps, etc.) that are included by default on Matomo Cloud
  • Matomo On-Premise requires servers and technical expertise to setup and manage

  Mobile app: Matomo offers a free mobile app (iOS and Android) so you can access your analytics on the go. 

  Integrations: Matomo integrates easily with many other tools and platforms, including WordPress, Looker Studio, Magento, Jira, Drupal, Joomla and Cloudflare.

  Pricing: 

  • Varies based on monthly hits
  • Matomo On-Premise: free
  • Matomo Cloud: starting at €19/month

  Mixpanel

  

  Mixpanel’s features are heavily geared toward e-commerce companies. From the moment a visitor lands on your website to the moment they enter their payment details and complete a transaction, Mixpanel tracks these events.

  Similar to GA4, Mixpanel is an event-focused analytics platform. While you can still track pageviews with Mixpanel, its main focus is on the specific actions users take that lead them to purchases. Putting your attention on this information allows you to find out which events on your site are going through the sales funnel.

  They’re currently developing a Warehouse Events feature to simplify the process of importing data lakes and data warehouses.

  Key features:

  • Custom alerts and anomaly detection
  • Boards, which allow you to share multiple reports and insights with your team in a range of visual styles 
  • Detailed segmentation reporting that lets you break down your data to the individual user, specific event or geographic level

  Pros:

  • Boards allow for emojis, gifs, images and videos to make collaboration fun
  • Powerful mobile analytics for iOS and Android apps
  • Free promotional credits for eligible startups 

  Cons:

  • Limited features in free plan
  • Best features limited to the Enterprise-tier subscription
  • Complicated set up
  • Steep learning curve

  Mobile app: No

  Integrations: Mixpanel has a load of integrations, including Figma, Google Cloud, Slack, HappyFox, Snowflake, Microsoft Azure, Optimizely, Mailchimp and Tenjin. They also have a WordPress plugin.

  Pricing: 

  • Starter: free plan available
  • Growth: $20/month
  • Enterprise $833/month

  HubSpot Marketing

  

  HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform with marketing, sales, customer service, content management system (CMS) and operations tools. This greater ecosystem of HubSpot software allows you to practically run your entire business in one place.

  Even though HubSpot Marketing isn’t a dedicated web analytics tool, it provides comparable standard metrics as the other tools on this list, albeit without the more advanced analytical metrics they offer. If you’re already using HubSpot to host your website, it’s definitely worth consideration.

  Key features:

  • Customer Journey Analytics presents the steps your customers went through in the sales process, step-by-step, in a visual way
  • Dashboards for your reports, including both fully customisable options for power users and pre-made templates for new users

  Pros:

  • Integration with other HubSpot tools, like HubSpot CRM’s free live chat widget 
  • User-friendly interface with many features being drag-and-drop, like the report dashboard
  • 24/7 customer support

  Cons:

  • Can get expensive with upgrades and other HubSpot tool add ons
  • Not a dedicated web analytics tool, so it’s missing some of the features other tools have, like heatmaps
  • Not really worth it as a standalone tool
  • Some users report customer support is unhelpful

  Mobile app: Yes

  Integrations: The larger HubSpot CRM platform can connect with nearly 1,500 other apps through the HubSpot App Marketplace. These include Slack, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Make, WordPress, SurveyMonkey, Shopify, monday.com, Stripe, WooCommerce and hundreds of others.

  Pricing: 

  • Starter: $20/month ($18/month with annual plan) 
  • Professional: $890/month ($800/month with annual plan) 
  • Enterprise: $3,600/month ($43,200 billed annually)

  Kissmetrics

  

  Kissmetrics is a web analytics tool that is marketed toward SaaS and ecommerce companies. They label themselves as “person-based” because they combine event-based tracking with detailed user profiles of the visitors to your site, which allows you to gain insights into customer behaviour. 

  With user profiles, you can drill down to see how many times someone has visited your site, if they’ve purchased from you and the steps they took before completing a sale. This allows you to cater more to these users and drive growth.

  Key features: 

  • Person Profiles that give granular information about individual users and their activities on your site
  • Campaigns, an engagement messenger application, allows you to set up email automations that are triggered by specific events
  • Detailed reporting tools 

  Pros: 

  • No third-party cookies
  • No data sampling
  • APIs for Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Python and PHP

  Cons: 

  • Difficult installation
  • Strongest reporting features only available in the most expensive plan
  • Reports can be slow to generate
  • Requires custom JavaScript code to tack single-page applications
  • Doesn’t track demographic data, bounce rate, exits, session length or time on page

  Mobile app: No

  Integrations: Kissmetrics integrates with HubSpot, Appcues, Slack, Mailchimp, Shopify, WooCommerce, Recurly and a dozen others. There is also a Kissmetrics WordPress plugin.

  Pricing: 

  • Silver: $299/month (small businesses)
  • Gold: $499/month (medium) 
  • Platinum: custom pricing (enterprises)

  Conclusion

  In this article, you learned about popular tools for web analytics to better inform you of your options. Despite all of GA4’s shortcomings, by complementing it with another web analytics tool, teams can gain a more comprehensive understanding of their website traffic and enhance their overall analytics capabilities.

  If you want an option that delivers powerful insights while keeping privacy, security and compliance at the forefront, you should try Matomo. 

  Try Matomo alongside Google Analytics now to see how it compares.

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