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• Switch to Matomo for WordPress from Google Analytics

  10 mars 2020, par Joselyn Khor — Plugins, Privacy
  While Google Analytics may seem like a great plugin option on the WordPress directory, we’d like to present a new ethical alternative called Matomo for WordPress, which gives you 100% data ownership and privacy protection.

  Firstly what does Google Analytics offer in WordPress ?

  When you think of getting insights about visitors on your WordPress (WP) sites, the first thing that comes to mind might be Google Analytics. Why not right ? Especially when there are good free Google Analytics plugins, like Monster Insights and Site Kit. 

  These give you access to a great analytics platform, but the downside with Google Analytics is the lack of transparency around privacy and data ownership.

  

  Matomo Analytics for WordPress is an ethical alternative to Google Analytics for WordPress

  If you’re more interested in a privacy-respecting, GDPR compliant alternative, there’s now a new option on the WP plugins directory : Matomo Analytics – Ethical Stats. Powerful Insights. 

  It’s free and can be considered the #1 ethical alternative to Google Analytics in terms of features and capabilities. Why is it important to choose a web analytics platform that respects privacy ?

  

  Risk facing fines for non-GDPR compliance and privacy/data breaches

  In Europe there’s an overarching privacy law called GDPR which provides better privacy protection for EU citizens on the web. 

  Websites need to be GDPR compliant and follow rules governing how personal data is used or risk facing fines up to 4% of their yearly revenue for data/privacy breaches or non-compliance. Even if your website is based outside of Europe. If you have visitors from Europe, you can still be liable.

  

  In the US, there isn’t one main privacy law, there hundreds on both the federal and state levels to protect the personal data (or personally identifiable information) of US residents – like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). There are also industry-specific statutes related to data privacy like HIPAA.

  To protect your website from coming under fire for privacy breaches, best practise is to find platforms that are privacy and GDPR compliant by design. 

  When you own your own data – as with the case of Matomo – you have control over where data is stored, what you’re doing with it, and can better protect the privacy of your visitors.

  At this point you may be asking, “what’s the point of an analytics platform if you have to follow all these rules ?”

  The importance of analytics for your WordPress site

  • Figuring out how your audience behaves to increase conversions
  • Setting, tracking and measuring conversion goals
  • Being able to find insights to improve and optimize your site 
  • Making smarter, data-driven decisions so your company can thrive, rather than risk being left behind

  Analytics is used to answer questions like :

  • Where are your website visitors coming from (location) ?
  • How many people visit your website ?
  • Which are the most popular pages on your site ?
  • What sources of traffic are coming to your site (social, marketing campaigns, search) ?
  • Is your marketing campaign performing better this month compared to last ?

  Matomo can answer all of the above questions. BONUS : On top of that, with Matomo you get the peace of mind knowing you’re the only one who has access to those answers.

  

  Matomo Analytics vs Google Analytics on WordPress

  The top 5 most useful features in Matomo Analytics that’s comparable to GA

  1. Campaign measurement – traffic. Matomo also has a URL builder that lets you track which campaigns are working effectively
  2. Tracking goals. Matomo empowers you to set goals you can track. Being able to see this means you can accurately measure your return on investment (ROI) 
  3. Audience reports to learn about visitors. Matomo’s powerful visitors feature lets you learn who is visiting your site, what their journey is and the steps they take to conversion.
  4. In depth view of behaviour with Funnels in Matomo. This tracks the journey of your visitors from the moment they enter your site, to when they leave. Giving you insight into where and why you lose your visitors.
  5. Custom reports. Where you create your unique reports to fit your business goals.

  Other benefits of using Matomo :

  • No data sampling which means you get 100% accurate reporting
  • 100% data ownership
  • Free Tag Manager
  • Search engine keyword rankings
  • Unlimited websites
  • Unlimited team members
  • GDPR manager
  • API access
  • Hosted on your own servers so you have full control over where your data is stored

  Learn more about the differences in this comprehensive table.

  

  Matomo Analytics for WordPress is free !

  Matomo Analytics is the best free Google Analytics alternative on the WordPress Directory. In addition to having comparable features where you can do pretty much do everything you wanted to do in GA. Matomo Analytics for WordPress makes for an ethical choice because you can respect your visitor’s privacy, can become GDPR compliant, and maintain control over your own data.

  Google Analytics leads the market for good reasons. It’s a great free tool for those who want analytics, but there’s no clarity when it comes to grey areas like privacy and data ownership. If these are major concerns for you, Matomo offers complete peace of mind that you’re doing the best you can to stay ethical while growing your business and website.

  It’s just as easy to install in a few click !

  Install and see for yourself !

• A Complete Guide to Metrics in Google Analytics

  11 janvier 2024, par Erin

  There’s no denying that Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics solution today. Many marketers choose it to understand user behaviour. But when it offers so many different types of metrics, it can be overwhelming to choose which ones to focus on. In this article, we’ll dive into how metrics work in Google Analytics 4 and how to decide which metrics may be most useful to you, depending on your analytics needs.

  However, there are alternative web analytics solutions that can provide more accurate data and supplement GA’s existing features. Keep reading to learn how to overcome Google Analytics limitations so you can get the more out of your web analytics.

  What is a metric in Google Analytics ?

  In Google Analytics, a metric is a quantitative measurement or numerical data that provides insights into specific aspects of user behaviour. Metrics represent the counts or sums of user interactions, events or other data points. You can use GA metrics to better understand how people engage with a website or mobile app. 

  Unlike the previous Universal Analytics (the previous version of GA), GA4 is event-centric and has automated and simplified the event tracking process. Compared to Universal Analytics, GA4 is more user-centric and lets you hone in on individual user journeys. Some examples of common key metrics in GA4 are : 

  • Sessions : A group of user interactions on your website that occur within a specific time period. A session concludes when there is no user activity for 30 minutes.
  • Total Users : The cumulative count of individuals who accessed your site within a specified date range.
  • Engagement Rate : The percentage of visits to your website or app that included engagement (e.g., one more pageview, one or more conversion, etc.), determined by dividing engaged sessions by sessions.

  

  Metrics are invaluable when it comes to website and conversion optimisation. Whether you’re on the marketing team, creating content or designing web pages, understanding how your users interact with your digital platforms is essential.

  GA4 metrics vs. dimensions

  GA4 uses metrics to discuss quantitative measurements and dimensions as qualitative descriptors that provide additional context to metrics. To make things crystal clear, here are some examples of how metrics and dimensions are used together : 

  • “Session duration” = metric, “device type” = dimension 
    • In this situation, the dimension can segment the data by device type so you can optimise the user experience for different devices.
  • “Bounce rate” = metric, “traffic source/medium” = dimension 
    • Here, the dimension helps you segment by traffic source to understand how different acquisition channels are performing. 
  • “Conversion rate” = metric, “Landing page” = dimension 
    • When the conversion rate data is segmented by landing page, you can better see the most effective landing pages. 

  You can get into the nitty gritty of granular analysis by combining metrics and dimensions to better understand specific user interactions.

  How do Google Analytics metrics work ?

  Before diving into the most important metrics you should track, let’s review how metrics in GA4 work. 

  

  1. Tracking code implementation

  The process begins with implementing Google Analytics 4 tracking code into the HTML of web pages. This tracking code is JavaScript added to each website page — it collects data related to user interactions, events and other important tidbits.

  2. Data collection

  As users interact with the website or app, the Google Analytics 4 tracking code captures various data points (i.e., page views, clicks, form submissions, custom events, etc.). This raw data is compiled and sent to Google Analytics servers for processing.

  3. Data processing algorithms

  When the data reaches Google Analytics servers, data processing algorithms come into play. These algorithms analyse the incoming raw data to identify the dataset’s trends, relationships and patterns. This part of the process involves cleaning and organising the data.

  4. Segmentation and customisation

  As discussed in the previous section, Google Analytics 4 allows for segmentation and customisation of data with dimensions. To analyse specific data groups, you can define segments based on various dimensions (e.g., traffic source, device type). Custom events and user properties can also be defined to tailor the tracking to the unique needs of your website or app.

  5. Report generation

  Google Analytics 4 can make comprehensive reports and dashboards based on the processed and segmented data. These reports, often in the form of graphs and charts, help identify patterns and trends in the data.

  What are the most important Google Analytics metrics to track ? 

  In this section, we’ll identify and define key metrics for marketing teams to track in Google Analytics 4. 

  

  1. Pageviews are the total number of times a specific page or screen on your website or app is viewed by visitors. Pageviews are calculated each time a web page is loaded or reloaded in a browser. You can use this metric to measure the popularity of certain content on your website and what users are interested in. 
  2. Event tracking monitors user interactions with content on a website or app (i.e., clicks, downloads, video views, etc.). Event tracking provides detailed insights into user engagement so you can better understand how users interact with dynamic content. 
  3. Retention rate can be analysed with a pre-made overview report that Google Analytics 4 provides. This user metric measures the percentage of visitors who return to your website or app after their first visit within a specific time period. Retention rate = (users with subsequent visits / total users in the initial cohort) x 100. Use this information to understand how relevant or effective your content, user experience and marketing efforts are in retaining visitors. You probably have more loyal/returning buyers if you have a high retention rate. 
  4. Average session duration calculates the average time users spend on your website or app per session. Average session duration = total duration of all sessions / # of sessions. A high average session duration indicates how interested and engaged users are with your content. 
  5. Site searches and search queries on your website are automatically tracked by Google Analytics 4. These metrics include search terms, number of searches and user engagement post-search. You can use site search metrics to better understand user intent and refine content based on users’ searches. 
  6. Entrance and exit pages show where users first enter and leave your site. This metric is calculated by the percentage of sessions that start or end on a specific page. Knowing where users are entering and leaving your site can help identify places for content optimisation. 
  7. Device and browser info includes data about which devices and browsers websites or apps visitors use. This is another metric that Google Analytics 4 automatically collects and categorises during user sessions. You can use this data to improve the user experience on relevant devices and browsers. 
  8. Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page sessions where users leave your site or app without interacting further. Bounce rate = (# of single-page sessions / total # of sessions) x 100. Bounce rate is useful for determining how effective your landing pages are — pages with high bounce rates can be tweaked and optimised to enhance user engagement.

  Examples of how Matomo can elevate your web analytics

  Although Google Analytics is a powerful tool for understanding user behaviour, it also has privacy concerns, limitations and a list of issues. Another web analytics solution like Matomo can help fill those gaps so you can get the most out of your analytics.

  

  1. Cross-verify and validate your observations from Google Analytics by comparing data from Matomo’s Heatmaps and Session Recordings for the same pages. This process grants you access to these advanced features that GA4 does not offer.

  

  1. Matomo provides you with greater accuracy thanks to its privacy-friendly design. Unlike GA4, Matomo can be configured to operate without cookies. This means increased accuracy without intrusive cookie consent screens interrupting the user experience. It’s a win for you and for your users. Matomo also doesn’t apply data sampling so you can rest assured that the data you see is 100% accurate.

  3. Unlike GA4, Matomo offers direct access to customer support so you can save time sifting through community forum threads and online documentation. Gain personalised assistance and guidance for your analytics questions, and resolve issues efficiently.

  

  4. Matomo’s Form Analytics and Media Analytics extend your analytics capabilities beyond just pageviews and event tracking.

     Tracking user interactions with forms can tell you which fields users struggle with, common drop-off points, in addition to which parts of the form successfully guide visitors towards submission.

     See first-hand how Concrete CMS 3x their leads using Matomo’s Form Analytics.

     Media Analytics can provide insight into how users interact with image, video, or audio content on your website. You can use this feature to assess the relevance and popularity of specific content by knowing what your audience is engaged by.

  Try Matomo for Free

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

  Start for free

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  Final thoughts

  Although Google Analytics is a powerful tool on its own, Matomo can elevate your web analytics by offering advanced features, data accuracy and a privacy-friendly design. Don’t play a guessing game with your data — Matomo provides 100% accurate data so you don’t have to rely on AI or machine learning to fill in the gaps. Matomo can be configured cookieless which also provides you with more accurate data and a better user experience. 

  Lastly, Matomo is fully compliant with some of the world’s strictest privacy regulations like GPDR. You won’t have to sacrifice compliance for accurate, high quality data. 

  Start your 21-day free trial of Matomo — no credit card required.

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• The use cases for a element in HTML

  1er janvier 2014, par silvia

  The W3C HTML WG and the WHATWG are currently discussing the introduction of a <main> element into HTML.

  The <main> element has been proposed by Steve Faulkner and is specified in a draft extension spec which is about to be accepted as a FPWD (first public working draft) by the W3C HTML WG. This implies that the W3C HTML WG will be looking for implementations and for feedback by implementers on this spec.

  I am supportive of the introduction of a <main> element into HTML. However, I believe that the current spec and use case list don’t make a good enough case for its introduction. Here are my thoughts.

  Main use case : accessibility

  In my opinion, the main use case for the introduction of <main> is accessibility.

  Like any other users, when blind users want to perceive a Web page/application, they need to have a quick means of grasping the content of a page. Since they cannot visually scan the layout and thus determine where the main content is, they use accessibility technology (AT) to find what is known as “landmarks”.

  “Landmarks” tell the user what semantic content is on a page : a header (such as a banner), a search box, a navigation menu, some asides (also called complementary content), a footer, …. and the most important part : the main content of the page. It is this main content that a blind user most often wants to skip to directly.

  In the days of HTML4, a hidden “skip to content” link at the beginning of the Web page was used as a means to help blind users access the main content.

  In the days of ARIA, the aria @role=main enables authors to avoid a hidden link and instead mark the element where the main content begins to allow direct access to the main content. This attribute is supported by AT – in particular screen readers – by making it part of the landmarks that AT can directly skip to.

  Both the hidden link and the ARIA @role=main approaches are, however, band aids : they are being used by those of us that make “finished” Web pages accessible by adding specific extra markup.

  A world where ARIA is not necessary and where accessibility developers would be out of a job because the normal markup that everyone writes already creates accessible Web sites/applications would be much preferable over the current world of band-aids.

  Therefore, to me, the primary use case for a <main> element is to achieve exactly this better world and not require specialized markup to tell a user (or a tool) where the main content on a page starts.

  An immediate effect would be that pages that have a <main> element will expose a “main” landmark to blind and vision-impaired users that will enable them to directly access that main content on the page without having to wade through other text on the page. Without a <main> element, this functionality can currently only be provided using heuristics to skip other semantic and structural elements and is for this reason not typically implemented in AT.

  Other use cases

  The <main> element is a semantic element not unlike other new semantic elements such as <header>, <footer>, <aside>, <article>, <nav>, or <section>. Thus, it can also serve other uses where the main content on a Web page/Web application needs to be identified.

  Data mining

  For data mining of Web content, the identification of the main content is one of the key challenges. Many scholarly articles have been published on this topic. This stackoverflow article references and suggests a multitude of approaches, but the accepted answer says “there’s no way to do this that’s guaranteed to work”. This is because Web pages are inherently complex and many <div>, <p>, <iframe> and other elements are used to provide markup for styling, notifications, ads, analytics and other use cases that are necessary to make a Web page complete, but don’t contribute to what a user consumes as semantically rich content. A <main> element will allow authors to pro-actively direct data mining tools to the main content.

  Search engines

  One particularly important “data mining” tool are search engines. They, too, have a hard time to identify which sections of a Web page are more important than others and employ many heuristics to do so, see e.g. this ACM article. Yet, they still disappoint with poor results pointing to findings of keywords in little relevant sections of a page rather than ranking Web pages higher where the keywords turn up in the main content area. A <main> element would be able to help search engines give text in main content areas a higher weight and prefer them over other areas of the Web page. It would be able to rank different Web pages depending on where on the page the search words are found. The <main> element will be an additional hint that search engines will digest.

  Visual focus

  On small devices, the display of Web pages designed for Desktop often causes confusion as to where the main content can be found and read, in particular when the text ends up being too small to be readable. It would be nice if browsers on small devices had a functionality (maybe a default setting) where Web pages would start being displayed as zoomed in on the main content. This could alleviate some of the headaches of responsive Web design, where the recommendation is to show high priority content as the first content. Right now this problem is addressed through stylesheets that re-layout the page differently depending on device, but again this is a band-aid solution. Explicit semantic markup of the main content can solve this problem more elegantly.

  Styling

  Finally, naturally, <main> would also be used to style the main content differently from others. You can e.g. replace a semantically meaningless <div id=”main”> with a semantically meaningful <main> where their position is identical. My analysis below shows, that this is not always the case, since oftentimes <div id=”main”> is used to group everything together that is not the header – in particular where there are multiple columns. Thus, the ease of styling a <main> element is only a positive side effect and not actually a real use case. It does make it easier, however, to adapt the style of the main content e.g. with media queries.

  Proposed alternative solutions

  It has been proposed that existing markup serves to satisfy the use cases that <main> has been proposed for. Let’s analyse these on some of the most popular Web sites. First let’s list the propsed algorithms.

  Proposed solution No 1 : Scooby-Doo

  On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 11:01 AM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote :
  | The main content is whatever content isn’t
  | marked up as not being main content (anything not marked up with <header>,
  | <aside>, <nav>, etc).
  

  This implies that the first element that is not a <header>, <aside>, <nav>, or <footer> will be the element that we want to give to a blind user as the location where they should start reading. The algorithm is implemented in https://gist.github.com/4032962.

  Proposed solution No 2 : First article element

  On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 8:01 AM, Ian Hickson  wrote :
  | On Thu, 15 Nov 2012, Ian Yang wrote :
  | >
  | > That’s a good idea. We really need an element to wrap all the <p>s,
  | > <ul>s, <ol>s, <figure>s, <table>s ... etc of a blog post.
  |
  | That’s called <article>.
  

  This approach identifies the first <article> element on the page as containing the main content. Here’s the algorithm for this approach.

  Proposed solution No 3 : An example heuristic approach

  The readability plugin has been developed to make Web pages readable by essentially removing all the non-main content from a page. An early source of readability is available. This demonstrates what a heuristic approach can perform.

  Analysing alternative solutions

  Comparison

  I’ve picked 4 typical Websites (top on Alexa) to analyse how these three different approaches fare. Ideally, I’d like to simply apply the above three scripts and compare pictures. However, since the semantic HTML5 elements <header>, <aside>, <nav>, and <footer> are not actually used by any of these Web sites, I don’t actually have this choice.

  So, instead, I decided to make some assumptions of where these semantic elements would be used and what the outcome of applying the first two algorithms would be. I can then compare it to the third, which is a product so we can take screenshots.

  Google.com

  http://google.com – search for “Scooby Doo”.

  The search results page would likely be built with :

  • a <nav> menu for the Google bar
  • a <header> for the search bar
  • another <header> for the login section
  • another <nav> menu for the search types
  • a <div> to contain the rest of the page
  • a <div> for the app bar with the search number
  • a few <aside>s for the left and right column
  • a set of <article>s for the search results

  “Scooby Doo” would find the first element after the headers as the “main content”. This is the element before the app bar in this case. Interestingly, there is a <div @id=main> already in the current Google results page, which “Scooby Doo” would likely also pick. However, there are a nav bar and two asides in this div, which clearly should not be part of the “main content”. Google actually placed a @role=main on a different element, namely the one that encapsulates all the search results.

  “First Article” would find the first search result as the “main content”. While not quite the same as what Google intended – namely all search results – it is close enough to be useful.

  The “readability” result is interesting, since it is not able to identify the main text on the page. It is actually aware of this problem and brings a warning before displaying this page :

  

  Facebook.com

  https://facebook.com

  A user page would likely be built with :

  • a <header> bar for the search and login bar
  • a <div> to contain the rest of the page
  • an <aside> for the left column
  • a <div> to contain the center and right column
  • an <aside> for the right column
  • a <header> to contain the center column “megaphone”
  • a <div> for the status posting
  • a set of <article>s for the home stream

  “Scooby Doo” would find the first element after the headers as the “main content”. This is the element that contains all three columns. It’s actually a <div @id=content> already in the current Facebook user page, which “Scooby Doo” would likely also pick. However, Facebook selected a different element to place the @role=main : the center column.

  “First Article” would find the first news item in the home stream. This is clearly not what Facebook intended, since they placed the @role=main on the center column, above the first blog post’s title. “First Article” would miss that title and the status posting.

  The “readability” result again disappoints but warns that it failed :

  

  YouTube.com

  http://youtube.com

  A video page would likely be built with :

  • a <header> bar for the search and login bar
  • a <nav> for the menu
  • a <div> to contain the rest of the page
  • a <header> for the video title and channel links
  • a <div> to contain the video with controls
  • a <div> to contain the center and right column
  • an <aside> for the right column with an <article> per related video
  • an <aside> for the information below the video
  • a <article> per comment below the video

  “Scooby Doo” would find the first element after the headers as the “main content”. This is the element that contains the rest of the page. It’s actually a <div @id=content> already in the current YouTube video page, which “Scooby Doo” would likely also pick. However, YouTube’s related videos and comments are unlikely to be what the user would regard as “main content” – it’s the video they are after, which generously has a <div id=watch-player>.

  “First Article” would find the first related video or comment in the home stream. This is clearly not what YouTube intends.

  The “readability” result is not quite as unusable, but still very bare :

  

  Wikipedia.com

  http://wikipedia.com (“Overscan” page)

  A Wikipedia page would likely be built with :

  • a <header> bar for the search, login and menu items
  • a <div> to contain the rest of the page
  • an &ls ; article> with title and lots of text
  • <article> an <aside> with the table of contents
  • several <aside>s for the left column

  Good news : “Scooby Doo” would find the first element after the headers as the “main content”. This is the element that contains the rest of the page. It’s actually a <div id=”content” role=”main”> element on Wikipedia, which “Scooby Doo” would likely also pick.

  “First Article” would find the title and text of the main element on the page, but it would also include an <aside>.

  The “readability” result is also in agreement.

  

  Results

  In the following table we have summarised the results for the experiments :

  Site	Scooby-Doo	First article	Readability
  Google.com	FAIL	SUCCESS	FAIL
  Facebook.com	FAIL	FAIL	FAIL
  YouTube.com	FAIL	FAIL	FAIL
  Wikipedia.com	SUCCESS	SUCCESS	SUCCESS

  Clearly, Wikipedia is the prime example of a site where even the simple approaches find it easy to determine the main content on the page. WordPress blogs are similarly successful. Almost any other site, including news sites, social networks and search engine sites are petty hopeless with the proposed approaches, because there are too many elements that are used for layout or other purposes (notifications, hidden areas) such that the pre-determined list of semantic elements that are available simply don’t suffice to mark up a Web page/application completely.

  Conclusion

  It seems that in general it is impossible to determine which element(s) on a Web page should be the “main” piece of content that accessibility tools jump to when requested, that a search engine should put their focus on, or that should be highlighted to a general user to read. It would be very useful if the author of the Web page would provide a hint through a <main> element where that main content is to be found.

  I think that the <main> element becomes particularly useful when combined with a default keyboard shortcut in browsers as proposed by Steve : we may actually find that non-accessibility users will also start making use of this shortcut, e.g. to get to videos on YouTube pages directly without having to tab over search boxes and other interactive elements, etc. Worthwhile markup indeed.