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• A Beginner’s Guide to Omnichannel Analytics

  14 avril 2024, par Erin

  Linear customer journeys are as obsolete as dial-up internet and floppy disks. As a marketing manager, you know better than anyone that customers interact with your brand hundreds of times across dozens of channels before purchasing. That can make tracking them a nightmare unless you build an omnichannel analytics solution. 

  Alas, if only it were that simple. 

  Unfortunately, it’s not enough to collect data on your customers’ complex journeys just by buying an omnichannel platform. You need to generate actionable insights by using marketing attribution to tie channels to conversions. 

  This article will explain how to build a useful omnichannel analytics solution that lets you understand and improve the customer journey.

  What is omnichannel analytics ?

  Omnichannel analytics collects and analyses customer data from every touchpoint and device. The goal is to collect all this omnichannel data in one place, creating a single, real-time, unified view of your customer’s journey.

  

  Unfortunately, most businesses haven’t achieved this yet. As Karen Lellouche Tordjman and Marco Bertini say :

  “Despite all the buzz around the concept of omnichannel, most companies still view customer journeys as a linear sequence of standardised touchpoints within a given channel. But the future of customer engagement transforms touchpoints from nodes along a predefined distribution path to full-blown portals that can serve as points of sale or pathways to many other digital and virtual interactions. They link to chatbots, kiosks, robo-advisors, and other tools that customers — especially younger ones — want to engage with.”

  However, doing so is more important than ever — especially when consumers have over 300 digital touchpoints, and the average number of touchpoints in the B2B buyer journey is 27.

  Not only that, but customers expect personalised experiences across every platform — that’s the kind you can only create when you have access to omnichannel data.

  

  What might omnichannel analytics look like in practice for an e-commerce store ?

  An online store would integrate data from channels like its website, mobile app, social media accounts, Google Ads and customer service records. This would show how customers find its brand, how they use each channel to interact with it and which channels convert the most customers. 

  This would allow the e-commerce store to tailor marketing channels to customers’ needs. For instance, they could focus social media use on product discovery and customer support. Google Ads campaigns could target the best-converting products. While all this is happening, the store could also ensure every channel looks the same and delivers the same experience. 

  What are the benefits of omnichannel analytics ?

  Why go to all the trouble of creating a comprehensive view of the customer’s experience ? Because you stand to gain some pretty significant benefits when implementing omnichannel analytics.

  

  Understand the customer journey

  You want to understand how your customers behave, right ? No other method will allow you to fully understand your customer journey the way omnichannel analytics does. 

  It doesn’t matter how customers engage with your brand — whether that’s your website, app, social media profiles or physical stores — omnichannel analytics capture every interaction.

  With this 360-degree view of your customers, it’s easy to understand how they move between channels, where they encounter issues and what bottlenecks prevent them from converting. 

  Deliver better personalisation

  We don’t have to tell you that personalisation matters. But do you know just how important it is ? Since 56% of customers will become repeat buyers after a personalised experience, delivering them as often as possible is critical. 

  Omnichannel analytics helps in your quest for personalisation by highlighting the individual preferences of customer segments. For example, e-commerce stores can use omnichannel analytics to understand how shoppers behave across different devices and tailor their offers accordingly. 

  Upgrade the customer experience

  Omnichannel analytics gives you the insights to improve every aspect of the customer experience. 

  For starters, you can ensure a consistent brand experience across all your top channels by making sure they look and behave the same.

  Then, you can use omnichannel insights to tailor each channel to your customers’ requirements. For example, most people interacting with your brand on social media may seek support. Knowing that you can create dedicated support accounts to assist users. 

  Improve marketing campaigns

  Which marketing campaigns or traffic sources convert the most customers ? How can you improve these campaigns ? Omnichannel analytics has the answers. 

  When you implement omnichannel analytics you automatically track the performance of every marketing channel by attributing each conversion to one or more traffic sources. This lets you see whether Google Ads bring in more customers than your SEO efforts. Or whether social media ads are the most profitable acquisition channel. 

  Armed with this information, you can improve your marketing efforts — either by focusing on your profitable channels or rectifying problems that stop less profitable channels from converting.

  What are the challenges of omnichannel analytics ?

  There are three challenges when implementing an omnichannel analytics solution :

  

  • Complex customer journeys : Customer journeys aren’t linear and can be incredibly difficult to track. 
  • Regulatory and privacy issues : When you start gathering customer data, you quickly come up against consumer privacy laws. 
  • No underlying goal : There has to be a reason to go to all this effort, but brands don’t always have goals in mind before they start. 

  You can’t do anything about the first challenge. 

  After all, your customer journey will almost never be linear. And isn’t the point of implementing an omnichannel solution to understand these complex journeys in the first place ? Once you set up omnichannel analytics, these journeys will be much easier to decipher. 

  As for the other two :

  Using the right software that respects user privacy and complies with all major privacy laws will avoid regulatory issues. Take Matomo, for instance. Our software was designed with privacy in mind and is configured to follow the strictest privacy laws, such as GDPR. 

  Tying omnichannel analytics to marketing attribution will solve the final challenge by giving your omnichannel efforts a goal. When you tie omnichannel analytics to your marketing efforts, you aren’t just getting a 360-degree view of your customer journey for the sake of it. You are getting that view to improve your marketing efforts and increase sales.

  Try Matomo for Free

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

  Start for free

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  How to set up an omnichannel analytics solution

  Want to set up a seamless analytical environment that incorporates data from every possible source ? Follow these five steps :

  Choose one or more analytics providers

  You can use several tools to build an omnichannel analytics solution. These include web and app analytics tools, customer data platforms that centralise first-party data and business intelligence tools (typically used for visualisation). 

  Which tools you use will depend on your goals and your budget — the loftier your ambitions and the higher your budget, the more tools you can use. 

  Ideally, you should use as few tools as possible to capture your data. Most teams won’t need business intelligence platforms, for example. However, you may or may not need both an analytics platform and a customer data platform. Your decision will depend on how many channels your customers use and how well your analytics tool tracks everything.

  If it can capture web and app usage while integrating with third-party platforms like your back-end e-commerce platform, then it’s probably enough.

  Collect accurate data at every touchpoint 

  Your omnichannel analytics efforts hinge on the quantity and quality of data you can collect. You want to gather data from every touchpoint possible and store that data in as few places as possible. That’s why choosing as few tools as possible in the step above is so important. 

  So, where should you start ? Common data sources include :

  • Your website
  • Apps (iOS and Android)
  • Social media profiles
  • ERPs
  • PoS systems

  At the same time, make sure you’re tracking all relevant metrics. Revenue, customer engagement and conversion-focused metrics like conversion rate, dwell time, cart abandonment rate and churn rate are particularly important. 

  Set up marketing attribution

  Setting up marketing attribution (also known as multi-touch attribution) is essential to tie omnichannel data to business goals. It’s the only way to know exactly how valuable each marketing channel is and where each customer comes from. 

  You’ll want to use multi-touch attribution, given you have data from across the customer journey.

  

  Multi-touch attribution models can include (but are not limited to) :

  • Linear : where each touchpoint is given equal weighting
  • Time decay : where touchpoints are more valuable the nearer they are to conversion
  • Position-based : where the first and last touch points are more valuable than all the others. 

  You don’t have to use just one of the models above, however. One of the benefits of using a web analytics tool like Matomo is that you can choose between different attribution models and compare them.

  Try Matomo for Free

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

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  Create reports that help you visualise data

  Dashboards are your friend here. They’ll let you see KPIs at a glance, allowing you to keep track of day-to-day changes in your customer journey. Ideally, you’ll want a platform that lets you customise dashboard widgets so only relevant KPIs are shown. 

  

  Setting up standard and custom reports is also important. Custom reports allow you to choose metrics and dimensions that align with your goals. They will also allow you to present your data most meaningfully to your team, increasing the likelihood they act upon insights. 

  Analyse data and take action

  Now that you have customer journey data at your fingertips, it’s time to analyse it. After all, there’s no point in implementing an omnichannel analytics solution if you aren’t going to take action. 

  If you’re unsure where to start, re-read the benefits we listed at the start of this article. You could use your omnichannel insights to improve your marketing campaigns by doubling down on the channels that bring in the best customers.

  Or you could identify (and fix) bottlenecks in the customer journey so customers are less likely to fall out of your funnel between certain channels. 

  Just make sure you take action based on your data alone.

  Make the most of omnichannel analytics with Matomo

  A comprehensive web and app analytics platform is vital to any omnichannel analytics strategy. 

  But not just any solution will do. When privacy regulations impede an omnichannel analytics solution, you need a platform to capture accurate data without breaking privacy laws or your users’ trust. 

  That’s where Matomo comes in. Our privacy-friendly web analytics platform ensures accurate tracking of web traffic while keeping you compliant with even the strictest regulations. Moreover, our range of APIs and SDKs makes it easy to track interactions from all your digital products (website, apps, e-commerce back-ends, etc.) in one place. 

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

  Try Matomo for Free

  21 day free trial. No credit card required.

  
  

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• Is Google Analytics Accurate ? 6 Important Caveats

  8 novembre 2022, par Erin

  It’s no secret that accurate website analytics is crucial for growing your online business — and Google Analytics is often the go-to source for insights. 

  But is Google Analytics data accurate ? Can you fully trust the provided numbers ? Here’s a detailed explainer.

  How Accurate is Google Analytics ? A Data-Backed Answer 

  When properly configured, Google Analytics (Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4) is moderately accurate for global traffic collection. That said : Google Analytics doesn’t accurately report European traffic. 

  According to GDPR provisions, sites using GA products must display a cookie consent banner. This consent is required to collect third-party cookies — a tracking mechanism for identifying users across web properties.

  Google Analytics (GA) cannot process data about the user’s visit if they rejected cookies. In such cases, your analytics reports will be incomplete.

  Cookie rejection refers to visitors declining or blocking cookies from ever being collected by a specific website (or within their browser). It immediately affects the accuracy of all metrics in Google Analytics.

  Google Analytics is not accurate in locations where cookie consent to tracking is legally required. Most consumers don’t like disruptive cookie banners or harbour concerns about their privacy — and chose to reject tracking. 

  This leaves businesses with incomplete data, which, in turn, results in : 

  • Lower traffic counts as you’re not collecting 100% of the visitor data. 
  • Loss of website optimisation capabilities. You can’t make data-backed decisions due to inconsistent reporting

  For the above reasons, many companies now consider cookieless website tracking apps that don’t require consent screen displays. 

  Why is Google Analytics Not Accurate ? 6 Causes and Solutions 

  A high rejection rate of cookie banners is the main reason for inaccurate Google Analytics reporting. In addition, your account settings can also hinder Google Analytics’ accuracy.

  If your analytics data looks wonky, check for these six Google Analytics accuracy problems. 

  You Need to Secure Consent to Cookies Collection 

  To be GDPR-compliant, you must display a cookie consent screen to all European users. Likewise, other jurisdictions and industries require similar measures for user data collection. 

  This is a nuisance for many businesses since cookie rejection undermines their remarketing capabilities. Hence, some try to maximise cookie acceptance rates with dark patterns. For example : hide the option to decline tracking or make the texts too small. 

  

  Sadly, not everyone’s treating users with respect. A joint study by German and American researchers found that only 11% of US websites (from a sample of 5,000+) use GDPR-compliant cookie banners.

  As a result, many users aren’t aware of the background data collection to which they have (or have not) given consent. Another analysis of 200,000 cookies discovered that 70% of third-party marketing cookies transfer user data outside of the EU — a practice in breach of GDPR.

  Naturally, data regulators and activities are after this issue. In April 2022, Google was pressured to introduce a ‘reject all’ cookies button to all of its products (a €150 million compliance fine likely helped with that). Whereas, noyb has lodged over 220 complaints against individual websites with deceptive cookie consent banners.

  The takeaway ? Messing up with the cookie consent mechanism can get you in legal trouble. Don’t use sneaky banners as there are better ways to collect website traffic statistics. 

  Solution : Try Matomo GDPR-Friendly Analytics 

  Fill in the gaps in your traffic analytics with Matomo – a fully GDPR-compliant product that doesn’t rely on third-party cookies for tracking web visitors. Because of how it is designed, the French data protection authority (CNIL) confirmed that Matomo can be used to collect data without tracking consent.

  With Matomo, you can track website users without asking for cookie consent. And when you do, we supply you with a compact, compliant, non-disruptive cookie banner design. 

  Your Google Tag Isn’t Embedded Correctly 

  Google Tag (gtag.js) is a web tracking script that sends data to your Google Analytics, Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform.

  A corrupted gtag.js installation can create two accuracy issues : 

  • Duplicate page tracking 
  • Missing script installation 

  Is there a way to tell if you’re affected ?

  Yes. You may have duplicate scripts installed if you have a very low bounce rate on most website pages (below 15% – 20%). The above can happen if you’re using a WordPress GA plugin and additionally embed gtag.js straight in your website code. 

  A tell-tale sign of a missing script on some pages is low/no traffic stats. Google alerts you about this with a banner : 

  

  Solution : Use Available Troubleshooting Tools 

  Use Google Analytics Debugger extension to analyse pages with low bounce rates. Use the search bar to locate duplicate code-tracking elements. 

  Alternatively, you can use Google Tag Assistant for diagnosing snippet install and troubleshooting issues on individual pages. 

  If the above didn’t work, re-install your analytics script. 

  Machine Learning and Blended Data Are Applied

  Google Analytics 4 (GA4) relies a lot on machine learning and algorithmic predictions.

  By applying Google’s advanced machine learning models, the new Analytics can automatically alert you to significant trends in your data. [...] For example, it calculates churn probability so you can more efficiently invest in retaining customers.

  Vidhya Srinivasan, VP of Measurement, Analytics and Buying Platforms at Google

  On the surface, the above sounds exciting. In practice, Google’s application of predictive algorithms means you’re not seeing actual data. 

  To offer a variation of cookieless tracking, Google algorithms close the gaps in reporting by creating models (i.e., data-backed predictions) instead of reporting on actual user behaviours. Therefore, your GA4 numbers may not be accurate.

  For bigger web properties (think websites with 1+ million users), Google also relies on data sampling — a practice of extrapolating data analytics, based on a data subset, rather than the entire dataset. Once again, this can lead to inconsistencies in reporting with some numbers (e.g., average conversion rates) being inflated or downplayed. 

  Solution : Try an Alternative Website Analytics App 

  Unlike GA4, Matomo reports consist of 100% unsampled data. All the aggregated reporting you see is based on real user data (not guesstimation). 

  Moreover, you can migrate from Universal Analytics (UA) to Matomo without losing access to your historical records. GA4 doesn’t yet have any backward compatibility.

  Spam and Bot Traffic Isn’t Filtered Out 

  Surprise ! 42% of all Internet traffic is generated by bots, of which 27.7% are bad ones.

  Good bots (aka crawlers) do essential web “housekeeping” tasks like indexing web pages. Bad bots distribute malware, spam contact forms, hack user accounts and do other nasty stuff. 

  A lot of such spam bots are designed specifically for web analytics apps. The goal ? Flood your dashboard with bogus data in hopes of getting some return action from your side. 

  Types of Google Analytics Spam :

  • Referral spam. Spambots hijack the referrer, displayed in your GA referral traffic report to indicate a page visit from some random website (which didn’t actually occur). 
  • Event spam. Bots generate fake events with free language entries enticing you to visit their website. 
  • Ghost traffic spam. Malicious parties can also inject fake pageviews, containing URLs that they want you to click. 

  Obviously, such spammy entities distort the real website analytics numbers. 

  Solution : Set Up Bot/Spam Filters 

  Google Analytics 4 has automatic filtering of bot traffic enabled for all tracked Web and App properties. 

  But if you’re using Universal Analytics, you’ll have to manually configure spam filtering. First, create a new view and then set up a custom filter. Program it to exclude :

  • Filter Field : Request URI
  • Filter Pattern : Bot traffic URL

  Once you’ve configured everything, validate the results using Verify this filter feature. Then repeat the process for other fishy URLs, hostnames and IP addresses. 

  You Don’t Filter Internal Traffic 

  Your team(s) spend a lot of time on your website — and their sporadic behaviours can impair your traffic counts and other website metrics.

  To keep your data “employee-free”, exclude traffic from : 

  • Your corporate IPs addresses 
  • Known personal IPs of employees (for remote workers) 

  If you also have a separate stage version of your website, you should also filter out all traffic coming from it. Your developers, contractors and marketing people spend a lot of time fiddling with your website. This can cause a big discrepancy in average time on page and engagement rates. 

  Solution : Set Internal Traffic Filters 

  Google provides instructions for excluding internal traffic from your reports using IPv4/IPv6 address filters. 

  

  Session Timeouts After 30 Minutes 

  After 30 minutes of inactivity, Google Analytics tracking sessions start over. Inactivity means no recorded interaction hits during this time. 

  Session timeouts can be a problem for some websites as users often pin a tab to check it back later. Because of this, you can count the same user twice or more — and this leads to skewed reporting. 

  Solution : Programme Custom Timeout Sessions

  You can codify custom cookie timeout sessions with the following code snippets : 

  • _setSessionCookieTimeout. Set a custom new session cookie timeout in milliseconds.
  • _setVisitorCookieTimeout. Sets a custom Google Analytics visitor cookie expiration time frame in milliseconds.

  Final Thoughts 

  Thanks to its scale and longevity, Google Analytics has some strong sides, but its data accuracy isn’t 100% perfect.

  The inability to capture analytics data from users who don’t consent to cookie tracking and data sampling applied to bigger web properties may be a deal-breaker for your business. 

  If that’s the case, try Matomo — a GDPR-compliant, accurate web analytics solution. Start your 21-day free trial now. No credit card required.

  21 day free trial. No credit card required.

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• Top 5 Web Analytics Tools for Your Site

  11 août 2023, par 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.