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• Meta Receives a Record GDPR Fine from The Irish Data Protection Commission

  29 mai 2023, par Erin — GDPR

  The Irish Data Protection Commission (the DPC) issued a €1.2 billion fine to Meta on May, 22nd 2023 for violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 

  The regulator ruled that Meta was unlawfully transferring European users’ data to its US-based servers and taking no sufficient measures for ensuring users’ privacy. 

  Meta must now suspend data transfer within five months and delete EU/EEA users’ personal data that was illegally transferred across the border. Or they risk facing another round of repercussions. 

  Meta continued to transfer personal user data to the USA following an earlier ruling of The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which already address problematic EU-U.S. data flows. Meta continued those transfers on the basis of the updated Standard Contractual Clauses (“SCCs”), adopted by the European Commission in 2021. 

  The Irish regulator successfully proved that these arrangements had not sufficiently addressed the “fundamental rights and freedoms” of the European data subjects, outlined in the CJEU ruling. Meta was not doing enough to protect EU users’ data against possible surveillance and unconsented usage by US authorities or other authorised entities.

  Why European Regulators Are After The US Big Tech Firms ? 

  GDPR regulations have been a sore area of compliance for US-based big tech companies. 

  Effectively, they had to adopt a host of new measures for collecting user consent, ensuring compliant data storage and the right to request data removal for a substantial part of their user bases. 

  The wrinkle, however, is that companies like Google and Meta among others, don’t have separate data processing infrastructure for different markets. Instead, all the user data gets commingled on the companies’ servers, which are located in the US. 

  Data storage facilities’ location is an issue. In 2020, the CJEU made a historical ruling, called the invalidation of the Privacy Shield. Originally, international companies were allowed to transfer data between the EU and the US if they adhered to seven data protection principles. This arrangement was called the Privacy Shield. 

  However, the continuous investigation found that the Privacy Shield scheme was not GDPR compliant and therefore companies could no longer use it to justify cross-border data transfers.

  The invalidation of the Privacy Shield gave ground for further investigations of the big tech companies’ compliance statuses. 

  In March 2022, the Irish DPC issued the first €17 million fine to Meta for “insufficient technical and organisational measures to ensure information security of European users”. In September 2022, Meta was again hit with a €405 million fine for Instagram breaching GDPR principles. 

  2023 began with another series of rulings, with the DPC concluding that Meta had breaches of the GDPR relating to its Facebook service (€210 million fine) and breaches related to Instagram (€180 million fine). 

  Clearly, Meta already knew they weren’t doing enough for GDPR compliance and yet they refused to take privacy-focused action. 

  Is Google GDPR Compliant ?

  Google has a similar “track record” as Meta when it comes to ensuring full compliance with the GDPR. Although Google has said to provide users with more controls for managing their data privacy, the proposed solutions are just scratching the surface. 

  In the background, Google continues to leverage its ample reserves of user browsing, behavioural and device data in product development and advertising. 

  In 2022, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) found that Google used web users’ information in its real-time bidding ad system without their knowledge or consent. The French data regulator (CNIL), in turn, fined Google for €150 million because of poor cookie consent banners the same year. 

  Google Analytics GDPR compliance status is, however, the bigger concern.

  Neither Google Univeral Analytics (UA) nor Google Analytics 4 are GDPR compliant, following the Privacy Shield framework invalidation in 2020. 

  Fines from individual regulators in Sweden, France, Austria, Italy, Denmark, Finland and Norway ruled that Google Analytics is non-GDPR compliant and is therefore illegal to use. 

  The regulatory rulings not just affect Google, but also GA users. Because the product is in breach of European privacy laws, people using it are complacent. Privacy groups like noyb, for example, are exercising their right to sue individual websites, using Google Analytics.

  How to Stay GDPR Compliant With Website Analytics 

  To avoid any potential risk exposure, selectively investigate each website analytics provider’s data storage and management practices. 

  Inquire about the company’s data storage locations among the first things. For example, Matomo Cloud keeps all the data in the EU, while Matomo On-Premise edition gives you the option to store data in any country of your choice. 

  Secondly, ask about their process for consent tracking and subsequent data analysis. Our website analytics product is fully GDPR compliant as we have first-party cookies enabled by default, offer a convenient option of tracking out-outs, provide a data removal mechanism and practice safe data storage. In fact, Matomo was approved by the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) as one of the few web analytics apps that can be used to collect data without tracking consent. 

  Using an in-built GDPR Manager, Matomo users can implement the right set of controls for their market and their industry. For example, you can implement extra data or IP anonymization ; disable visitor logs and profiles. 

  Thanks to our privacy-by-design architecture and native controls, users can make their Matomo analytics compliant even with the strictest privacy laws like HIPAA, CCPA, LGPD and PECR. 

  Learn more about GDPR-friendly website analytics.

  Final Thoughts

  Since the GDPR came into effect in 2018, over 1,400 fines have been given to various companies in breach of the regulations. Meta and Google have been initially lax in response to European regulatory demands. But as new fines follow and the consumer pressure mounts, Big Tech companies are forced to take more proactive measures : add opt-outs for personalised ads and introduce an alternative mechanism to third-party cookies. 

  Companies, using non-GDPR-compliant tools risk finding themselves in the crossfire of consumer angst and regulatory criticism. To operate an ethical, compliant business consider privacy-focused alternatives to Google products, especially in the area of website analytics. 

• 5 Top Google Optimize Alternatives to Consider

  17 mars 2023, par Erin — Analytics Tips

  Google Optimize is a popular conversion rate optimization (CRO) tool from Alphabet (parent company of Google). With it, you can run A/B, multivariate, and redirect tests to figure out which web page designs perform best. 

  Google Optimize seamlessly integrates with Google Analytics (GA). It also has a free tier. So many marketers chose it as their default A/B testing tool…until recently. 

  Google will sunset Google Optimize by 30 September 2023. 

  Starting from this date, Google will no longer support Optimize and Optimize 360 (premium edition). All experiments, active after this date, will be paused automatically and you’ll no longer have access to your historical records (unless these are exported in advance).

  The better news is that you still have time to find a Google Optimize alternative — and this post will help you with that. 

  Disclaimer : Please note that the information provided in this blog post is for general informational purposes only and is not intended to provide legal advice. Every situation is unique and requires a specific legal analysis. If you have any questions regarding the legal implications of any matter, please consult with your legal team or seek advice from a qualified legal professional. 

  Best Google Optimize Alternatives 

  Google Optimize was among the first free A/B testing apps. But as with any product, it has some disadvantages. 

  Data updates happen every 24 hours, not in real-time. A free account has caps on the number of experiments. You cannot run more than 5 experiments at a time or implement over 16 combinations for multivariate testing (MVT). A premium version (Optimize 365) has fewer usage constraints, but it costs north of $150K per year. 

  Google Optimize has native integration with GA (of course), so you can review all the CRO data without switching apps. But Optimize doesn’t work well with Google Analytics alternatives, which many choose to use for privacy-friendly user tracking, higher data accuracy and GDPR compliance. 

  At the same time, many other conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools have emerged, often boasting better accuracy and more competitive features than Google Optimize.

  Here are 5 alternative A/B testing apps worth considering.

  Adobe Target 

  

  Adobe Target is an advanced personalization platform for optimising user and marketing experiences on digital properties. It uses machine learning algorithms to deliver dynamic content, personalised promotions and custom browsing experiences to visitors based on their behaviour and demographic data. 

  Adobe Target also provides A/B testing and multivariate testing (MVT) capabilities to help marketers test and refine their digital experiences.

  Key features : 

  • Visual experience builder for A/B tests setup and replication 
  • Full factorial multivariate tests and multi-armed bandit testing
  • Omnichannel personalisation across web properties 
  • Multiple audience segmentation and targeting options 
  • Personalised content, media and product recommendations 
  • Advanced customer intelligence (in conjunction with other Adobe products)

  Pros

  • Convenient A/B test design tool 
  • Acucate MVT and MAB results 
  • Powerful segmentation capabilities 
  • Access to extra behavioural analytics 
  • One-click personalisation activation 
  • Supports rules-based, location-based and contextual personalisation
  • Robust omnichannel analytics in conjunction with other Adobe products 

  Cons 

  • Requires an Adobe Marketing Cloud subscription 
  • No free trial or freemium tier 
  • More complex product setup and configuration 
  • Steep learning curve for new users 

  Price : On-demand. 

  Adobe Target is sold as part of Adobe Marketing Cloud. Licence costs vary, based on selected subscriptions and the number of users, but are typically above $10K.

  Google Optimize vs Adobe Target : The Verdict 

  Google Optimize comes with a free tier, unlike Adobe Target. It provides you with a basic builder for A/B and MVT tests, but none of the personalisation tools Adobe has. Because of ease-of-use and low price, other Google Optimize alternatives are better suited for small to medium-sized businesses, doing baseline CRO for funnel optimisation. 

  Adobe Target pulls you into the vast Adobe marketing ecosystem, offering omnipotent customer behaviour analytics, machine-learning-driven website optimisation, dynamic content recommendations, product personalisation and extensive reporting. The app is better suited for larger enterprises with a significant investment in digital marketing.

  Matomo A/B Testing

  

  Matomo A/B Testing is a CRO tool, integrated into Matomo. All Matomo Cloud users get instant access to it, while On-Premise (free) Matomo users can purchase A/B testing as a plugin. 

  With Matomo A/B Testing, you can create multiple variations of a web or mobile page and test them with different segments of their audience. Matomo also doesn’t have any strict experiment caps, unlike Google Optimize. 

  You can split-test multiple creative variants for on-site assets such as buttons, slogans, titles, call-to-actions, image positions and more. You can even benchmark the performance of two (or more !) completely different homepage designs, for instance. 

  With us, you can compliantly and ethically collect historical user data about any visitor, who’s entered any of the active tests — and monitor their entire customer journey. You can also leverage Matomo A/B Testing data as part of multi-touch attribution modelling to determine which channels bring the best leads and which assets drive them towards conversion. 

   

  Since Matomo A/B Testing is part of our analytics platform, it works well with other features such as goal tracking, heatmaps, user session recordings and more. 

  Key features

  • Run experiments for web, mobile, email and digital campaigns 
  • Convenient A/B test design interface 
  • One-click experiment scheduling 
  • Integration with historic visitor profiles
  • Near real-time conversion tracking 
  • Apply segmentation to Matomo reports 
  • Easy creative variation sharing via a URL 

  Pros

  • High data accuracy with no reporting gaps 
  • Monitor the evolution of your success metrics for each variation
  • Embed experiments across multiple digital channels 
  • Set a custom confidence threshold for winning variations 
  • No compromises on user privacy 
  • Free 21-day trial available (for Matomo Cloud) and free 30-day plugin trial (for Matomo On-Premise)

  Cons

  • No on-site personalisation tools available 
  • Configuration requires some coding experience 

  Price : Matomo A/B Testing is included in the monthly Cloud plan (starting at €19 per month). On-Premise users can buy this functionality as a plugin (starting at €199/year). 

  Google Optimize vs Matomo A/B Testing : The Verdict 

  Matomo offers the same types of A/B testing features as Google Optimize (and some extras !), but without any usage caps. Unlike Matomo, Google Optimize doesn’t support A/B tests for mobile apps. You can access some content testing features for Android Apps via Firebase, but this requires another subscription. 

  Matomo lets you run A/B experiments across the web and mobile properties, plus desktop apps, email campaigns and digital ads. Also, Matomo has higher conversion data accuracy, thanks to our privacy-focused method for collecting website analytics. 

  When using Matomo in most EU markets, you’re legally exempt from showing a cookie consent banner. Meaning you can collect richer insights for each experiment and make data-driven decisions. Nearly 40% of global consumers reject cookie consent banners. With most other tools, you won’t be getting the full picture of your traffic. 

  Optimizely 

  

  Optimizely is a conversion optimization platform that offers several competitive products for a separate subscription. These include a flexible content management system (CMS), a content marketing platform, a web A/B testing app, a mobile featuring testing product and two eCommerce-specific website management products.

  The Web Experimentation app allows you to optimise every customer touchpoint by scheduling unlimited split or multi-variant tests and conversions across all your projects from the same app. Apart from websites, this subscription also supports experiments for single-page applications. But if you want more advanced mobile app testing features, you’ll have to purchase another product — Feature Experimentation. 

  Key features :

  • Intuitive experiment design tool 
  • Cross-browser testing and experiment preview 
  • Multi-page funnel tests design 
  • Behavioural and geo-targeting 
  • Exit/bounce rate tracking
  • Custom audience builder for experiments
  • Comprehensive reporting 

  Pros

  • Unlimited number of concurrent experiments 
  • Upload your audience data for test optimisation 
  • Dynamic content personalisation available on a higher tier 
  • Pre-made integrations with popular heatmap and analytics tools 
  • Supports segmentation by device, campaign type, traffic sources or referrer 

  Cons

  • You need a separate subscription for mobile CRO 
  • Free trial not available, pricing on-demand 
  • Multiple licences and subscriptions may be required 
  • Doesn’t support A/B tests for emails 

  Price : Available on-demand. 

  Web Experimentation tool has three subscription tiers — Grow, Accelerate, and Scale with different features included. 

  Google Optimize vs Optimizely : The Verdict 

  Optimizely is a strong contender for Google Optimize alternative as it offers more advanced audience targeting and segmentation options. You can target users by IP address, cookies, traffic sources, device type, browser, language, location or a custom utm_campaign parameter.

  Similar to Matomo A/B testing, Optimizely doesn’t limit the number of projects or concurrent experiments you can do. But you have to immediately sign an annual contract (no monthly plans are available). Pricing also varies based on the number of processed impressions (more experiments = a higher annual bill). An annual licence can cost $63,700 for 10 million impressions on average, according to an independent estimate. 

  Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) 

  

  VWO is another popular experimentation platform, supporting web, mobile and server-side A/B testing and personalisation campaigns.

  Similar to others, VWO offers a drag-and-drop visual editor for creating campaign variants. You don’t need design or coding knowledge to create tests. Once you’re all set, the app will benchmark your experiment performance against expected conversion rates, report on differences in conversion rate and point towards the best-performing creative. 

  Similar to Optimizely, VWO also offers web/mobile app optimisation as a separate subscription. Apart from testing visual page elements, you can also run in-app experiments throughout the product stack to locate new revenue opportunities. For example, you can test in-app subscription flows, search algorithms or navigation flows to improve product UX. 

  Key features :

  • Multivariate and multi-arm bandit tests 
  • Multi-step (funnel) split tests 
  • Collaborative experiment tracking dashboard 
  • Target users by different attributes (URL, device, geo-data) 
  • Personal library of creative elements 
  • Funnel analytics, session records, and heatmaps available 

  Pros

  • Free starter plan is available (similar to Google Optimize)
  • Simple tracking code installation and easy code editor
  • Offers online reporting dashboards and report downloads 
  • Slice-and-dice reports by different audience dimensions
  • No impact on website/app loading speed and performance 

  Cons

  • Multivariate testing is only available on a higher-tier plan 
  • Annual contract required, despite monthly billing 
  • Mobile app A/B split tests require another licence 
  • Requires ongoing user training 

  Price : Free limited plan available. 

  Then from $356/month, billed annually. 

  Google Optimize vs VWO : The Verdict 

  The free plan on VWO is very similar to Google Optimize. You get access to A/B testing and split URL testing features for websites only. The visual editing tool is relatively simple — and you can use URL or device targeting. 

  Free VWO reports, however, lack the advertised depth in terms of behavioural or funnel-based reporting. In-depth insights are available only to premium users. Extra advertised features like heatmaps, form analytics and session recordings require yet another subscription. With Matomo Cloud, you get all three of these together with A/B testing. 

  ConvertFlow 

  

  ConvertFlow markets itself as a funnel optimisation app for eCommerce and SaaS companies. It meshes lead generation tools with some CRO workflows. 

  With ConvertFlow, you can effortlessly design opt-in forms, pop-ups, quizzes and even entire landing pages using pre-made web elements and a visual builder. Afterwards, you can put all of these assets to a “field test” via the ConvertFlow CRO platform. Select among pre-made templates or create custom variants for split or multivariate testing. You can customise tests based on URLs, cookie data and user geolocation among other factors. 

  Similar to Adobe Target, ConvertFlow also allows you to run tests targeted at specific customer segments in your CRM. The app has native integrations with HubSpot and Salesforce, so this feature is easy to enable. ConvertFlow also offers advanced targeting and segmentation options, based on user on-site behaviour, demographics data or known interests.

  Key features :

  • Create and test landing pages, surveys, quizzes, pop-ups, surveys and other lead-gen assets. 
  • All-in-one funnel builder for creating demand-generation campaigns 
  • Campaign personalisation, based on on-site activity 
  • Re-usable dynamic visitor segments for targeting 
  • Multi-step funnel design and customisation 
  • Embedded forms for split testing CTAs on existing pages 

  Pros

  • Allows controlling the traffic split for each variant to get objective results 
  • Pre-made integration with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager 
  • Conversion and funnel reports, available for each variant 
  • Access to a library with 300+ conversion campaign templates
  • Apply progressive visitor profiling to dynamically adjust user experiences 

  Cons

  • Each plan covers only $10K views. Each extra 10k costs another $20/mo 
  • Only one website allowed per account (except for Teams plan) 
  • Doesn’t support experiments in mobile app 
  • Not all CRO features are available on a Pro plan. 

  Price : Access to CRO features costs from $300/month on a Pro plan. Subscription costs also increase, based on the total number of monthly views. 

  Google Optimize vs CovertFlow : The Verdict 

  ConvertFlow is equally convenient to use in conjunction with Google Analytics as Google Optimize is. But the similarities end up here since ConvertFlow combines funnel design features with CRO tools. 

  With ConvertFlow, you can run more advanced experiments and apply more targeting criteria than with Google Optimize. You can observe user behaviour and conversion rates across multi-step CTA forms and page funnels, plus benefit from first-touch attribution reporting without switching apps. 

  Though CovertFlow has a free plan, it doesn’t include access to CRO features. Meaning it’s not a free alternative to Google Optimize.

  Comparison of the Top 5 Google Optimize Alternatives

  Feature	Google Optimize	Adobe Target	Matomo A/B test	Optimizely	VWO	ConvertFlow
  Supported channels	Web	Web, mobile, social media, email	Web, mobile, email, digital campaigns	Websites & mobile apps	Websites, web and mobile apps	Websites and mobile apps
  A/B testing
  Easy GA integration
  Integrations with other web analytics apps
  Audience segmentation	Basic	Advanced	Advanced	Advanced	Advanced	Advanced
  Geo-targeting
  Behavioural targeting	Basic	Advanced	Advanced	Advanced	Advanced	Advanced
  Heatmaps			No extra cost with Matomo Cloud	〰️ *via integrations	〰️ *requires another subscription
  Session recordings			No extra cost with Matomo Cloud		〰️ *requires another subscription
  Multivariate testing (MVT)
  Dynamic personalisation					〰️ *only on higher account tiers	〰️ *only on the highest account tiers
  Product recommendations				〰️ *requires another subscription	〰️ *requires another subscription
  Support	Self-help desk on a free tier	Email, live-chat, phone support	Email, self-help guides and user forum	Knowledge base, online tickets, user community	Self-help guides, email, phone	Knowledge base, email, and live chat support
  Price	Freemium	On-demand	From €19 for Cloud subscription From €199/year as plugin for On-Premise	On-demand	Freemium From $365/mo	From $300/month

  Conclusion 

  Google Optimize has served marketers well for over five years. But as the company decided to move on — so should you. 

  Oher A/B testing tools like Matomo, Optimizely or VWO offer better funnel analytics and split testing capabilities without any usage caps. Also, tools like Adobe Target, Optimizely, and VWO offer advanced content personalisation, based on aggregate analytics. However, they also come with much higher subscription costs.

  Matomo is a robust, compliant and cost-effective alternative to Google Optimize. Our tool allows you to schedule campaigns across all digital mediums (and even desktop apps !) without a

• How to Check Website Traffic As Accurately As Possible

  18 août 2023, par Erin — Analytics Tips

  If you want to learn about the health of your website and the success of your digital marketing initiatives, there are few better ways than checking your website traffic. 

  It’s a great way to get a quick dopamine hit when things are up, but you can also use traffic levels to identify issues, learn more about your users or benchmark your performance. That means you need a reliable and easy way to check your website traffic over time — as well as a way to check out your competitors’ traffic levels, too. 

  In this article, we’ll show you how to do just that. You’ll learn how to check website traffic for both your and your competitor’s sites and discover why some methods of checking website traffic are better than others. 

  Why check website traffic ? 

  Dopamine hits aside, it’s important to constantly monitor your website’s traffic for several reasons.

  

  Benchmark site performance

  Keeping regular tabs on your traffic levels is a great way to track your website’s performance over time. It can help you plan for the future or identify problems. 

  For instance, growing traffic levels may mean expanding your business’s offering or investing in more inventory. On the flip side, decreasing traffic levels may suggest it’s time to revamp your marketing strategies or look into issues impacting your SEO. 

  Analyse user behaviour

  Checking website traffic and user behaviour lets marketing managers understand how users interact with your website. Which pages are they visiting ? Which CTAs do they click on ? What can you do to encourage users to take the actions you want ? You can also identify issues that lead to high bounce rates and other problems. 

  The better you understand user behaviour, the easier it will be to give them what they want. For example, you may find that users spend more time on your landing pages than they do your blog pages. You could use that information to revise how you create blog posts or focus on creating more landing pages. 

  Improve the user experience

  Once you understand how users behave on your website, you can use that information to fix errors, update your content and improve the user experience for the site. 

  You can even personalise the experience for customers, leading to significant growth. Research shows companies that grow faster derive 40% more of their revenue from personalisation. 

  That could come in the form of sweeping personalisations — like rearranging your website’s navigation bar based on user behaviour — or individual personalisation that uses analytics to transform sections or entire pages of your site based on user behaviour. 

  Optimise marketing strategies

  You can use website traffic reports to understand where users are coming from and optimise your marketing plan accordingly. You may want to double down on organic traffic, for instance, or invest more in PPC advertising. Knowing current traffic estimates and how these traffic levels have trended over time can help you benchmark your campaigns and prioritise your efforts. 

  Increasing traffic levels from other countries can also help you identify new marketing opportunities. If you start seeing significant traffic levels from a neighbouring country or a large market, it could be time to take your business international and launch a cross-border campaign. 

  Filter unwanted traffic

  A not-insignificant portion of your site’s traffic may be coming from bots and other unwanted sources. These can compromise the quality of your analytics and make it harder to draw insights. You may not be able to get rid of this traffic, but you can use analytics tools to remove it from your stats. 

  How to check website traffic on Matomo

  If you want to check your website’s traffic, you’d be forgiven for heading to Google Analytics first. It’s the most popular analytics tool on the market, after all. But if you want a more reliable assessment of your website’s traffic, then we recommend using Matomo alongside Google Analytics. 

  The Matomo web analytics platform is an open-source solution that helps you collect accurate data about your website’s traffic and make more informed decisions as a result — all while enhancing the customer experience and ensuring GDPR compliance and user privacy. 

  Matomo also offers multiple ways to check website traffic :

  • Visits log report
  • Real-time visitor map
  • Visits in real-time report

  Let’s look at all of them one by one. 

  The visits log report is a unique rundown of all of the individual visitors to your site. This offers a much more granular view than other tools that just show the total number of visitors for a given period. 

  

  You can access the visits log report by clicking on the reporting menu, then clicking Visitor and Visits Log. From there, you’ll be able to scroll through every user session and see the following information :

  • The location of the user
  • The total number of actions they took
  • The length of time on site
  • How they arrived at your site
  • And the device they used to access your site 

  This may be overwhelming if your site receives thousands of visitors at a time. But it’s a great way to understand users at an individual level and appreciate the lifetime activity of specific users. 

  The Real-time visitor map is a visual display of users’ location for a given timeframe. If you have an international website, it’s a fantastic way to see exactly where in the world your traffic comes from.

  

  You can access the Real-time Visitor Map by clicking Visitor in the main navigation menu and then Real-time Map. The map itself is colour-coded. Larger orange bubbles represent recent visits, and smaller dark orange and grey bubbles represent older visits. The map will refresh every five seconds, and new users appear with a flashing effect. 

  If you run TV or radio adverts, Matomo’s Real-time Map provides an immediate read on the effectiveness of your campaign. If your map lights up in the minutes following your ad, you know it’s been effective. It can also help you identify the source of bot attacks, too. 

  Finally, the Visits in Real-time report provides a snapshot of who is browsing your website. You can access this report under Visitors > Real-time and add it to your custom dashboards as a widget. 

  Open the report, and you’ll see the real-time flow of your site’s users and counters for visits and pageviews over the last 30 minutes and 24 hours. The report refreshes every five seconds with new users added to the top of the report with a fade-in effect.

  

  The report provides a snapshot of each visitor, including :

  • Whether they are new or a returning 
  • Their country
  • Their browser
  • Their operating system
  • The number of actions they took
  • The time they spent on the site
  • The channel they came in from
  • Whether the visitor converted a goal

  3 other ways to check website traffic

  You don’t need to use Matomo to check your website traffic. Here are three other tools you can use instead. 

  How to check website traffic on Google Analytics

  Google Analytics is usually the first starting point for anyone looking to check their website traffic. It’s free to use, incredibly popular and offers a wide range of traffic reports. 

  Google Analytics lets you break down historical traffic data almost any way you wish. You can split traffic by acquisition channel (organic, social media, direct, etc.) by country, device or demographic.

  

  It also provides real-time traffic reports that give you a snapshot of users on your site right now and over the last 30 minutes. 

  

  Google Analytics may be one of the most popular ways to check website traffic, but it could be better. Google Analytics 4 is difficult to use compared to its predecessor, and it also limits the amount of data you can track in accordance with privacy laws. If users refuse your cookie consent, Google Analytics won’t record these visits. In other words, you aren’t getting a complete view of your traffic by using Google Analytics alone. 

  That’s why it’s important to use Google Analytics alongside other web analytics tools (like Matomo) that don’t suffer from the same privacy issues. That way, you can make sure you track every single user who visits your site. 

  How to check website traffic on Google Search Console

  Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that lets you analyse the search traffic that your site gets from Google. 

  The top-line report shows you how many times your website has appeared in Google Search, how many clicks it has received, the average clickthrough rate and the average position of your website in the search results. 

  

  Google Search Console is a great way to understand what you rank for and how much traffic your organic rankings generate. It will also show you which pages are indexed in Google and whether there are any crawling errors. 

  Unfortunately, Google Search Console is limited if you want to get a complete view of your traffic. While you can analyse search traffic in a huge amount of detail, it will not tell you how users who access your website directly or via social media behave. 

  How to check website traffic on Similarweb

  Similarweb is a website analysis tool that estimates the total traffic of any site on the internet. It is one of the best tools for estimating how much traffic your competitors receive. 

  What’s great about Similarweb is that it estimates total traffic, not just traffic from search engines like many SEO tools. It even breaks down traffic by different channels, allowing you to see how your website compares against your competitors. 

  

  As you can see from the image above, Similarweb provides an estimate of total visits, bounce rate, the average number of pages users view per visit and the average duration on the site. The company also has a free browser extension that lets you check website traffic estimates as you browse the web. 

  You can use Similarweb for free to a point. But to really get the most out of this tool, you’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan which starts at $125 per user per month. 

  The price isn’t the only downside of using Similarweb to check the traffic of your own and your competitor’s websites. Ultimately, Similarweb is only an estimate — even if it’s a reasonably accurate one — and it’s no match for a comprehensive analytics tool. 

  7 website traffic metrics to track

  Now that you know how to check your website’s traffic, you can start to analyse it. You can use plenty of metrics to assess the quality of your website traffic, but here are some of the most important metrics to track. 

  • New visitors : These are users who have never visited your website before. They are a great sign that your marketing efforts are working and your site is reaching more people. But it’s also important to track how they behave on the website to ensure your site caters effectively to new visitors. 
  • Returning visitors : Returning visitors are coming back to your site for a reason : either they like the content you’re creating or they want to make a purchase. Both instances are great. The more returning visitors, the better. 
  • Bounce rate : This is a measure of how many users leave your website without taking action. Different analytics tools measure this metric differently.
  • Session duration : This is the length of time users spend on your website, and it can be a great gauge of whether they find your site engaging. Especially when combined with the metric below. 
  • Pages per session : This measures how many different pages users visit on average. The more pages they visit and the longer users spend on your website, the more engaging it is. 
  • Traffic source : Traffic can come from a variety of sources (organic, direct, social media, referral, etc.) Tracking which sources generate the most traffic can help you analyse and prioritise your marketing efforts. 
  • User demographics : This broad metric tells you more about who the users are that visit your website, what device they use, what country they come from, etc. While the bulk of your website traffic will come from the countries you target, an influx of new users from other countries can open the door to new opportunities.

  Why do my traffic reports differ ?

  If you use more than one of the methods above to check your website traffic, you’ll quickly realise that every traffic report differs. In some cases, the reasons are obvious. Any tool that estimates your traffic without adding code to your website is just that : an estimate. Tools like Similarweb will never offer the accuracy of analytics platforms like Matomo and Google Analytics. 

  But what about the differences between these analytics platforms themselves ? While each platform has a different way of recording user behaviour, significant differences in website traffic reports between analytics platforms are usually a result of how each platform handles user privacy. 

  A platform like Google Analytics requires users to accept a cookie consent banner to track them. If they accept, great. Google collects all of the data that any other analytics platform does. It may even collect more. If users reject cookie consent banners, however, then Google Analytics can’t track these visitors at all. They simply won’t show up in your traffic reports. 

  That doesn’t happen with all analytics platforms, however. A privacy-focused alternative like Matomo doesn’t require cookie consent banners (apart from in the United Kingdom and Germany) and can therefore continue to track visitors even after they have rejected a cookie consent screen from Google Analytics. This means that virtually all of your website traffic will be tracked regardless of whether users accept a cookie consent banner or not. And it’s why traffic reports in Matomo are often much higher than they are in Google Analytics.

  

  Given that around half (47.32%) of adults in the European Union refuse to allow the use of personal data tracking for advertising purposes and that 95% of people will reject additional cookies when it is easy to do so, this means you could have vastly different traffic reports — and be missing out on a significant amount of user data. 

  If you’re serious about using web analytics to improve your website and optimise your marketing campaigns, then it is essential to use another analytics platform alongside Google Analytics. 

  Get more accurate traffic reports with Matomo

  There are several methods to check website traffic. Some, like Similarweb, can provide estimates on your competitors’ traffic levels. Others, like Google Analytics, are free. But data doesn’t lie. Only privacy-focused analytics solutions like Matomo can provide accurate reports that account for every visitor. 

  Join over one million organisations using Matomo to accurately check their website traffic. Try it for free alongside GA today. No credit card required.