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• How to make your plugin configurable – Introducing the Piwik Platform

  18 septembre 2014, par Thomas Steur — Development

  This is the next post of our blog series where we introduce the capabilities of the Piwik platform (our previous post was How to add new pages and menu items to Piwik). This time you will learn how to define settings for your plugin. For this tutorial you will need to have basic knowledge of PHP.

  What can I do with settings ?

  The Settings API offers you a simple way to make your plugin configurable within the Admin interface of Piwik without having to deal with HTML, JavaScript, CSS or CSRF tokens. There are many things you can do with settings, for instance let users configure :

  • connection infos to a third party system such as a WordPress installation.
  • select a metric to be displayed in your widget
  • select a refresh interval for your widget
  • which menu items, reports or widgets should be displayed
  • and much more

  Getting started

  In this series of posts, we assume that you have already set up your development environment. If not, visit the Piwik Developer Zone where you’ll find the tutorial Setting up Piwik.

  To summarize the things you have to do to get setup :

  • Install Piwik (for instance via git).
  • Activate the developer mode : ./console development:enable --full.
  • Generate a plugin : ./console generate:plugin --name="MySettingsPlugin". There should now be a folder plugins/MySettingsPlugin.
  • And activate the created plugin under Settings => Plugins.

  Let’s start creating settings

  We start by using the Piwik Console to create a settings template :

  ./console generate:settings

  The command will ask you to enter the name of the plugin the settings should belong to. I will simply use the above chosen plugin name “MySettingsPlugin”. There should now be a file plugins/MySettingsPlugin/Settings.php which contains already some examples to get you started easily. To see the settings in action go to Settings => Plugin settings in your Piwik installation.

  

  Adding one or more settings

  Settings are added in the init() method of the settings class by calling the method addSetting() and passing an instance of a UserSetting or SystemSetting object. How to create a setting is explained in the next chapter.

  Customising a setting

  To create a setting you have to define a name along some options. For instance which input field should be displayed, what type of value you expect, a validator and more. Depending on the input field we might automatically validate the values for you. For example if you define available values for a select field then we make sure to validate and store only a valid value which provides good security out of the box.

  For a list of possible properties have a look at the SystemSetting and UserSetting API reference.

  class Settings extends \Piwik\Plugin\Settings
  
  {
  
      public $refreshInterval;
  
  
  
      protected function init()
  
      {
  
          $this->setIntroduction('Here you can specify the settings for this plugin.');
  
  
  
          $this->createRefreshIntervalSetting();
  
      }
  
  
  
      private function createRefreshIntervalSetting()
  
      {
  
          $this->refreshInterval = new UserSetting('refreshInterval', 'Refresh Interval');
  
          $this->refreshInterval->type = static::TYPE_INT;
  
          $this->refreshInterval->uiControlType = static::CONTROL_TEXT;
  
          $this->refreshInterval->uiControlAttributes = array('size' => 3);
  
          $this->refreshInterval->description = 'How often the value should be updated';
  
          $this->refreshInterval->inlineHelp = 'Enter a number which is >= 15';
  
          $this->refreshInterval->defaultValue = '30';
  
          $this->refreshInterval->validate = function ($value, $setting) {
  
              if ($value < 15) {
  
                  throw new \Exception('Value is invalid');
  
              }
  
          };
  
  
  
          $this->addSetting($this->refreshInterval);
  
      }
  
  }

  In this example you can see some of those properties. Here we create a setting named “refreshInterval” with the display name “Refresh Interval”. We want the setting value to be an integer and the user should enter this value in a text input field having the size 3. There is a description, an inline help and a default value of 30. The validate function makes sure to accept only integers that are at least 15, otherwise an error in the UI will be shown.

  

  You do not always have to specify a PHP type and a uiControlType. For instance if you specify a PHP type boolean we automatically display a checkbox by default. Similarly if you specify to display a checkbox we assume that you want a boolean value.

  Accessing settings values

  You can access the value of a setting in a widget, in a controller, in a report or anywhere you want. To access the value create an instance of your settings class and get the value like this :

  $settings = new Settings();
  
  $interval = $settings->refreshInterval->getValue()

  Type of settings

  The Piwik platform differentiates between UserSetting and SystemSetting. User settings can be configured by any logged in user and each user can configure the setting independently. The Piwik platform makes sure that settings are stored per user and that a user cannot see another users configuration.

  A system setting applies to all of your users. It can be configured only by a user who has super user access. By default, the value can be read only by a super user as well but often you want to have it readable by anyone or at least by logged in users. If you set a setting readable the value will still be only displayed to super users but you will always be able to access the value in the background.

  Imagine you are building a widget that fetches data from a third party system where you need to configure an API URL and token. While no regular user should see the value of both settings, the value should still be readable by any logged in user. Otherwise when logged in users cannot read the setting value then the data cannot be fetched in the background when this user wants to see the content of the widget. Solve this by making the setting readable by the current user :

  $setting->readableByCurrentUser = !Piwik::isUserIsAnonymous();

  Publishing your Plugin on the Marketplace

  In case you want to share your settings or your plugin with other Piwik users you can do this by pushing your plugin to a public GitHub repository and creating a tag. Easy as that. Read more about how to distribute a plugin.

  Advanced features

  Isn’t it easy to create settings for plugins ? We never even created a file ! The Settings API already offers many possibilities but it might not yet be as flexible as your use case requires. So let us know in case you are missing something and we hope to add this feature at some point in the future.
  
  If you have any feedback regarding our APIs or our guides in the Developer Zone feel free to send it to us.

• How to make your plugin configurable – Introducing the Piwik Platform

  18 septembre 2014, par Thomas Steur — Development

  This is the next post of our blog series where we introduce the capabilities of the Piwik platform (our previous post was How to add new pages and menu items to Piwik). This time you will learn how to define settings for your plugin. For this tutorial you will need to have basic knowledge of PHP.

  What can I do with settings ?

  The Settings API offers you a simple way to make your plugin configurable within the Admin interface of Piwik without having to deal with HTML, JavaScript, CSS or CSRF tokens. There are many things you can do with settings, for instance let users configure :

  • connection infos to a third party system such as a WordPress installation.
  • select a metric to be displayed in your widget
  • select a refresh interval for your widget
  • which menu items, reports or widgets should be displayed
  • and much more

  Getting started

  In this series of posts, we assume that you have already set up your development environment. If not, visit the Piwik Developer Zone where you’ll find the tutorial Setting up Piwik.

  To summarize the things you have to do to get setup :

  • Install Piwik (for instance via git).
  • Activate the developer mode : ./console development:enable --full.
  • Generate a plugin : ./console generate:plugin --name="MySettingsPlugin". There should now be a folder plugins/MySettingsPlugin.
  • And activate the created plugin under Settings => Plugins.

  Let’s start creating settings

  We start by using the Piwik Console to create a settings template :

  ./console generate:settings

  The command will ask you to enter the name of the plugin the settings should belong to. I will simply use the above chosen plugin name “MySettingsPlugin”. There should now be a file plugins/MySettingsPlugin/Settings.php which contains already some examples to get you started easily. To see the settings in action go to Settings => Plugin settings in your Piwik installation.

  

  Adding one or more settings

  Settings are added in the init() method of the settings class by calling the method addSetting() and passing an instance of a UserSetting or SystemSetting object. How to create a setting is explained in the next chapter.

  Customising a setting

  To create a setting you have to define a name along some options. For instance which input field should be displayed, what type of value you expect, a validator and more. Depending on the input field we might automatically validate the values for you. For example if you define available values for a select field then we make sure to validate and store only a valid value which provides good security out of the box.

  For a list of possible properties have a look at the SystemSetting and UserSetting API reference.

  class Settings extends \Piwik\Plugin\Settings
  
  {
  
      public $refreshInterval;
  
  
  
      protected function init()
  
      {
  
          $this->setIntroduction('Here you can specify the settings for this plugin.');
  
  
  
          $this->createRefreshIntervalSetting();
  
      }
  
  
  
      private function createRefreshIntervalSetting()
  
      {
  
          $this->refreshInterval = new UserSetting('refreshInterval', 'Refresh Interval');
  
          $this->refreshInterval->type = static::TYPE_INT;
  
          $this->refreshInterval->uiControlType = static::CONTROL_TEXT;
  
          $this->refreshInterval->uiControlAttributes = array('size' => 3);
  
          $this->refreshInterval->description = 'How often the value should be updated';
  
          $this->refreshInterval->inlineHelp = 'Enter a number which is >= 15';
  
          $this->refreshInterval->defaultValue = '30';
  
          $this->refreshInterval->validate = function ($value, $setting) {
  
              if ($value < 15) {
  
                  throw new \Exception('Value is invalid');
  
              }
  
          };
  
  
  
          $this->addSetting($this->refreshInterval);
  
      }
  
  }

  In this example you can see some of those properties. Here we create a setting named “refreshInterval” with the display name “Refresh Interval”. We want the setting value to be an integer and the user should enter this value in a text input field having the size 3. There is a description, an inline help and a default value of 30. The validate function makes sure to accept only integers that are at least 15, otherwise an error in the UI will be shown.

  

  You do not always have to specify a PHP type and a uiControlType. For instance if you specify a PHP type boolean we automatically display a checkbox by default. Similarly if you specify to display a checkbox we assume that you want a boolean value.

  Accessing settings values

  You can access the value of a setting in a widget, in a controller, in a report or anywhere you want. To access the value create an instance of your settings class and get the value like this :

  $settings = new Settings();
  
  $interval = $settings->refreshInterval->getValue()

  Type of settings

  The Piwik platform differentiates between UserSetting and SystemSetting. User settings can be configured by any logged in user and each user can configure the setting independently. The Piwik platform makes sure that settings are stored per user and that a user cannot see another users configuration.

  A system setting applies to all of your users. It can be configured only by a user who has super user access. By default, the value can be read only by a super user as well but often you want to have it readable by anyone or at least by logged in users. If you set a setting readable the value will still be only displayed to super users but you will always be able to access the value in the background.

  Imagine you are building a widget that fetches data from a third party system where you need to configure an API URL and token. While no regular user should see the value of both settings, the value should still be readable by any logged in user. Otherwise when logged in users cannot read the setting value then the data cannot be fetched in the background when this user wants to see the content of the widget. Solve this by making the setting readable by the current user :

  $setting->readableByCurrentUser = !Piwik::isUserIsAnonymous();

  Publishing your Plugin on the Marketplace

  In case you want to share your settings or your plugin with other Piwik users you can do this by pushing your plugin to a public GitHub repository and creating a tag. Easy as that. Read more about how to distribute a plugin.

  Advanced features

  Isn’t it easy to create settings for plugins ? We never even created a file ! The Settings API already offers many possibilities but it might not yet be as flexible as your use case requires. So let us know in case you are missing something and we hope to add this feature at some point in the future.
  
  If you have any feedback regarding our APIs or our guides in the Developer Zone feel free to send it to us.

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

  9 avril 2024, par Erin

  Conversion rate.

  Bounce rate.

  Sessions.

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

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

  Why ?

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

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

  What are website metrics ?

  Your website is your digital headquarters.

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

  16 website metrics to track

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

  1. Pageviews

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

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

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

  

  2. Average time on page

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

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

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

  3. Actions per visit

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

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

  • Outlinks
  • Downloads
  • Page views
  • Internal site searches

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

  4. Bounce rate

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Conversions

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

  Do you want your audience to :

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

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

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

  

  6. Conversion rate

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

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

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

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

  7. Exit rate

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

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

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

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

  

  8. Top pages

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

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

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

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

  9. Traffic sources

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

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

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

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

  10. Form average time spent

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

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

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

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

  11. Play rate

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

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

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

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

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

  Try Matomo for Free

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

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  12. Returning visitors

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

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

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

  13. Device type

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

  • Tablets
  • Mobile phones
  • Desktop computers

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

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

  

  14. Top exit pages

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

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

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

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

  15. Marketing attribution

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

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

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

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

  Try Matomo for Free

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

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  16. Event tracking

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

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

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

  

  Start tracking your website metrics with Matomo today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Try Matomo for Free

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