Advanced search

On other websites (4646)

• How to Choose the Optimal Multi-Touch Attribution Model for Your Organisation

  13 March 2023, by Erin — Analytics Tips

  If you struggle to connect the dots on your customer journeys, you are researching the correct solution. 

  Multi-channel attribution models allow you to better understand the users’ paths to conversion and identify key channels and marketing assets that assist them.

  That said, each attribution model has inherent limitations, which make the selection process even harder.

  This guide explains how to choose the optimal multi-touch attribution model. We cover the pros and cons of popular attribution models, main evaluation criteria and how-to instructions for model implementation. 

  Pros and Cons of Different Attribution Models 

  

  First Interaction 

  First Interaction attribution model (also known as first touch) assigns full credit to the conversion to the first channel, which brought in a lead. However, it doesn’t report other interactions the visitor had before converting.

  Marketers, who are primarily focused on demand generation and user acquisition, find the first touch attribution model useful to evaluate and optimise top-of-the-funnel (ToFU). 

  Pros 

  • Reflects the start of the customer journey
  • Shows channels that bring in the best-qualified leads 
  • Helps track brand awareness campaigns

  Cons 

  • Ignores the impact of later interactions at the middle and bottom of the funnel 
  • Doesn’t provide a full picture of users’ decision-making process 

  Last Interaction 

  Last Interaction attribution model (also known as last touch) shifts the entire credit allocation to the last channel before conversion. But it doesn’t account for the contribution of all other channels. 

  If your focus is conversion optimization, the last-touch model helps you determine which channels, assets or campaigns seal the deal for the prospect. 

  Pros 

  • Reports bottom-of-the-funnel events
  • Requires minimal data and configurations 
  • Helps estimate cost-per-lead or cost-per-acquisition

  Cons 

  • No visibility into assisted conversions and prior visitor interactions 
  • Overemphasise the importance of the last channel (which can often be direct traffic) 

  Last Non-Direct Interaction 

  Last Non-Direct attribution excludes direct traffic from the calculation and assigns the full conversion credit to the preceding channel. For example, a paid ad will receive 100% of credit for conversion if a visitor goes directly to your website to buy a product. 

  Last Non-Direct attribution provides greater clarity into the bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFU). events. Yet, it still under-reports the role other channels played in conversion. 

  Pros 

  • Improved channel visibility, compared to Last-Touch 
  • Avoids over-valuing direct visits
  • Reports on lead-generation efforts

  Cons 

  • Doesn’t work for account-based marketing (ABM) 
  • Devalues the quality over quantity of leads 

  Linear Model

  Linear attribution model assigns equal credit for a conversion to all tracked touchpoints, regardless of their impact on the visitor’s decision to convert.

  It helps you understand the full conversion path. But this model doesn’t distinguish between the importance of lead generation activities versus nurturing touches.

  Pros 

  • Focuses on all touch points associated with a conversion 
  • Reflects more steps in the customer journey 
  • Helps analyse longer sales cycles

  Cons 

  • Doesn’t accurately reflect the varying roles of each touchpoint 
  • Can dilute the credit if too many touchpoints are involved 

  Time Decay Model 

  Time decay models assumes that the closer a touchpoint is to the conversion, the greater its influence. Pre-conversion touchpoints get the highest credit, while the first ones are ranked lower (5%-5%-10%-15%-25%-30%).

  This model better reflects real-life customer journeys. However, it devalues the impact of brand awareness and demand-generation campaigns. 

  Pros 

  • Helps track longer sales cycles and reports on each touchpoint involved 
  • Allows customising the half-life of decay to improve reporting 
  • Promotes conversion optimization at BoFu stages

  Cons 

  • Can prompt marketers to curtail ToFU spending, which would translate to fewer qualified leads at lower stages
  • Doesn’t reflect highly-influential events at earlier stages (e.g., a product demo request or free account registration, which didn’t immediately lead to conversion)

  Position-Based Model 

  Position-Based attribution model (also known as the U-shaped model) allocates the biggest credit to the first and the last interaction (40% each). Then distributes the remaining 20% across other touches. 

  For many marketers, that’s the preferred multi-touch attribution model as it allows optimising both ToFU and BoFU channels. 

  Pros 

  • Helps establish the main channels for lead generation and conversion
  • Adds extra layers of visibility, compared to first- and last-touch attribution models 
  • Promotes budget allocation toward the most strategic touchpoints

  Cons 

  • Diminishes the importance of lead nurturing activities as more credit gets assigned to demand-gen and conversion-generation channels
  • Limited flexibility since it always assigns a fixed amount of credit to the first and last touchpoints, and the remaining credit is divided evenly among the other touchpoints

  How to Choose the Right Multi-Touch Attribution Model For Your Business 

  If you’re deciding which attribution model is best for your business, prepare for a heated discussion. Each one has its trade-offs as it emphasises or devalues the role of different channels and marketing activities.

  To reach a consensus, the best strategy is to evaluate each model against three criteria: Your marketing objectives, sales cycle length and data availability. 

  Marketing Objectives 

  Businesses generate revenue in many ways: Through direct sales, subscriptions, referral fees, licensing agreements, one-off or retainer services. Or any combination of these activities. 

  In each case, your marketing strategy will look different. For example, SaaS and direct-to-consumer (DTC) eCommerce brands have to maximise both demand generation and conversion rates. In contrast, a B2B cybersecurity consulting firm is more interested in attracting qualified leads (as opposed to any type of traffic) and progressively nurturing them towards a big-ticket purchase. 

  When selecting a multi-touch attribution model, prioritise your objectives first. Create a simple scoreboard, where your team ranks various channels and campaign types you rely on to close sales. 

  Alternatively, you can survey your customers to learn how they first heard about your company and what eventually triggered their conversion. Having data from both sides can help you cross-validate your assumptions and eliminate some biases. 

  Then consider which model would best reflect the role and importance of different channels in your sales cycle. Speaking of which….

  Sales Cycle Length 

  As shoppers, we spend less time deciding on a new toothpaste brand versus contemplating a new IT system purchase. Factors like industry, business model (B2C, DTC, B2B, B2BC), and deal size determine the average cycle length in your industry. 

  Statistically, low-ticket B2C sales can happen within just several interactions. The average B2B decision-making process can have over 15 steps, spread over several months. 

  That’s why not all multi-touch attribution models work equally well for each business. Time-decay suits better B2B companies, while B2C usually go for position-based or linear attribution. 

  Data Availability 

  Businesses struggle with multi-touch attribution model implementation due to incomplete analytics data. 

  Our web analytics tool captures more data than Google Analytics. That’s because we rely on a privacy-focused tracking mechanism, which allows you to collect analytics without showing a cookie consent banner in markets outside of Germany and the UK. 

  Cookie consent banners are mandatory with Google Analytics. Yet, almost 40% of global consumers reject it. This results in gaps in your analytics and subsequent inconsistencies in multi-touch attribution reports. With Matomo, you can compliantly collect more data for accurate reporting. 

  Some companies also struggle to connect collected insights to individual shoppers. With Matomo, you can cross-attribute users across browning sessions, using our visitors’ tracking feature. 

  When you already know a user’s identifier (e.g., full name or email address), you can track their on-site behaviours over time to better understand how they interact with your content and complete their purchases. Quick disclaimer, though, visitors’ tracking may not be considered compliant with certain data privacy laws. Please consult with a local authority if you have doubts. 

  How to Implement Multi-Touch Attribution

  Multi-touch attribution modelling implementation is like a “seek and find” game. You have to identify all significant touchpoints in your customers’ journeys. And sometimes also brainstorm new ways to uncover the missing parts. Then figure out the best way to track users’ actions at those stages (aka do conversion and events tracking). 

  Here’s a step-by-step walkthrough to help you get started. 

  Select a Multi-Touch Attribution Tool 

  The global marketing attribution software is worth $3.1 billion. Meaning there are plenty of tools, differing in terms of accuracy, sophistication and price.

  To make the right call prioritise five factors:

  • Available models: Look for a solution that offers multiple options and allows you to experiment with different modelling techniques or develop custom models. 
  • Implementation complexity: Some providers offer advanced data modelling tools for creating custom multi-touch attribution models, but offer few out-of-the-box modelling options. 
  • Accuracy: Check if the shortlisted tool collects the type of data you need. Prioritise providers who are less dependent on third-party cookies and allow you to identify repeat users. 
  • Your marketing stack: Some marketing attribution tools come with useful add-ons such as tag manager, heatmaps, form analytics, user session recordings and A/B testing tools. This means you can collect more data for multi-channel modelling with them instead of investing in extra software. 
  • Compliance: Ensure that the selected multi-attribution analytics software wouldn’t put you at risk of GDPR non-compliance when it comes to user privacy and consent to tracking/analysis. 

  Finally, evaluate the adoption costs. Free multi-channel analytics tools come with data quality and consistency trade-offs. Premium attribution tools may have “hidden” licensing costs and bill you for extra data integrations. 

  Look for a tool that offers a good price-to-value ratio (i.e., one that offers extra perks for a transparent price). 

  Set Up Proper Data Collection 

  Multi-touch attribution requires ample user data. To collect the right type of insights you need to set up: 

  • Website analytics: Ensure that you have all tracking codes installed (and working correctly!) to capture pageviews, on-site actions, referral sources and other data points around what users do on page. 
  • Tags: Add tracking parameters to monitor different referral channels (e.g., “facebook”), campaign types (e.g., ”final-sale”), and creative assets (e.g., “banner-1”). Tags help you get a clearer picture of different touchpoints. 
  • Integrations: To better identify on-site users and track their actions, you can also populate your attribution tool with data from your other tools – CRM system, A/B testing app, etc. 

  Finally, think about the ideal lookback window — a bounded time frame you’ll use to calculate conversions. For example, Matomo has a default windows of 7, 30 or 90 days. But you can configure a custom period to better reflect your average sales cycle. For instance, if you’re selling makeup, a shorter window could yield better results. But if you’re selling CRM software for the manufacturing industry, consider extending it.

  Configure Goals and Events 

  Goals indicate your main marketing objectives — more traffic, conversions and sales. In web analytics tools, you can measure these by tracking specific user behaviours. 

  For example: If your goal is lead generation, you can track:

  • Newsletter sign ups 
  • Product demo requests 
  • Gated content downloads 
  • Free trial account registration 
  • Contact form submission 
  • On-site call bookings 

  In each case, you can set up a unique tag to monitor these types of requests. Then analyse conversion rates — the percentage of users who have successfully completed the action. 

  To collect sufficient data for multi-channel attribution modelling, set up Goal Tracking for different types of touchpoints (MoFU & BoFU) and asset types (contact forms, downloadable assets, etc). 

  Your next task is to figure out how users interact with different on-site assets. That’s when Event Tracking comes in handy. 

  Event Tracking reports notify you about specific actions users take on your website. With Matomo Event Tracking, you can monitor where people click on your website, on which pages they click newsletter subscription links, or when they try to interact with static content elements (e.g., a non-clickable banner). 

  Using in-depth user behavioural reports, you can better understand which assets play a key role in the average customer journey. Using this data, you can localise “leaks” in your sales funnel and fix them to increase conversion rates.

  Test and Validated the Selected Model 

  A common challenge of multi-channel attribution modelling is determining the correct correlation and causality between exposure to touchpoints and purchases. 

  For example, a user who bought a discounted product from a Facebook ad would act differently than someone who purchased a full-priced product via a newsletter link. Their rate of pre- and post-sales exposure will also differ a lot — and your attribution model may not always accurately capture that. 

  That’s why you have to continuously test and tweak the selected model type. The best approach for that is lift analysis. 

  Lift analysis means comparing how your key metrics (e.g., revenue or conversion rates) change among users who were exposed to a certain campaign versus a control group. 

  In the case of multi-touch attribution modelling, you have to monitor how your metrics change after you’ve acted on the model recommendations (e.g., invested more in a well-performing referral channel or tried a new brand awareness Twitter ad). Compare the before and after ROI. If you see a positive dynamic, your model works great. 

  The downside of this approach is that you have to invest a lot upfront. But if your goal is to create a trustworthy attribution model, the best way to validate is to act on its suggestions and then test them against past results. 

  Conclusion

  A multi-touch attribution model helps you measure the impact of different channels, campaign types, and marketing assets on metrics that matter — conversion rate, sales volumes and ROI. 

  Using this data, you can invest budgets into the best-performing channels and confidently experiment with new campaign types. 

  As a Matomo user, you also get to do so without breaching customers’ privacy or compromising on analytics accuracy.

  Start using accurate multi-channel attribution in Matomo. Get your free 21-day trial now. No credit card required.

• 9 Ways to Customise Your Matomo Like a Pro

  5 October 2022, by Erin

  Matomo is a feature-rich web analytics platform. As such, it has many layers of depth — core features, extra plug-ins, custom dimensions, reports, extensions and integrations. 

  Most of the product elements you see can be personalised and customised to your needs with minimal restrictions. However, this breadth of choice can be overlooked by new users. 

  In this post, we explain how to get the most out of Matomo with custom reports, dashboards, dimensions and even app design. 

  How to customise your Matomo web analytics

  To make major changes to Matomo (e.g., create custom dashboards or install new plugins), you’ll have to be a Matomo Super User (a.k.a. The Admin). Super Users can also grant administrator permissions to others so that more people could customise your Matomo deployment. 

  Most feature-related customisations (e.g. configuring a custom report, adding custom goal tracking, etc.) can be done by all users. 

  With the above in mind, here’s how you can tweak Matomo to better serve your website analytics needs: 

  1. Custom dashboards

  

  Dashboards provide a panorama view of all the collected website statistics. We display different categories of stats and KPIs as separate widgets — a standalone module you can also customise. 

  On your dashboard, you can change the type, position and number of widgets on display. This is an easy way to create separate dashboard views for different projects, clients or team members. Rather than a one-size-fits-all dashboard, a custom dashboard designed for a specific role or business unit will increase data-driven decision-making and efficiency across the business.

  You can create a new dashboard view in a few clicks. Then select a preferred layout — a split-page view or multi columns. Next, populate the new dashboard area with preferred widgets showing:

  • SEO website rankings 
  • Visits, conversions and revenue 
  • Custom reports 

  Or code a custom widget area to pull specific website stats or other reporting data you need. Once you are done, arrange everything with our drag-and-drop functionality. 

  

  Popular feature use cases

  • Personalised website statistics layout for convenient viewing 
  • Simplified analytics dashboards for the line of business leaders/stakeholders 
  • Project- or client-specific dashboards for easy report sharing 

  Read more about customising Matomo dashboards and widget areas. 

  2. Custom reports

  

  As the name implies, Custom Reports widget allows you to mesh any of the dimensions and metrics collected by Matomo into a custom website traffic analysis. Custom reports save users time by providing specific data needed in one view so there is no need to jump back and forth between multiple reports or toggle through a report to find data.

  For each custom report, you can select up to three dimensions and then apply additional quantitative measurements (metrics) to drill down into the data.

  For example, if you want to closely observe mobile conversion rates in one market, you can create the following custom report:

  • Dimensions: User Type (registered), Device type (mobile), Location (France)
  • Metrics: Visits, Conversion Rate, Revenue, Avg. Generation Time.

  Custom Report widget is available within Matomo Cloud and as a plugin for Matomo On-Premise.

  &lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;&gt;<br />
       if ('function' === typeof window.playMatomoVideo){<br />
       window.playMatomoVideo(&quot;custom_reports&quot;, &quot;#custom_reports&quot;)<br />
       } else {<br />
       document.addEventListener(&quot;DOMContentLoaded&quot;, function() { window.playMatomoVideo(&quot;custom_reports&quot;, &quot;#custom_reports&quot;); });<br />
       }<br />
  &lt;/script&gt;

  Popular feature use cases

  • Campaign-specific reporting to better understand the impact of different promo strategies 
  • Advanced event tracking for conversion optimization 
  • Market segmentation reports to analyse different audience cohorts 

  Read more about creating and analysing Custom Reports.

  3. Custom widgets

  

  We realise that our users have different degrees of analytics knowledge. Some love in-depth reporting dimensions and multi-row reporting tables. Others just want to see essential stats. 

  To delight both the pros and the novice users, we’ve created widgets — reporting sub-modules you can add, delete or rearrange in a few clicks. Essentially, a widget is a slice of a dashboard area you can populate with extra information. 

  You can add pre-made custom widgets to Matomo or develop your own widget to display custom reports or even external data (e.g., offline sales volume). At the same time, you can also embed Matomo widgets into other applications (e.g., a website CMS or corporate portal).

  Popular feature use cases

  • Display main goals (e.g., new trial sign-ups) on the main dashboard for greater visibility 
  • Highlight cost-per-conversion reporting by combining goals and conversion data to keep your budgets in check 
  • Run omnichannel eCommerce analytics (with embedded offline sales data) to get a 360-degree view into your operations 

  Read more about creating widgets in Matomo (beginner’s guide). 

  4. Custom dimensions 

  

  Dimensions describe the characteristics of reported data. Think of them as “filters” — a means to organise website analytics data by a certain parameter such as “Browser”, “Country”, “Device Type”, “User Type” and many more. 

  Custom Dimensions come in handy for all sorts of segmentation reports. For example, comparing conversion rates between registered and guest users. Or tracking revenue by device type and location. 

  For convenience, we’ve grouped Custom Dimensions in two categories:

  Visit dimensions. These associate metadata about a user with Visitor profiles — a summary of different knowledge you have about your audience. Reports for Visit scoped custom dimensions are available in the Visitors section of your dashboard. 

  Action dimensions. These segment users by specific actions tracked by Matomo such as pageviews, events completion, downloads, form clicks, etc. When configuring Custom Dimensions, you can select among pre-defined action types or code extra action dimensions. Action scoped custom dimensions are available in the Behaviours section of Matomo. 

  Depending on your Matomo version, you can apply 5 – 15 custom dimensions to reports. 

  Important: Since you can’t delete dimensions (only deactivate them), think about your use case first. Custom Dimensions each have their own dedicated reports page on your Matomo dashboard. 

  Popular custom dimension use cases among users:

  • Segmenting reports by users’ screen resolution size to understand how your website performs on different devices
  • Monitor conversion rates for different page types to determine your best-performing assets 

  Read more about creating, tracking and managing Custom Dimensions. 

  5. Custom scheduled reports

  Manually sending reports can be time consuming, especially if you have multiple clients or provide reports to numerous stakeholders. Custom scheduled reports remove this manual process to improve efficiency and ensure timely distribution of data to relevant users.

  Any report in Matomo (default or custom) can be shared with others by email as a PDF file, HTML content or as an attached CSV document. 

  You can customise which data you want to send to different people — your colleagues, upper management, clients or other company divisions. Then set up the frequency of email dispatches and Matomo will do the rest. 

  Auto-scheduling an email report is easy. Name your report, select a Segment (aka custom or standard report), pick time, file format and sender. 

  

  You can also share links to Matomo reports as text messages, if you are using ASPSMS or Clockwork SMS. 

  Popular feature use cases

  • Convenient stakeholder reporting on key website KPIs 
  • Automated client updates to keep clients informed and reduce workload 
  • Easy data downloads for doing custom analysis with business intelligence tools 

  Read more about email reporting features in Matomo. 

  6. Custom alerts

  

  Custom Alerts is a Matomo plugin for keeping you updated on the most important analytics events. Unlike Custom Reports, which provide a complete or segmented analytics snapshot, alerts are better suited for tracking individual events. For example, significant traffic increases from a specific channel, new 404 pages or major goal achievement (e.g., hitting 1,000 sales in a week). 

  Custom Alerts are a convenient way to keep your finger on the pulse of your site so you can quickly remedy an issue or get updated on reaching a crucial KPI promptly. You can receive custom alerts via email or text message in a matter of minutes.

  To avoid flooding your inbox with alerts, we recommend reserving Custom Alerts for a select few use cases (3 to 5) and schedule custom Email Reports to receive general web page analytics. 

  Popular custom alerts use cases among users:

  • Monitor sudden drops in revenue to investigate the cause behind them and solve any issues promptly 
  • Get notified of traffic spikes or sudden dips to better manage your website’s technical performance 

  Read more about creating and managing Custom Alerts. 

  7. Goals

  

  Goals feature helps you better understand how your website performs on certain business objectives such as lead generation, online sales or content discovery. A goal is a quantifiable action you want to measure (e.g., a specific page visit, form submission or a file download). 

  When combined together, Goals make up your sales funnel — a series of specific actions you expect users to complete in order to convert. 

  Goals-setting and Funnel Analytics are a powerful, customisable combo for understanding how people navigate your website; what makes them take action or, on the contrary, lose interest and bounce off. 

  On Matomo, you can simultaneously track multiple goals, monitor multiple conversions per one visit (e.g., when one user requests two content downloads) and assign revenue targets to specific goals.

  &lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;&gt;<br />
       if ('function' === typeof window.playMatomoVideo){<br />
       window.playMatomoVideo(&quot;goals&quot;, &quot;#goals&quot;)<br />
       } else {<br />
       document.addEventListener(&quot;DOMContentLoaded&quot;, function() { window.playMatomoVideo(&quot;goals&quot;, &quot;#goals&quot;); });<br />
       }<br />
  &lt;/script&gt;

  Separately, Matomo Cloud users also get access to a premium Funnels feature and Multi Channel Conversion Attribution. On-Premises Matomo users can get both as paid plugins via our Marketplace.

  Popular goal tracking use cases among users:

  • Tracking newsletter subscription to maximise subscriber growth 
  • Conversion tracking for gated content (e.g., eBooks) to understand how each asset performs 
  • Analysing the volume of job applications per post to better interpret your HR marketing performance 

  Read more about creating and managing Goals in Matomo.

  8. Themes

  

  Want to give your Matomo app a distinctive visual flair? Pick a new free theme for your On-Premises installation. Minimalistic, dark or classic — our community created six different looks that other Matomo users can download and install in a few clicks. 

  If you have some HTML/CSS/JS knowledge, you can also design your own Matomo theme. Since Matomo is an open-source project, we don’t restrict interface customisation and always welcome creativity from our users.

  Read more about designing your own Matomo theme (developer documentation).

  9. White labelling

  

  Matomo is one of the few website analytics tools to support white labelling. White labelling means that you can distribute our product to others under your brand. 

  For example, as a web design agency, you can delight customers with pre-installed GDPR-friendly website analytics. Marketing services providers, in turn, can present their clients with embedded reporting widgets, robust funnel analytics and 100% unsampled data. 

  Apart from selecting a custom theme, you can also align Matomo with your brand by:

  • Customising product name
  • Using custom header/font colours 
  • Change your tracking endpoint
  • Remove links to Matomo.org

  To streamline Matomo customisation and set-up, we developed a White Label plug-in. It provides a convenient set of controls for changing your Matomo deployment and distributing access rights to other users or sharing embedded Matomo widgets). 

  Read more about white labelling Matomo. 

  Learning more about Matomo 

  Matomo has an ever-growing list of features, ranging from standard website tracking controls to unique conversion rate optimisation tools (heatmaps, media analytics, user cohorts and more).

  To learn more about Matomo features you can check our free video web analytics training series where we cover the basics. For feature-specific tips, tricks and configurations, browse our video content or written guides. 

  21 day free trial. No credit card required.