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• Safari sends excessive HTTP range requests during HTML5 MOV playback

  28 mai, par Lucy

  I am currently developing a web application based on React and Next.js, and I use the react-player library to play user-uploaded videos stored on AWS S3. The supported upload video formats are mp4, mov, and mkv, with codecs including H.264 or H.265 (HEVC).

  


  Problem

  


  However, some H.264 videos in the mov format exhibit noticeably poor playback performance only in the Safari browser. The videos do not play smoothly and frequently experience stuttering or delays.

  


  How Safari Handles Range Requests (As I Understand It) :

  


  

  1. Safari first sends a normal GET request to check if the server supports Range requests. If the server responds with the header Accept-Ranges : bytes, Safari closes the connection.

  


  2. Then, Safari sends a very small range request like Range : bytes=0-1 to confirm it receives a 206 Partial Content response.

  


  3. Next, Safari requests some parts from the beginning and the end of the file to locate metadata such as the moov atom in MP4 files.

  


  4. After that, actual streaming begins, but Safari does not request the entire file at once ; instead, it divides the needed parts into multiple small Range requests.

  


  


  Example of Actual Problematic Requests

  


  Below are some of the Range requests Safari makes for the problematic .mov video (H.264 codec) :

  


  # Request - 1
Connection: keep-alive
Range: bytes=0-1

# Response
HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Disposition: attachment;filename*=utf-8''test.mov
Content-Length: 2
Content-Range: bytes 0-1/102801747
Content-Type: video/quicktime

-------------------------------------
# Request - 2
Connection: Keep-Alive
Range: bytes=0-102801746

# Response
HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Disposition: attachment;filename*=utf-8''test.mov
Content-Length: 102801747
Content-Range: bytes 0-102801746/102801747
Content-Type: video/quicktime

-------------------------------------
# Request - 3
Connection: Keep-Alive
Range: bytes=102760448-102801746

# Response - 3
HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Disposition: attachment;filename*=utf-8''test.mov
Content-Length: 41299
Content-Range: bytes 102760448-102801746/102801747
Content-Type: video/quicktime

-------------------------------------
# Request - 4
Connection: keep-alive
Range: bytes=3014656-3080191 # 64KB

# Response - 4
HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Disposition: attachment;filename*=utf-8''IMG_7929.mov
Content-Length: 65536
Content-Range: bytes 3014656-3080191/102801747
Content-Type: video/quicktime


  


  Safari continues to send hundreds of similar small Range requests repeatedly, gradually downloading the file.

  


  This causes increased network load, which ultimately leads to video stuttering or playback delays.

  


  Example of another .mov file that works properly :

  


  In contrast, another .mov video using the same format and codec (H.264) sends Range requests over much larger byte ranges, downloading about 30MB of data at once. In this case, the video plays smoothly.

  


  # Request 
Connection: Keep-Alive
Range: bytes=1310534-673918954 # Request : 672MB, Actual Downloaded : 32MB

# Response
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Disposition: attachment;filename*=utf-8''mov-example-video-download-4k-uhd-3840x2160.mov
Content-Length: 672608421
Content-Range: bytes 1310534-673918954/673918955
Content-Type: video/quicktime


  


  Question

  


  In Safari, for certain video files, the browser repeatedly closes the connection after receiving only a few kilobytes per request and immediately sends the next request. As a result, dozens or even hundreds of small range requests occur consecutively. This causes increased connection overhead and latency, and although the web server can deliver data at sufficient speed, the player does not receive data in time, leading to poor and stuttering video playback.

  


  

  1. What could be the reason Safari repeatedly makes these very small requests for certain files ?

  


  2. Could the internal structure of the video file (such as the moov atom) influence this request pattern ?

  


  


  f you have any similar experience or advice, please share.

  


  What I'ved tried

  


  

  • Using ffmpeg to move the moov atom to the beginning of the file with -movflags faststart does not resolve the issue — the same problem persists.

  


  • Converting the exact same video to MP4 format and testing it results in normal playback without issues.

  


  


  Test Environment

  


  

  • Macbook pro 16

  


  • mac OS - Sequoia 15.5

  


  • Safari - Latest

  


  


  File information

  


  Due to company policy, I am unable to share the problematic video files directly. However, I am attaching the file information obtained via ffprobe for your reference.

  


  ffprobe -v error -show_format -show_streams -print_format json test.mov

{
    "streams": [
        {
            "index": 0,
            "codec_name": "h264",
            "codec_long_name": "H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10",
            "profile": "High",
            "codec_type": "video",
            "codec_tag_string": "avc1",
            "codec_tag": "0x31637661",
            "width": 3840,
            "height": 2160,
            "coded_width": 3840,
            "coded_height": 2160,
            "closed_captions": 0,
            "film_grain": 0,
            "has_b_frames": 0,
            "pix_fmt": "yuv420p",
            "level": 51,
            "color_range": "tv",
            "color_space": "bt709",
            "color_transfer": "bt709",
            "color_primaries": "bt709",
            "chroma_location": "left",
            "field_order": "progressive",
            "refs": 1,
            "is_avc": "true",
            "nal_length_size": "4",
            "id": "0x1",
            "r_frame_rate": "30000/1001",
            "avg_frame_rate": "18200/607",
            "time_base": "1/600",
            "start_pts": 0,
            "start_time": "0.000000",
            "duration_ts": 10925,
            "duration": "18.208333",
            "bit_rate": "44900923",
            "bits_per_raw_sample": "8",
            "nb_frames": "546",
            "extradata_size": 158,
            "disposition": {
                "default": 1,
                "dub": 0,
                "original": 0,
                "comment": 0,
                "lyrics": 0,
                "karaoke": 0,
                "forced": 0,
                "hearing_impaired": 0,
                "visual_impaired": 0,
                "clean_effects": 0,
                "attached_pic": 0,
                "timed_thumbnails": 0,
                "non_diegetic": 0,
                "captions": 0,
                "descriptions": 0,
                "metadata": 0,
                "dependent": 0,
                "still_image": 0,
                "multilayer": 0
            },
            "tags": {
                "creation_time": "",
                "language": "und",
                "handler_name": "Core Media Video",
                "vendor_id": "[0][0][0][0]",
                "encoder": "H.264"
            }
        },
        {
            "index": 1,
            "codec_name": "aac",
            "codec_long_name": "AAC (Advanced Audio Coding)",
            "profile": "LC",
            "codec_type": "audio",
            "codec_tag_string": "mp4a",
            "codec_tag": "0x6134706d",
            "sample_fmt": "fltp",
            "sample_rate": "44100",
            "channels": 2,
            "channel_layout": "stereo",
            "bits_per_sample": 0,
            "initial_padding": 0,
            "id": "0x2",
            "r_frame_rate": "0/0",
            "avg_frame_rate": "0/0",
            "time_base": "1/44100",
            "start_pts": 0,
            "start_time": "0.000000",
            "duration_ts": 802988,
            "duration": "18.208345",
            "bit_rate": "187218",
            "nb_frames": "787",
            "extradata_size": 2,
            "disposition": {
                "default": 1,
                "dub": 0,
                "original": 0,
                "comment": 0,
                "lyrics": 0,
                "karaoke": 0,
                "forced": 0,
                "hearing_impaired": 0,
                "visual_impaired": 0,
                "clean_effects": 0,
                "attached_pic": 0,
                "timed_thumbnails": 0,
                "non_diegetic": 0,
                "captions": 0,
                "descriptions": 0,
                "metadata": 0,
                "dependent": 0,
                "still_image": 0,
                "multilayer": 0
            },
            "tags": {
                "creation_time": "",
                "language": "und",
                "handler_name": "Core Media Audio",
                "vendor_id": "[0][0][0][0]"
            }
        },
        {
            "index": 2,
            "codec_type": "data",
            "codec_tag_string": "mebx",
            "codec_tag": "0x7862656d",
            "id": "0x3",
            "r_frame_rate": "0/0",
            "avg_frame_rate": "0/0",
            "time_base": "1/600",
            "start_pts": 0,
            "start_time": "0.000000",
            "duration_ts": 10925,
            "duration": "18.208333",
            "bit_rate": "4",
            "nb_frames": "1",
            "disposition": {
                "default": 1,
                "dub": 0,
                "original": 0,
                "comment": 0,
                "lyrics": 0,
                "karaoke": 0,
                "forced": 0,
                "hearing_impaired": 0,
                "visual_impaired": 0,
                "clean_effects": 0,
                "attached_pic": 0,
                "timed_thumbnails": 0,
                "non_diegetic": 0,
                "captions": 0,
                "descriptions": 0,
                "metadata": 0,
                "dependent": 0,
                "still_image": 0,
                "multilayer": 0
            },
            "tags": {
                "creation_time": "",
                "language": "und",
                "handler_name": "Core Media Metadata"
            }
        },
        {
            "index": 3,
            "codec_type": "data",
            "codec_tag_string": "mebx",
            "codec_tag": "0x7862656d",
            "id": "0x4",
            "r_frame_rate": "0/0",
            "avg_frame_rate": "0/0",
            "time_base": "1/600",
            "start_pts": 0,
            "start_time": "0.000000",
            "duration_ts": 10925,
            "duration": "18.208333",
            "bit_rate": "6756",
            "nb_frames": "80",
            "disposition": {
                "default": 1,
                "dub": 0,
                "original": 0,
                "comment": 0,
                "lyrics": 0,
                "karaoke": 0,
                "forced": 0,
                "hearing_impaired": 0,
                "visual_impaired": 0,
                "clean_effects": 0,
                "attached_pic": 0,
                "timed_thumbnails": 0,
                "non_diegetic": 0,
                "captions": 0,
                "descriptions": 0,
                "metadata": 0,
                "dependent": 0,
                "still_image": 0,
                "multilayer": 0
            },
            "tags": {
                "creation_time": "",
                "language": "und",
                "handler_name": "Core Media Metadata"
            }
        },
        {
            "index": 4,
            "codec_type": "data",
            "codec_tag_string": "mebx",
            "codec_tag": "0x7862656d",
            "id": "0x5",
            "r_frame_rate": "0/0",
            "avg_frame_rate": "0/0",
            "time_base": "1/600",
            "start_pts": 0,
            "start_time": "0.000000",
            "duration_ts": 10925,
            "duration": "18.208333",
            "bit_rate": "50764",
            "nb_frames": "546",
            "disposition": {
                "default": 1,
                "dub": 0,
                "original": 0,
                "comment": 0,
                "lyrics": 0,
                "karaoke": 0,
                "forced": 0,
                "hearing_impaired": 0,
                "visual_impaired": 0,
                "clean_effects": 0,
                "attached_pic": 0,
                "timed_thumbnails": 0,
                "non_diegetic": 0,
                "captions": 0,
                "descriptions": 0,
                "metadata": 0,
                "dependent": 0,
                "still_image": 0,
                "multilayer": 0
            },
            "tags": {
                "creation_time": "",
                "language": "und",
                "handler_name": "Core Media Metadata"
            }
        },
        {
            "index": 5,
            "codec_type": "data",
            "codec_tag_string": "mebx",
            "codec_tag": "0x7862656d",
            "id": "0x6",
            "r_frame_rate": "0/0",
            "avg_frame_rate": "0/0",
            "time_base": "1/600",
            "start_pts": 0,
            "start_time": "0.000000",
            "duration_ts": 10925,
            "duration": "18.208333",
            "bit_rate": "19",
            "nb_frames": "1",
            "disposition": {
                "default": 1,
                "dub": 0,
                "original": 0,
                "comment": 0,
                "lyrics": 0,
                "karaoke": 0,
                "forced": 0,
                "hearing_impaired": 0,
                "visual_impaired": 0,
                "clean_effects": 0,
                "attached_pic": 0,
                "timed_thumbnails": 0,
                "non_diegetic": 0,
                "captions": 0,
                "descriptions": 0,
                "metadata": 0,
                "dependent": 0,
                "still_image": 0,
                "multilayer": 0
            },
            "tags": {
                "creation_time": "",
                "language": "und",
                "handler_name": "Core Media Metadata"
            }
        }
    ],
    "format": {
        "filename": "test.mov",
        "nb_streams": 6,
        "nb_programs": 0,
        "nb_stream_groups": 0,
        "format_name": "mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2",
        "format_long_name": "QuickTime / MOV",
        "start_time": "0.000000",
        "duration": "18.208345",
        "size": "102801747",
        "bit_rate": "45166871",
        "probe_score": 100,
        "tags": {
            "major_brand": "qt  ",
            "minor_version": "0",
            "compatible_brands": "qt  ",
            "creation_time": "",
            "com.apple.quicktime.location.accuracy.horizontal": "76.200233",
            "com.apple.quicktime.full-frame-rate-playback-intent": "0",
            "com.apple.quicktime.location.ISO6709": "",
            "com.apple.quicktime.make": "Apple",
            "com.apple.quicktime.model": "iPhone 15 Pro",
            "com.apple.quicktime.software": "18.4.1",
            "com.apple.quicktime.creationdate": ""
        }
    }
}


  


• How to Track Website Visitors : Benefits, Tools and FAQs

  31 août 2023, par Erin — Analytics Tips, Marketing

  Businesses spend a ton of time, money and effort into creating websites that are not only helpful and captivating, but also highly effective at converting visitors. They’ll create content, revise designs, add new pages and change forms, all in the hope of getting visitors to stay on the site and convert into leads or customers.

  When you track website visitors, you can see which of your efforts are moving the needle. While many people are familiar with pageviews as a metric, website visitor tracking can be much more in-depth and insightful.

  In this article, we’ll cover how website visitor tracking works, what you can track, and how this information can improve sales and marketing results. We’ll also explain global privacy concerns and how businesses can choose the right tracking software. 

  What is website visitor tracking ? 

  Website visitor tracking uses software and applications to track and analyse how visitors interact with your website. It’s a vital tool to help businesses understand whether their website design and content are having the desired effect.

  

  Website visitor tracking includes very broad, non-specific data, like how many times visitors have come to your site. But it can also get very specific, with personal information about the user and even recordings of their visit to your site. Site visits, which may include visiting several different pages of the same site, are often referred to as “sessions.”

  Although Google Analytics is the most widely used website visitor tracking software, it isn’t the most comprehensive or powerful. Companies that want a more in-depth understanding of their website may need to consider running a more precise tool alongside Google Analytics, like Matomo.

  As we’ll cover later, website tracking has many important business applications, but it also poses privacy and security concerns, causing some states and countries to impose strict regulations. Privacy laws and your company’s values should also impact what web analytics tool you choose.

  How website tracking works

  Website tracking starts with the collection of data as users interact with the website. Tracking technologies like cookies, JavaScript and pixels are embedded into web pages. These technologies then gather data about user behaviour, session details and user actions, such as pageviews, clicks, form submissions and more.

  More advanced tracking systems assign unique identifiers (such as cookies or visitor IDs) to individual users. This enables tracking of user journeys across multiple sessions and pages. These detailed journeys can often tell a different story and provide different insights than aggregated numbers do. 

  All this collected data is transmitted from the user’s browser to a centralised tracking system, which can be a third-party web analytics tool or a self-hosted solution. The collected data is stored in databases and processed to generate meaningful insights. This process involves organising the data, aggregating metrics, and creating reports.

  Analytics tools process the collected data to generate reports and visualisations that provide insights into user behaviour. Metrics such as pageviews, bounce rates, conversion rates and user paths are analysed. Good web analytics tools are able to present these insights in a user-friendly way. Analysts and marketing professionals then use this knowledge to make informed decisions to improve the user experience (UX).

  Advanced tracking systems allow data segmentation and filtering based on various criteria, such as user demographics, traffic sources, devices and more. This enables deeper analysis of specific user groups. For example, you might find that your conversion rate is much lower when your website is viewed on a mobile device. You can then dig deeper into that segment of data to find out why and experiment with changes that might increase mobile conversions.

  3 types of website tracking and their benefits

  There are three main categories of website tracking, and they each provide different information that can be used by sales, marketing, engineering and others. Here, we cover those three types and how businesses use them to understand customers and create better experiences.

  Website analytics 

  Website analytics is all about understanding the traffic your website receives. This type of tracking allows you to learn how the website performs based on pageviews, real-time traffic, bounce rate and conversions. 

  For example, you would use website analytics to determine how effectively your homepage drives people toward a product or pricing page. You can use pageviews and previous page statistics to learn how many people who land on your homepage read your blog posts. From there, you could use web analytics to determine the conversion rate of the call to action at the end of each article.

  

  User behaviour

  While website analytics focuses on the website’s performance, user behaviour tracking is about monitoring and quantifying user behaviour. One of the most obvious aspects of user behaviour is what they click on, but there are many other actions you can track. 

  The time a user spends on a page can help you determine whether the content on the page is engaging. Some tracking tools can also measure how far down the page a user scrolls, which reveals whether some content is even being seen. 

  Session recordings are another popular tool for analysing user behaviour. They not only show concrete actions, like clicks, but can also show how the user moves throughout the page. Where do they stop ? What do they scroll right past ? This is one example of how user behaviour data can be quantitative or qualitative.

  Visitor information

  Tracking can also include gathering or uncovering information about visitors to your site. This might include demographic information, such as language and location, or details like what device a website visitor is using and on which browser they view your website. 

  This type of data helps your web and marketing teams make better decisions about how to design and format the site. If you know, for example, that the website for your business-to-business (B2B) software is overwhelmingly viewed on desktop computers, that will affect how you structure your pages and choose images. 

  Similarly, if visitor information tells you that you have a significant audience in France, your marketing team might develop new content to appeal to those potential customers.

  Use website visitor tracking to improve marketing, sales and UX 

  Website visitor tracking has various applications for different parts of your business, from marketing to sales and much more. When you understand the impact tracking has on different teams, you can better evaluate your company’s needs and build buy-in among stakeholders.

  Marketing

  At many companies, the marketing team owns and determines what kind of content is on your website. From landing pages to blog posts to the navigation bar, you want to create an experience that drives people toward making a purchase. When marketers can track website visitors, they can get a real look at how visitors respond to and engage with their marketing efforts. Pageviews, conversion rates and time spent on pages help them better understand what your customers care about and what messaging resonates.

  But web analytics can even help marketing teams better understand how their external marketing campaigns are performing. Tracking tools like Matomo reveal your most important traffic sources. The term “traffic source” refers to the content or web property from which someone arrives at your site. 

  For instance, you might notice that an older page got a big boost in traffic this month. You can then check the traffic sources, where you find that an influential LinkedIn user posted a link to the page. This presents an opportunity to adjust the influencer or social media aspects of your marketing strategy.

  

  Beyond traffic sources, Matomo can provide a visual user journey (also known as User Flow), showing which pages visitors tend to view in a session and even in what order they progress. This gives you a bird’s-eye view of the customer journey.

  Sales

  Just like your marketing team, your sales team can benefit from tracking and analysing website visitor information. Data about user behaviour and visitor demographics helps sales representatives better understand the people they’re talking to. Segmented visitor tracking data can even provide clues as to how to appeal to different buyer personas.

  Sales leadership can use web analytics to gauge interest over time, tie visitors to revenue and develop more accurate sales forecasts and goals. 

  

  And it’s not just aggregated website tracking data that your sales team can use to better serve customers. They can also use insights about an individual visitor to tailor their approach. Matomo’s Visits Log report and Visitor Profiles allow you to see which pages a prospect has viewed. This tells your sales team which products and features the prospect is most interested in, leading to more relevant interactions and more effective sales efforts.

  User experience and web development

  The way users interact with and experience your website has a big impact on their impression of your brand and, ultimately, whether they become customers. While marketing often controls much of a website’s content, the backend and technical operation of the site usually falls to a web development or engineering team. Website analytics and tracking inform their work, too.

  Along with data about website traffic and conversion rates, web development teams often monitor bounce rates (the percentage of people who leave your website entirely after landing on a page) and page load time (the time it takes for an individual web page to load for a user). Besides the fact that slow loading times inconvenience visitors, they can also negatively affect your search engine optimization (SEO).

  

  Along with session recordings, user experience teams and web developers may use heatmaps to find out what parts of a page draw a visitor’s attention and where they are most likely to convert or take some other action. They can then use these insights to make a web page more intuitive and useful.

  Visitor tracking and privacy regulations 

  There are different data privacy standards in other parts of the world, which are designed to ensure that businesses collect and use consumer data ethically. The most-discussed of these privacy standards is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was instituted by the European Union (EU) but affects businesses worldwide. However, it’s important to note that individual countries or states can have different privacy laws.

  Many privacy laws govern how websites can use cookies to track visitors. With a user’s consent, cookies can help websites identify and remember visitors. However, many web visitors will reject cookie consent banners. When this happens, analysts and marketers can’t collect information from these visitors and have to work with incomplete tracking data. Incomplete data leads to poor decision-making. What’s more, cookie consent banners can create a poor user experience and often annoy web visitors.

  With Matomo’s industry-leading measures to protect user privacy, France’s data protection agency (CNIL) has confirmed that Matomo is exempt from tracking consent in France. Matomo users have peace of mind knowing they can uphold the GDPR and collect data without needing to collect and track cookie consent. Only in Germany and the UK are cookie consent banners still required.

  Choosing user tracking software

  The benefits and value of tracking website visitors are enormous, but not all tracking software is equal. Different tools have different core functionalities. For instance, some focus on user behaviour over traditional web analytics. Others offer detailed website performance data but offer little in the way of visitor information. It’s a good idea to start by identifying your company’s most important tracking goals.

  Along with core features, look for useful tools to experiment with and optimise your website with. For example, Matomo enables A/B testing while many other tools do not.

  

  Along with users of your website, you also need to think about the employees who will be using the tracking software. The interface can have a big impact on the value you get from a tool. Matomo’s session recording functionality, for example, not only provides you with video but with a colour-coded timeline identifying important user actions.

  

  Privacy standards and compliance should also be a part of the conversation. Different tools use different tracking methods, impacting accuracy and security and can even cause legal trouble. You should consider which data privacy laws you are subject to, as well as the privacy expectations of your users.

  

  Some industries have especially high data security standards. Government and healthcare organisations, for example, may require visitor tracking software that is hosted on their premises. While there are many purely cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) tracking tools, Matomo is available both On-Premise (also known as self-hosted) and in the Cloud.

  Frequently asked questions

  Here are answers to some of people’s most common questions about tracking website visitors.

  Can you track who visited your website ?

  In most cases, tracking your website’s traffic is possible. Still, the extent of the tracking depends on the visitor-tracking technology you use and the privacy settings and precautions the visitor uses. For example, some technologies can pinpoint users by IP address. In other cases, you may only have access to anonymized data.

  Is it legal to track someone’s IP address ?

  It is legal for websites and businesses to track someone’s IP address in the sense that they can identify that someone from the same IP address is visiting a page repeatedly. Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), IP addresses are considered personally identifiable information (PII). The GDPR mandates that websites only log and store a user’s IP address with the user’s consent.

  How do you find where visitors are clicking the most ?

  Heatmap tools are among the most common tools for learning where visitors click the most on your website. Heatmaps use colour-coding to show what parts of a web page users either click on or hover over the most.

  Unique tracking URLs are another way to determine what part of your website gets the most clicks. For example, if you have three links on a page that all go to the same destination, you can use tracking links to determine how many clicks each link generates.

  Matomo also offers a Tag Manager within the platform that lets you manage and unify all your tracking and marketing tags to find out where visitors are clicking.

  What is the best tool for website visitor tracking ?

  Like most tools, the best website visitor tracking tool depends on your needs. Each tool offers different functionalities, user interfaces and different levels of accuracy and privacy. Matomo is a good choice for companies that value privacy, compliance and accuracy.

  Tracking for powerful insights and better performance

  Tracking website visitors is now a well-ingrained part of business operations. From sales reps seeking to understand their leads to marketers honing their ad spend, tracking helps teams do their jobs better.

  Take the time to consider what you want to learn from website tracking and let those priorities guide your choice of visitor tracking software. Whatever your industry or needs, user privacy and compliance must be a priority.

  Find out how much detail and insight Matomo can give you with our free 21-day trial — no credit card required.

• Marketing Touchpoints : Examples, KPIs, and Best Practices

  11 mars 2024, par Erin

  The customer journey is rarely straightforward. Rather, each stage comprises numerous points of contact with your brand, known as marketing touchpoints. And each touchpoint is equally important to the customer experience. 

  This article will explore marketing touchpoints in detail, including how to analyse them with attribution models and which KPIs to track. It will also share tips on incorporating these touchpoints into your marketing strategy. 

  What are marketing touchpoints ? 

  Marketing touchpoints are the interactions that take place between brands and customers throughout the latter’s journey, either online or in person. 

  

  By understanding how customers interact with your brand before, during and after a purchase, you can identify the channels that contribute to starting, driving and closing buyer journeys. Not only that, but you’ll also learn how to optimise the customer experience. This can also help you : 

  • Promote customer loyalty through increased customer satisfaction
  • Improve your brand reputation and foster a more positive perception of your brand, supported by social proof 
  • Build brand awareness among prospective customers 
  • Reconnect with current customers to drive repeat business

  According to a 2023 survey, social media and video-sharing platforms are the leading digital touchpoints among US consumers.

  

  With the customer journey divided into three stages — awareness, consideration, and decision — we can group these interactions into three touchpoint segments, depending on whether they occur before, during or after a purchase. 

  Touchpoints before a purchase

  Touchpoints before a purchase are those initial interactions between potential customers and brands that occur during the awareness stage — before they’ve made a purchase decision. 

  Here are some key touchpoints at the pre-purchase stage : 

  • Customer reviews, forums, and testimonials 
  • Social media posts
  • Online ads 
  • Company events and product demos
  • Other digital touchpoints, like video content, blog posts, or infographics
  • Peer referral 

  In PwC’s 2024 Global Consumer Insights Pulse Survey, 54% of consumers listed search engines as their primary source of pre-purchase information, followed by Amazon (35%) and retailer websites (33%). 

  Here are the survey’s findings in Western Europe, specifically : 

  

  Social channels are another major pre-purchase touchpoint ; 25% of social media users aged 18 to 44 have made a purchase through a social media app over the past three months. 

  Touchpoints during a purchase

  Touchpoints during a purchase occur when the prospective customer has made their purchase decision. It’s the beginning of a (hopefully) lasting relationship with them. 

  It’s important to involve both marketing and sales teams here — and to keep track of conversion metrics. 

  Here are the main touchpoints at this stage : 

  • Company website pages 
  • Product pages and catalogues 
  • Communication between customers and sales reps 
  • Product packaging and labelling 
  • Point-of-sale (POS) — the final touchpoint the prospective customer will reach before making the final purchasing decision 

  Touchpoints after a purchase

  You can use touchpoints after a purchase to maintain a positive relationship and keep current customers engaged. Examples of touchpoints that contribute to a good post-purchase experience for the customer include the following : 

  • Thank-you emails 
  • Email newsletters 
  • Customer satisfaction surveys 
  • Cross-selling emails 
  • Renewal options 
  • Customer loyalty programs

  Email marketing remains significant across all touchpoint segments, with 44% of CMOs agreeing that it’s essential to their marketing strategy — and it also plays a particularly important role in the post-purchase experience. For 61.1% of marketing teams, email open rates are higher than 20%.

  

  Sixty-nine percent of consumers say they’ve stopped doing business with a brand following a bad experience, so the importance of customer service touchpoints shouldn’t be overlooked. Live chat, chatbots, self-service resources, and customer service teams are integral to the post-purchase experience.

  Attribution models : Assigning value to marketing touchpoints 

  Determining the most effective touchpoints — those that directly contribute to conversions — is a process known as marketing attribution. The goal here is to identify the specific channels and points of contact with prospective customers that result in revenue for the company.

  

  You can use these insights to understand — and maximise — marketing return on investment (ROI). Otherwise, you risk allocating your budget to the wrong channels. 

  It’s possible to group attribution models into two categories — single-touch and multi-touch — depending on whether you assign value to one or more contributing touchpoints.

  Single-touch attribution models, where you’re giving credit for the conversion to a single touchpoint, include the following :

  • First-touch attribution : This assigns credit for the conversion to the first interaction a customer had with a brand ; however, it fails to consider lower-funnel touchpoints.
  • Last-click attribution : This focuses only on bottom-of-funnel marketing and credits the last interaction the customer had with a brand before completing a purchase.
  • Last non-direct : Credits the touchpoint immediately preceding a direct touchpoint with all the credit.

  Multi-touch attribution models are more complex and distribute the credit for conversion across multiple relevant touchpoints throughout the customer journey :

  • Linear attribution : The simplest multi-touch attribution model assigns equal values to all contributing touchpoints.
  • Position-based or U-shaped attribution : This assigns the greatest value to the first and last touchpoint — with 40% of the conversion credit each — and then divides the remaining 20% across all the other touchpoints.
  • Time-decay attribution : This model assigns the most credit to the customer’s most recent interactions with a brand, assuming that the touchpoints that occur later in the journey have a bigger impact on the conversion.

  Consider the following when choosing the most appropriate attribution model for your business :

  • The length of your typical sales cycle
  • Your marketing goals : increasing awareness, lead generation, driving revenue, etc.
  • How many stages and touchpoints make up your sales funnel

  Sometimes, it even makes sense to measure marketing performance using more than one attribution model.

  With the sheer volume of data that’s constantly generated across numerous online touchpoints, from your website to social media channels, it’s practically impossible to collect and analyse it manually.

  You’ll need an advanced web analytics platform to identify key touchpoints and assign value to them.

  Matomo’s Marketing Attribution feature can accurately measure the performance of different touchpoints to ensure that you’re allocating resources to the right channels. This is done in a compliant manner, without the need of data sampling or requiring cookie consent screens (excluding in Germany and the UK), ensuring both accuracy and privacy compliance.

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  Customer journey KPIs for measuring marketing campaign performance 

  Measuring the impact of different touchpoints on marketing campaign performance can help you understand how customer interactions drive conversions — and how to optimise your future efforts. 

  

  Clearly, this is not a one-time effort. You should continuously reevaluate the crucial touchpoints that drive the most engagement at different stages of the customer journey. 

  Web analytics platforms can provide valuable insights into ever-changing consumer behaviours and trends and help you make informed decisions. 

  At the moment, Google is the most popular solution in the web analytics industry, with a combined market share of more than 70%. 

  However, if privacy, data accuracy, and GDPR compliance are a priority for you, Matomo is an alternative worth considering. 

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  KPIs to track before a purchase 

  During the pre-purchase stage, focus on the KPIs that measure the effectiveness of marketing activities across various online touchpoints — landing pages, email campaigns, social channels and ad placement on SERPs, for instance. 

  KPIs to track during the consideration stage include the following : 

  • Cost-per-click (CPC) : The CPC, the total cost of paid online advertising divided by the number of clicks those ads get, indicates whether you’re getting a good ROI. In the UK, the average CPC for search advertising is $1.22. Globally, it averages $0.62.
  • Engagement rate : The engagement rate, which is the total number of interactions divided by the number of followers, is useful for measuring the performance of social media touchpoints. Customer engagement also applies to other channels, like tracking average time on-page, form conversions, bounce rates, and other website interactions. 
  • Click-through rate (CTR) : The CTR — or the number of clicks your ads receive compared to the number of times they’re shown — helps you measure the performance of CTAs, email newsletters and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

  KPIs to track during a purchase 

  As a potential customer moves further down the sales funnel and reaches the decision stage, where they’re ready to make the choice to purchase, you should be tracking the following : 

  • Conversion rate : This is the percentage of leads that convert into customers by completing the desired action relative to the total number of website visitors. It shows you whether you’re targeting the right people and providing a frictionless checkout experience.
  • Sales revenue : This refers to the quantity of products sold multiplied by the product’s price. It helps you track the company’s ability to generate profit. 
  • Cost per conversion : This KPI is the total cost of online advertising in relation to the number of conversions. It measures the effectiveness of different marketing channels and the costs of converting prospective customers into buyers. It also forecasts future ad spend.

  KPIs to track after purchase 

  At the post-purchase stage, your priority should be gathering feedback : 

  Customer feedback surveys are great for collecting insights into customers’ post-purchase experience, opinions about your brand, products and services, and needs and expectations. 

  In addition to measuring customer satisfaction, these insights can help you identify points of friction, forecast future growth and revenue and spot customers at risk of churning. 

  Focus on the following customer satisfaction and retention metrics : 

  • Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) : This metric, which is gathered through customer satisfaction surveys, helps you gauge satisfaction levels. After all, 77% of consumers consider great customer service an important driver of brand loyalty.
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS) : Based on single-question customer surveys, NPS indicates how likely a customer is to recommend your business.
  • Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) : The CLV is the profit you can expect to generate from one customer throughout their relationship with your company. 
  • Customer Health Score (CHS) : This score can assess how “healthy” the customer’s relationship with your brand is and identify at-risk customers.

  Marketing touchpoints : Tips and best practices 

  Customer experience is more important today than ever. 

  

  Salesforce’s 2022 State of the Connected Consumer report indicated that, for 88% of customers, the experience the brand provides is just as important as the product itself. 

  Here’s how you can build your customer touchpoint strategy and use effective touchpoints to improve customer satisfaction, build a loyal customer base, deliver better digital experiences and drive growth : 

  Understand the customer’s end-to-end experience 

  The typical customer’s journey follows a non-linear path of individual experiences that shape their awareness and brand preference. 

  Seventy-three percent of customers expect brands to understand their needs. So, personalising each interaction and delivering targeted content at different touchpoint segments — supported by customer segmentation and tools like Matomo — should be a priority. 

  Try to put yourself in the prospective customer’s shoes and understand their motivation and needs, focusing on their end-to-end experience rather than individual interactions. 

  Create a customer journey map 

  Once you understand how prospective customers interact with your brand, it becomes easier to map their journey from the pre-purchase stage to the actual purchase and beyond. 

  By creating these visual “roadmaps,” you make sure that you’re delivering the right content on the right channels at the right times and to the right audience — the key to successful marketing.

  Identify best-performing digital touchpoints 

  You can use insights from marketing attribution to pinpoint areas that are performing well. 

  By analysing the data provided by Matomo’s Marketing Attribution feature, you can determine which digital touchpoints are driving the most conversions or engagement, allowing you to focus your resources on optimising these channels for even greater success. 

  This targeted approach helps maximise the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and ensures a higher return on investment.

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

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  Discover key marketing touchpoints with Matomo 

  The customer’s journey rarely follows a direct route. If you hope to reach more customers and improve their experience, you’ll need to identify and manage individual marketing touchpoints every step of the way.

  While this process looks different for every business, it’s important to remember that your customers’ experience begins long before they interact with your brand for the first time — and carries on long after they complete the purchase. 

  In order to find these touchpoints and measure their effectiveness across multiple marketing channels, you’ll have to rely on accurate data — and a powerful web analytics tool like Matomo can provide those valuable marketing insights. 

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

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