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• What is Web Log Analytics and Why You Should Use It

  26 juin 2024, par Erin

  Can’t use JavaScript tracking on your website ? Need a more secure and privacy-friendly way to understand your website visitors ? Web log analytics is your answer. This method pulls data directly from your server logs, offering a secure and privacy-respecting alternative.  

  In this blog, we cover what web log analytics is, how it compares to JavaScript tracking, who it is best suited for, and why it might be the right choice for you. 

  What are server logs ? 

  Before diving in, let’s start with the basics : What are server logs ? Think of your web server as a diary that notes every visit to your website. Each time someone visits, the server records details like : 

  • User agent : Information about the visitor’s browser and operating system. 

  • Timestamp : The exact time the request was made. 

  • Requested URL : The specific page or resource the visitor requested. 

  These “diary entries” are called server logs, and they provide a detailed record of all interactions with your website. 

  Server log example 

  Here’s what a server log looks like : 

  192.XXX.X.X – – [24/Jun/2024:14:32:01 +0000] “GET /index.html HTTP/1.1” 200 1024 “https://www.example.com/referrer.html” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0 ; Win64 ; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.124 Safari/537.36” 

  192.XXX.X.X – – [24/Jun/2024:14:32:02 +0000] “GET /style.css HTTP/1.1” 200 3456 “https://www.example.com/index.html” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0 ; Win64 ; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.124 Safari/537.36” 

  192.XXX.X.X – – [24/Jun/2024:14:32:03 +0000] “GET /script.js HTTP/1.1” 200 7890 “https://www.example.com/index.html” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0 ; Win64 ; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.124 Safari/537.36” 

  192.XXX.X.X – – [24/Jun/2024:14:32:04 +0000] “GET /images/logo.png HTTP/1.1” 200 1234 “https://www.example.com/index.html” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0 ; Win64 ; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.124 Safari/537.36” 

  Breakdown of the log entry 

  Each line in the server log represents a single request made by a visitor to your website. Here’s a detailed breakdown of what each part means : 

  • IP Address : 192.XXX.X.X 
    • This is the IP address of the visitor’s device. 
  • User Identifier : – – 
    • These fields are typically used for user identification and authentication, which are not applicable here, hence the hyphens. 
  • Timestamp : [24/Jun/2024:14:32:01 +0000] 
  • • • The date and time of the request, including the timezone. 
  • Request Line : “GET /index.html HTTP/1.1” 
    • The request method (GET), the requested resource (/index.html), and the HTTP version (HTTP/1.1). 
  • Response Code : 200 
    • The HTTP status code indicates the result of the request (200 means OK). 
  • Response Size : 1024 
    • The size of the response in bytes. 
  • Referrer : “https://www.example.com/referrer.html“ 
    • The URL of the referring page that led the visitor to the current page. 
  • User Agent : “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0 ; Win64 ; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.124 Safari/537.36” 
    • Information about the visitor’s browser and operating system. 

  In the example above, there are multiple log entries for different resources (HTML page, CSS file, JavaScript file, and an image). This shows that when a visitor loads a webpage, multiple requests are made to load all the necessary resources. 

  What is web log analytics ? 

  Web log analytics is one of many methods for tracking visitors to your site.  

  

  Web log analytics is the process of analysing server log files to track and understand website visitors. Unlike traditional methods that use JavaScript tracking codes embedded in web pages, web log analytics pulls data directly from these server logs. 

  How it works : 

  1. Visitor request : A visitor’s browser requests your website. 
  2. Server logging : The server logs the request details. 
  3. Analysis : These logs are analysed to extract useful information about your visitors and their activities. 

  Web log analytics vs. JavaScript tracking 

  JavaScript tracking 

  JavaScript tracking is the most common method used to track website visitors. It involves embedding a JavaScript code snippet into your web pages. This code collects data on visitor interactions and sends it to a web analytics platform. 

  

  Differences and benefits :
  

  Privacy : 

  • Web log analytics : Since it doesn’t require embedding tracking codes, it is considered less intrusive and helps maintain higher privacy standards. 

  • JavaScript tracking : Embeds tracking codes directly on your website, which can be more invasive and raise privacy concerns. 

  Ease of setup : 

  • Web log analytics : No need to modify your website’s code. All you need is access to your server logs. 

  • JavaScript tracking : Requires adding tracking code on your web pages. This is generally an easier setup process.  

  Data collection : 

  • Web log analytics : Contain requests of users with adblockers (ghostery, adblock, adblock plus, privacy badger, etc.) sometimes making it more accurate. However, it may miss certain interactive elements like screen resolution or user events. It may also over-report data.  

  • JavaScript tracking : Can collect a wide range of data, including Custom dimensions, Ecommerce tracking, Heatmaps, Session recordings, Media and Form analytics, etc. 

  Why choose web log analytics ? 

  Enhanced privacy 

  Avoiding embedded tracking codes means there’s no JavaScript running on your visitors’ browsers. This significantly reduces the risk of data leakage and enhances overall privacy. 

  Comprehensive data collection 

  It isn’t affected by ad blockers or browser tracking protections, ensuring you capture more complete and accurate data about your visitors. 

  Historical data analysis 

  You can import and analyse historical log files, giving you insights into long-term visitor behaviour and trends. 

  Simple setup 

  Since it relies on server logs, there’s no need to alter your website’s code. This makes setup straightforward and minimises potential technical issues. 

  Who should use web log analytics ? 

  Web log analytics is particularly suited for businesses that prioritise data privacy and security.

  Organisations that handle sensitive data, such as banks, healthcare providers, and government agencies, can benefit from the enhanced privacy.  

  By avoiding JavaScript tracking, these entities minimise data exposure and comply with strict privacy regulations like Sarbanes Oxley and PCI. 

  Why use Matomo for web log analytics ? 

  Matomo stands out as a top choice for web log analytics because it prioritises privacy and data ownership

  

  Here’s why : 

  • Complete data control : You own all your data, so you don’t have to worry about third-party access. 
  • IP anonymisation : Matomo anonymises IP addresses to further protect user privacy. 
  • Bot filtering : Automatically excludes bots from your reports, ensuring you get accurate data. 
  • Simple migration : You can easily switch from other tools like AWStats by importing your historical logs into Matomo. 
  • Server log recognition : Recognises most server log formats (Apache, Nginx, IIS, etc.). 

  Start using web log analytics 

  Web log analytics offers a secure, privacy-focused alternative to traditional JavaScript tracking methods. By analysing server logs, you get valuable insights into your website traffic while maintaining high privacy standards.  

  If you’re serious about privacy and want reliable data, give Matomo’s web log analytics a try.  

  Start your 21-day free trial now. No credit card required. 

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• A Comprehensive Guide to Robust Digital Marketing Analytics

  30 octobre 2023, par Erin

  First impressions are everything. This is not only true for dating and job interviews but also for your digital marketing strategy. Like a poorly planned resume getting tossed in the “no thank you” pile, 38% of visitors to your website will stop engaging with your content if they find the layout unpleasant. Thankfully, digital marketers can access data that can be harnessed to optimise websites and turn those “no thank you’s” into “absolutely’s.”

  So, how can we transform raw data into valuable insights that pay off ? The key is web analytics tools that can help you make sense of it all while collecting data ethically. In this article, we’ll equip you with ways to take your digital marketing strategy to the next level with the power of web analytics.

  What are the different types of digital marketing analytics ?

  Digital marketing analytics are like a cipher into the complex behaviour of your buyers. Digital marketing analytics help collect, analyse and interpret data from any touchpoint you interact with your buyers online. Whether you’re trying to gauge the effectiveness of a new email marketing campaign or improve your mobile app layout, there’s a way for you to make use of the insights you gain. 

  As we go through the eight commonly known types of digital marketing analytics, please note we’ll primarily focus on what falls under the umbrella of web analytics. 

  1. Web analytics help you better understand how users interact with your website. Good web analytics tools will help you understand user behaviour while securely handling user data. 
  2. Learn more about the effectiveness of your organisation’s social media platforms with social media analytics. Social media analytics include user engagement, post reach and audience demographics. 
  3. Email marketing analytics help you see how email campaigns are being engaged with.
  4. Search engine optimisation (SEO) analytics help you understand your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). 
  5. Pay-per-click (PPC) analytics measure the performance of paid advertising campaigns.
  6. Content marketing analytics focus on how your content is performing with your audience. 
  7. Customer analytics helps organisations identify and examine buyer behaviour to retain the biggest spenders. 
  8. Mobile app analytics track user interactions within mobile applications. 

  Choosing which digital marketing analytics tools are the best fit for your organisation is not an easy task. When making these decisions, it’s critical to remember the ethical implications of data collection. Although data insights can be invaluable to your organisation, they won’t be of much use if you lose the trust of your users. 

  Tips and best practices for developing robust digital marketing analytics 

  So, what separates top-notch, robust digital marketing analytics from the rest ? We’ve already touched on it, but a big part involves respecting user privacy and ethically handling data. Data security should be on your list of priorities, alongside conversion rate optimisation when developing a digital marketing strategy. In this section, we will examine best practices for using digital marketing analytics while retaining user trust.

  

  Clear objectives

  Before comparing digital marketing analytics tools, you should define clear and measurable goals. Try asking yourself what you need your digital marketing analytics strategy to accomplish. Do you want to improve conversion rates while remaining data compliant ? Maybe you’ve noticed users are not engaging with your platform and want to fix that. Save yourself time and energy by focusing on the most relevant pain points and areas of improvement.

  Choose the right tools for the job

  Don’t just base your decision on what other people tell you. Take the tool for a test drive — free trials allow you to test features and user interfaces and learn more about the platform before committing. When choosing digital marketing analytics tools, look for ones that ensure compliance with privacy laws like GDPR.

  Don’t overlook data compliance

  GDPR ensures organisations prioritise data protection and privacy. You could be fined up to €20 million, or 4% of the previous year’s revenue for violations. Without data compliance practices, you can say goodbye to the time and money spent on digital marketing strategies. 

  Don’t sacrifice data quality and accuracy

  Inaccurate and low-quality data can taint your analysis, making it hard to glean valuable insights from your digital marketing analytics efforts. Regularly audit and clean your data to remove inaccuracies and inconsistencies. Address data discrepancies promptly to maintain the integrity of your analytics. Data validation measures also help to filter out inaccurate data.

  Communicate your findings

  Having insights is one thing ; effectively communicating complex data findings is just as important. Customise dashboards to display key metrics aligned with your objectives. Make sure to automate reports, allowing stakeholders to stay updated without manual intervention. 

  Understand the user journey

  To optimise your conversion rates, you need to understand the user journey. Start by analysing visitors interactions with your website — this will help you identify conversion bottlenecks in your sales or lead generation processes. Implement A/B testing for landing page optimisation, refining elements like call-to-action buttons or copy, and leverage Form Analytics to make informed, data-driven improvements to your forms.

  Continuous improvement

  Learn from the data insights you gain, and iterate your marketing strategies based on the findings. Stay updated with evolving web analytics trends and technologies to leverage new growth opportunities.

  Why you need web analytics to support your digital marketing analytics toolbox

  You wouldn’t set out on a roadtrip without a map, right ? Digital marketing analytics without insights into how users interact with your website are just as useless. Used ethically, web analytics tools can be an invaluable addition to your digital marketing analytics toolbox. 

  The data collected via web analytics reveals user interactions with your website. These could include anything from how long visitors stay on your page to their actions while browsing your website. Web analytics tools help you gather and understand this data so you can better understand buyer preferences. It’s like a domino effect : the more you understand your buyers and user behaviour, the better you can assess the effectiveness of your digital content and campaigns. 

  Web analytics reveal user behaviour, highlighting navigation patterns and drop-off points. Understanding these patterns helps you refine website layout and content, improving engagement and conversions for a seamless user experience.

  

  Concrete CMS harnessed the power of web analytics, specifically Form Analytics, to uncover a crucial insight within their user onboarding process. Their data revealed a significant issue : the “address” input field was causing visitors to drop off and not complete the form, severely impacting the overall onboarding experience and conversion rate.

  Armed with these insights, Concrete CMS made targeted optimisations to the form, resulting in a substantial transformation. By addressing the specific issue identified through Form Analytics, they achieved an impressive outcome – a threefold increase in lead generation.

  This case is a great example of how web analytics can uncover customer needs and preferences and positively impact conversion rates. 

  Ethical implications of digital marketing analytics

  As we’ve touched on, digital marketing analytics are a powerful tool to help better understand online user behaviour. With great power comes great responsibility, however, and it’s a legal and ethical obligation for organisations to protect individual privacy rights. Let’s get into the benefits of practising ethical digital marketing analytics and the potential risks of not respecting user privacy : 

  • If someone uses your digital platform and then opens their email one day to find it filled with random targeted ad campaigns, they won’t be happy. Avoid losing user trust — and facing a potential lawsuit — by informing users what their data will be used for. Give them the option to consent to opt-in or opt-out of letting you use their personal information. If users are also assured you’ll safeguard personal information against unauthorised access, they’ll be more likely to trust you to handle their data securely.
  • Protecting data against breaches means investing in technology that will let you end-to-end encrypt and securely store data. Other important data-security best practices include access control, backing up data regularly and network and physical security of assets.
  • A fine line separates digital marketing analytics and misusing user data — many companies have gotten into big trouble for crossing it. (By big trouble, we mean millions of dollars in fines.) When it comes to digital marketing analytics, you should never cut corners when it comes to user privacy and data security. This balance involves understanding what data can be collected and what should be collected and respecting user boundaries and preferences.

  

  Learn more 

  We discussed a lot of facets of digital marketing analytics, namely how to develop a robust digital marketing strategy while prioritising data compliance. With Matomo, you can protect user data and respect user privacy while gaining invaluable insights into user behaviour. Save your organisation time and money by investing in a web analytics solution that gives you the best of both worlds. 

  If you’re ready to begin using ethical and robust digital marketing analytics on your website, try Matomo. Start your 21-day free trial now — no credit card required.

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• What is a Cohort Report ? A Beginner’s Guide to Cohort Analysis

  3 janvier 2024, par Erin

  Handling your user data as a single mass of numbers is rarely conducive to figuring out meaningful patterns you can use to improve your marketing campaigns.

  A cohort report (or cohort analysis) can help you quickly break down that larger audience into sequential segments and contrast and compare based on various metrics. As such, it is a great tool for unlocking more granular trends and insights — for example, identifying patterns in engagement and conversions based on the date users first interacted with your site.

  In this guide, we explain the basics of the cohort report and the best way to set one up to get the most out of it.

  What is a cohort report ?

  In a cohort report, you divide a data set into groups based on certain criteria — typically a time-based cohort metric like first purchase date — and then analyse the data across those segments, looking for patterns.

  Date-based cohort analysis is the most common approach, often creating cohorts based on the day a user completed a particular action — signed up, purchased something or visited your website. Depending on the metric you choose to measure (like return visits), the cohort report might look something like this :

  

  Note that this is not a universal benchmark or anything of the sort. The above is a theoretical cohort analysis based on app users who downloaded the app, tracking and comparing the retention rates as the days go by. 

  The benchmarks will be drastically different depending on the metric you’re measuring and the basis for your cohorts. For example, if you’re measuring returning visitor rates among first-time visitors to your website, expect single-digit percentages even on the second day.

  Your industry will also greatly affect what you consider positive in a cohort report. For example, if you’re a subscription SaaS, you’d expect high continued usage rates over the first week. If you sell office supplies to companies, much less so.

  What is an example of a cohort ?

  As we just mentioned, a typical cohort analysis separates users or customers by the date they first interacted with your business — in this case, they downloaded your app. Within that larger analysis, the users who downloaded it on May 3 represent a single cohort.

  

  In this case, we’ve chosen behaviour and time — the app download day — to separate the user base into cohorts. That means every specific day denotes a specific cohort within the analysis.

  Diving deeper into an individual cohort may be a good idea for important holidays or promotional events like Black Friday.

  Of course, cohorts don’t have to be based on specific behaviour within certain periods. You can also create cohorts based on other dimensions :

  • Transactional data — revenue per user
  • Churn data — date of churn
  • Behavioural cohort — based on actions taken on your website, app or e-commerce store, like the number of sessions per user or specific product pages visited
  • Acquisition cohort — which channel referred the user or customer

  For more information on different cohort types, read our in-depth guide on cohort analysis.

  How to create a cohort report (and make sense of it)

  Matomo makes it easy to view and analyse different cohorts (without the privacy and legal implications of using Google Analytics).

  Here are a few different ways to set up a cohort report in Matomo, starting with our built-in cohorts report.

  Cohort reports

  With Matomo, cohort reports are automatically compiled based on the first visit date. The default metric is the percentage of returning visitors.

  

  Changing the settings allows you to create multiple variations of cohort analysis reports.

  Break down cohorts by different metrics

  The percentage of returning visits can be valuable if you’re trying to improve early engagement in a SaaS app onboarding process. But it’s far from your only option.

  You can also compare performance by conversion, revenue, bounce rate, actions per visit, average session duration or other metrics.

  

  Change the time and scope of your cohort analysis

  Splitting up cohorts by single days may be useless if you don’t have a high volume of users or visitors. If the average cohort size is only a few users, you won’t be able to identify reliable patterns. 

  Matomo lets you set any time period to create your cohort analysis report. Instead of the most recent days, you can create cohorts by week, month, year or custom date ranges. 

  

  Cohort sizes will depend on your customer base. Make sure each cohort is large enough to encapsulate all the customers in that cohort and not so small that you have insignificant cohorts of only a few customers. Choose a date range that gives you that without scaling it too far so you can’t identify any seasonal trends.

  Cohort analysis can be a great tool if you’ve recently changed your marketing, product offering or onboarding. Set the data range to weekly and look for any impact in conversions and revenue after the changes.

  Using the “compare to” feature, you can also do month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter or any custom date range comparisons. This approach can help you get a rough overview of your campaign’s long-term progress without doing any in-depth analysis.

  You can also use the same approach to compare different holiday seasons against each other.

  If you want to combine time cohorts with segmentation, you can run cohort reports for different subsets of visitors instead of all visitors. This can lead to actionable insights like adjusting weekend or specific seasonal promotions to improve conversion rates.

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  Easily create custom cohort reports beyond the time dimension

  If you want to split your audience into cohorts by focusing on something other than time, you will need to create a custom report and choose another dimension. In Matomo, you can choose from a wide range of cohort metrics, including referrers, e-commerce signals like viewed product or product category, form submissions and more.

  

  Then, you can create a simple table-based report with all the insights you need by choosing the metrics you want to see. For example, you could choose average visit duration, bounce rate and other usage metrics.

  

  If you want more revenue-focused insights, add metrics like conversions, add-to-cart and other e-commerce events.

  Custom reports make it easy to create cohort reports for almost any dimension. You can use any metric within demographic and behavioural analytics to create a cohort. (You can explore the complete list of our possible segmentation metrics.)

  We cover different types of custom reports (and ideas for specific marketing campaigns) in our guide on custom segmentation.

  Create your first cohort report and gain better insights into your visitors

  Cohort reports can help you identify trends and the impact of short-term marketing efforts like events and promotions.

  With Matomo cohort reports you have the power to create complex custom reports for various cohorts and segments. 

  If you’re looking for a powerful, easy-to-use web analytics solution that gives you 100% accurate data without compromising your users’ privacy, Matomo is a great fit. Get started with a 21-day free trial today. No credit card required. 

  Try Matomo for Free

  21 day free trial. No credit card required.

  
  

  Your email address
  

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  Your Analytics subdomain will be .matomo.cloud (change)

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  Your information will be used to create an account on our cloud service. For more information please consult our privacy policy.
  
  
  

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