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• Protecting consumer privacy : How to ensure CCPA compliance

  18 août 2023, par Erin — CCPA, Privacy

  The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is a state law that enhances privacy rights and consumer protection for residents of California. 

  It grants consumers six rights, like the right to know what personal information is being collected about them by businesses and others. 

  CCPA also requires businesses to provide notice of data collection practices. Consumers can choose to opt out of the sale of their data. 

  In this article, we’ll learn more about the scope of CCPA, the penalties for non-compliance and how our web analytics tool, Matomo, can help you create a CCPA-compliant framework.

  What is the CCPA ? 

  CCPA was implemented on January 1, 2020. It ensures that businesses securely handle individuals’ personal information and respect their privacy in the digital ecosystem. 

  

  CCPA addresses the growing concerns over privacy and data protection ; 40% of US consumers share that they’re worried about digital privacy. With the increasing amount of personal information being collected and shared by businesses, there was a need to establish regulations to provide individuals with more control and transparency over their data. 

  CCPA aims to protect consumer privacy rights and promote greater accountability from businesses when handling personal information.

  Scope of CCPA 

  The scope of CCPA includes for-profit businesses that collect personal information from California residents, regardless of where you run the business from.

  It defines three thresholds that determine the inclusion criteria for businesses subject to CCPA regulations. 

  Businesses need to abide by CCPA if they meet any of the three options :

  1. Revenue threshold : Have an annual gross revenue of over $25 million.
  2. Consumer threshold : Businesses that purchase, sell or distribute the personal information of 100,000 or more consumers, households or devices.
  3. Data threshold : Businesses that earn at least half of their revenue annually from selling the personal information of California residents.

  What are the six consumer rights under the CCPA ? 

  Here’s a short description of the six consumer rights. 

  

  1. Right to know : Under this right, you can ask a business to disclose specific personal information they collect about you and the categories of sources of the information. You can also know the purpose of collection and to which third-party the business will disclose this info. This allows consumers to understand what information is being held and how it is used. You can request this info for free twice a year.
  2. Right to delete : Consumers can request the deletion of their personal information. Companies must comply with some exceptions.
  3. Right to opt-out : Consumers can deny the sale of their personal information. Companies must provide a link on their homepage for users to exercise this right. After you choose this, companies can’t sell your data unless you authorise them to do so later.
  4. Right to non-discrimination : Consumers cannot be discriminated against for exercising their CCPA rights. For instance, a company cannot charge different prices, provide a different quality of service or deny services.
  5. Right to correct : Consumers can request to correct inaccurate personal information.

  6. Right to limit use : Consumers can specify how they want the businesses to use their sensitive personal information. This includes social security numbers, financial account details, precise geolocation data or genetic data. Consumers can direct businesses to use this sensitive information only for specific purposes, such as providing the requested services.

  Penalties for CCPA non-compliance 

  52% of organisations have yet to adopt CCPA principles as of 2022. Non-compliance can attract penalties.

  

  Section 1798.155 of the CCPA states that any business that doesn’t comply with CCPA’s terms can face penalties based on the consumer’s private right to action. Consumers can directly take the company to the civil court and don’t need prosecutors’ interventions. 

  Businesses get a chance of 30 days to make amends for their actions. 

  If that’s also not possible, the business may receive a civil penalty of up to $2,500 per violation. Violations can be of any kind, even accidental. An intentional violation can attract a fine of $7,500. 

  Consumers can also initiate private lawsuits to claim damages that range from $100 to $750, or actual damages (whichever is higher), for each occurrence of their unredacted and unencrypted data being breached on a business’s server.

  CCPA vs. GDPR 

  Both CCPA and GDPR aim to enhance individuals’ control over their personal information and provide transparency about how their data is collected, used and shared. The comparison between the CCPA and GDPR is crucial in understanding the regulatory framework of data protection laws.

  Here’s how CCPA and GDPR differ :

  Scope

  • CCPA is for businesses that meet specific criteria and collect personal information from California residents. 
  • GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) applies to businesses that process the personal data of citizens and residents of the European Union.

  Definition of personal information

  • CCPA includes personal information broadly, including identifiers such as IP addresses and households. Examples include name, email id, location and browsing history. However, it excludes HIPAA-protected medical data, clinical trial data and other personal information from government records.
  • GDPR covers any personal data relating to an identified or identifiable individual, excluding households. Examples include the phone number, email address and personal identification number. It excludes anonymous and deceased person’s data.

  

  Consent

  • Under the CCPA, consumers can opt out of the sale of their personal information.
  • GDPR states that organisations should obtain explicit consent from individuals for processing their personal data.

  Rights

  • CCPA grants the right to know what personal information is being collected and the right to request deletion of their personal information.
  • GDPR also gives individuals various rights, such as the right to access and rectify their personal data, the right to erasure (also known as the right to be forgotten) and also the right to data portability. 

  Enforcement

  • For CCPA, businesses may have to pay $7,500 for each violation. 
  • GDPR has stricter penalties for non-compliance, with fines of up to 4% of the global annual revenue of a company or €20 million, whichever is higher.

  A 5-step CCPA compliance framework 

  Here’s a simple framework you can follow to ensure compliance with CCPA. Alongside this, we’ll also share how Matomo can help. 

  Matomo is an open-source web analytics platform trusted by organisations like the United Nations, NASA and more. It provides valuable insights into website traffic, visitor behaviour and marketing effectiveness. More than 1 million websites and apps (approximately 1% of the internet !) use our solution, and it’s available in 50+ languages. Below, we’ll share how you can use Matomo to be CCPA compliant.

  1. Assess data

  First, familiarise yourself with the California Consumer Privacy Act and check your eligibility for CCPA compliance. 

  For example, as mentioned earlier, one threshold is : purchases, receives or sells the personal data of 100,000 or more individuals or households. 

  But how do you know if you have crossed 100K ? With Matomo ! 

  Go to last year’s calendar, select visitors, then go to locations and under the “Region” option, check for California. If you’ve crossed 100K visitors, you know you have to become CCPA compliant.

  

  Identify and assess the personal information you collect with Matomo.

  2. Evaluate privacy practices

  Review the current state of your privacy policies and practices. Conduct a thorough assessment of data sharing and third-party agreements. Then, update policies and procedures to align with CCPA requirements.

  For example, you can anonymise IP addresses with Matomo to ensure that user data collected for web analytics purposes cannot be used to trace back to specific individuals.

  

  If you have a consent management solution to honour user requests for data privacy, you can also integrate Matomo with it. 

  3. Communicate 

  Inform consumers about their CCPA rights and how you handle their data.

  Establish procedures for handling consumer requests and obtaining consent. For example, you can add an opt-out form on your website with Matomo. Or you can also use Matomo to disable cookies from your website.

  

  Documenting your compliance efforts, including consumer requests and how you responded to them, is a good idea. Finally, educate staff on CCPA compliance and their responsibilities to work collaboratively.

  4. Review vendor contracts

  Assessing vendor contracts allows you to determine if they include necessary data processing agreements. You can also identify if vendors are sharing personal information with third parties, which could pose a compliance risk. Verify if vendors have adequate security measures in place to protect the personal data they handle.

  That’s why you can review and update agreements to include provisions for data protection, privacy and CCPA requirements.

  Establish procedures to monitor and review vendor compliance with CCPA regularly. This may include conducting audits, requesting certifications and implementing controls to mitigate risks associated with vendors handling personal data.

  5. Engage legal counsel

  Consider consulting with legal counsel to ensure complete understanding and compliance with CCPA regulations.

  Finally, stay updated on any changes or developments related to CCPA and adjust your compliance efforts accordingly.

  Matomo and CCPA compliance 

  There’s an increasing emphasis on privacy regulations like CCPA. Matomo offers a robust solution that allows businesses to be CCPA-compliant without sacrificing the ability to track and analyse crucial data.

  You can gain in-depth insights into user behaviour and website performance — all while prioritising data protection and privacy. 

  Request a demo or sign up for a free 21-day trial to get started with our powerful CCPA-compliant web analytics platform — no credit card required. 

  Disclaimer

  We are not lawyers and don’t claim to be. The information provided here is to help give an introduction to CCPA. We encourage every business and website to take data privacy seriously and discuss these issues with your lawyer if you have any concerns.

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

  13 mars 2023, par 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.

• How to Check Website Traffic As Accurately As Possible

  18 août 2023, par Erin — Analytics Tips

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

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

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

  Why check website traffic ? 

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

  

  Benchmark site performance

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

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

  Analyse user behaviour

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

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

  Improve the user experience

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

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

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

  Optimise marketing strategies

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

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

  Filter unwanted traffic

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

  How to check website traffic on Matomo

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

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

  Matomo also offers multiple ways to check website traffic :

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

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

  

  The report provides a snapshot of each visitor, including :

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

  3 other ways to check website traffic

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

  How to check website traffic on Google Analytics

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

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

  

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

  

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

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

  How to check website traffic on Google Search Console

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

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

  

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

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

  How to check website traffic on Similarweb

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

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

  

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

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

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

  7 website traffic metrics to track

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

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

  Why do my traffic reports differ ?

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

  Get more accurate traffic reports with Matomo

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

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