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• Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA) Guide

  27 septembre 2023, par Erin — Privacy

  Do you run a for-profit organisation in the United States that processes personal and sensitive consumer data ? If so, you may be concerned about the growing number of data privacy laws cropping up from state to state.

  Ever since the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) came into effect on January 1, 2020, four other US states — Connecticut, Colorado, Utah and Virginia — have passed their own data privacy laws. Each law uses the CCPA as a foundation but slightly deviates from the formula. This is a problem for US organisations, as they cannot apply the same CCPA compliance framework everywhere else.

  In this article, you’ll learn what makes the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA) unique and how to ensure compliance.

  What is the VCDPA ?

  Signed by Governor Ralph Northam on 2 March 2021, and brought into effect on 1 January 2023, the VCDPA is a new data privacy law. It gives Virginia residents certain rights regarding how organisations process their personal and sensitive consumer data.

  

  The law contains several provisions, which define :

  • Who must follow the VCDPA
  • Who is exempt from the VCDPA
  • The consumer rights of data subjects
  • Relevant terms, such as “consumers,” “personal data,” “sensitive data” and the “sale of personal data”
  • The rights and responsibilities of data controllers
  • What applicable organisations must do to ensure VCDPA compliance

  These guidelines define the data collection practices that VCDPA-compliant organisations must comply with. The practices are designed to protect the rights of Virginia residents who have their personal or sensitive data collected.

  What are the consumer rights of VCDPA data subjects ?

  There are seven consumer rights that protect residents who fit the definition of “data subjects” under the new Virginia data privacy law. 

  

  A data subject is an “identified or identifiable natural person” who has their information collected. Personally identifiable information includes a person’s name, address, date of birth, religious beliefs, immigration status, status of child protection assessments, ethnic origin and more.

  Below is a detailed breakdown of each VCDPA consumer right :

  1. Right to know, access and confirm personal data : Data subjects have the right to know that their data is being collected, the right to access their data and the right to confirm that the data being collected is accurate and up to date.
  2. Right to delete personal data : Data subjects have the right to request that their collected personal or sensitive consumer data be deleted.
  3. Right to correct inaccurate personal data : Data subjects have the right to request that their collected data be corrected.
  4. Right to data portability : Data subjects have the right to obtain their collected data and, when reasonable and possible, request that their collected data be transferred from one data controller to another.
  5. Right to opt out of data processing activity : Data subjects have the right to opt out of having their personal or sensitive data collected.
  6. Right to opt out of the sale of personal and sensitive consumer data : Data subjects have the right to opt out of having their collected data sold to third parties.

  Right to not be discriminated against for exercising one’s rights : Data subjects have the right to not be discriminated against for exercising their right to not have their personal or sensitive consumer data collected, processed and sold to third parties for targeted advertising or other purposes.

  Who must comply with the VCDPA ?

  The VCDPA applies to for-profit organisations. Specifically, those that operate and offer products or services in the state of Virginia.

  

  Additionally, for-profit organisations that fit under either of these two categories must comply with the VCDPA :

  • Collect and process the personal data of at least 100,000 Virginia residents within a financial year or
  • Collect and process the personal data of at least 25,000 Virginia residents and receive at least 50% of gross revenue by selling personal or sensitive data.

  If a for-profit organisation resides out of the state of Virginia and falls into one of the categories above, they must comply with the VCDPA. Eligibility requirements also apply, regardless of the revenue threshold of the organisation in question. Large organisations can avoid VCDPA compliance if they don’t meet either of the above two eligibility requirements.

  What types of consumer data does the VCDPA protect ?

  The two main types of data that apply to the VCDPA are personal and sensitive data. 

  

  Personal data is either identified or personally identifiable information, such as home address, date of birth or phone number. Information that is publicly available or has been de-identified (dissociated with a natural person or entity) is not considered personal data.

  Sensitive data is a category of personal data. It’s data that’s either the collected data of a known child or data that can be used to form an opinion about a natural person or individual. Examples of sensitive data include information about a person’s ethnicity, religion, political beliefs and sexual orientation. 

  It’s important that VCDPA-compliant organisations understand the difference between the two data types, as failure to do so could result in penalties of up to $7,500 per violation. For instance, if an organisation wants to collect sensitive data (and they have a valid reason to do so), they must first ask for consent from consumers. If the organisation in question fails to do so, then they’ll be in violation of the VCDPA, and may be subject to multiple penalties — equal to however many violations they incur.

  A 5-step VCDPA compliance framework

  Getting up to speed with the terms of the VCDPA can be challenging, especially if this is your first time encountering such a law. That said, even organisations that have experience with data privacy laws should still take the time to understand the VCDPA.

  

  Here’s a simple 5-step VCDPA compliance framework to follow.

  1. Assess data

  First off, take the time to become familiar with the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA). Then, read the content from the ‘Who does the VCDPA apply to’ section of this article, and use this information to determine if the law applies to your organisation.

  How do you know if you reach the data subject threshold ? Easy. Use a web analytics platform like Matomo to see where your web visitors are, how many of them (from that specific region) are visiting your website and how many of them you’re collecting personal or sensitive data from.

  To do this in Matomo, simply open the dashboard, look at the “Locations” section and use the information on display to see how many Virginia residents are visiting your website.

  

  Using the dashboard will help you determine if the VCDPA applies to your company.

  2. Evaluate your privacy practices

  Review your existing privacy policies and practices and update them to comply with the VCDPA. Ensure your data collection practices protect the confidentiality, integrity and accessibility of your visitors.

  One way to do this is to automatically anonymise visitor IPs, which you can do in Matomo — in fact, the feature is automatically set to default. 

  

  Another great thing about IP anonymisation is that after a visitor leaves your website, any evidence of them ever visiting is gone, and such information cannot be tracked by anyone else. 

  3. Inform data subjects of their rights

  To ensure VCDPA compliance in your organisation, you must inform your data subjects of their rights, including their right to access their data, their right to transfer their data to another controller and their right to opt out of your data collection efforts.

  That last point is one of the most important, and to ensure that you’re ready to respond to consumer rights requests, you should prepare an opt-out form in advance. If a visitor wants to opt out from tracking, they’ll be able to do so quickly and easily. Not only will this help you be VCDPA compliant, but your visitors will also appreciate the fact that you take their privacy seriously.

  

  To create an opt-out form in Matomo, visit the privacy settings section (click on the cog icon in the top menu) and click on the “Users opt-out” menu item under the Privacy section. After creating the form, you can then customise and publish the form as a snippet of HTML code that you can place on the pages of your website.

  4. Review vendor contracts

  Depending on the nature of your organisation, you may have vendor contracts with a third-party business associate. These are individuals or organisations, separate from your own, that contribute to the successful delivery of your products and services.

  You may also engage with third parties that process the data you collect, as is the case for many website owners that use Google Analytics (to which there are many alternatives) to convert visitor data into insights. 

  Financial institutions, such as stock exchange companies, also rely on third-party data for trading. If this is the case for you, then you likely have a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) in place — a legally binding document between you (the data controller, who dictates how and why the collected data is used) and the data processor (who processes the data you provide to them).

  To ensure that your DPA is VCDPA compliant, make sure it contains the following items :

  • Definition of terms
  • Instructions for processing data
  • Limits of use (explain what all parties can and cannot do with the collected data)
  • Physical data security practices (e.g., potential risks, risk of harm and control measures)
  • Data subject rights
  • Consumer request policies (i.e., must respond within 45 days of receipt)
  • Privacy notices and policies

  5. Seek expert legal advice

  To ensure your organisation is fully VCDPA compliant, consider speaking to a data and privacy lawyer. They can help you better understand the specifics of the law, advise you on where you fall short of compliance and what you must do to become VCDPA compliant.

  Data privacy lawyers can also help you draft a meaningful privacy notice, which may be useful in modifying your existing DPAs or creating new ones. If needed, they can also advise you on areas of compliance with other state-specific data protection acts, such as the CCPA and newly released laws in Colorado, Connecticut and Utah.

  How does the VCDPA differ from the CCPA ?

  Although the VCDPA has many similarities to the CCPA, the two laws still have their own approach to applying the law. 

  Here’s a quick breakdown of the main differences that set these laws apart.

  Definition of a consumer

  Under the VCDPA, a consumer is a “natural person who is a Virginia resident acting in an individual or household context.” Meanwhile, under the CCPA, a consumer is a “natural person who is a California resident acting in an individual or household context.” However, the VCDPA omits people in employment contexts, while the CCPA doesn’t. Hence, organisations don’t need to consider employee data.

  Sale of personal data

  The VCDPA defines the “sale of personal data” as an exchange “for monetary consideration” by the data controller to a data processor or third party. This means that, under the VCDPA, an act is only considered a “sale of personal data” if there is monetary value attached to the transaction.

  This contrasts with the CCPA, where that law also counts “other valuable considerations” as a factor when determining if the sale of personal data has occurred.

  Right to opt out

  Just like the CCPA, the VCDPA clearly outlines that organisations must respond to a user request to opt out of tracking. However, unlike the CCPA, the VCDPA does not give organisations any exceptions to such a right. This means that, even if the organisation believes that the request is impractical or hard to pull off, it must comply with the request under any circumstances, even in instances of hardship.

  Ensure VCDPA compliance with Matomo

  The VCDPA, like many other data privacy laws in the US, is designed to enhance the rights of Virginia consumers who have their personal or sensitive data collected and processed. Fortunately, this is where platforms like Matomo can help.

  Matomo is a powerful web analytics platform that has built-in features to help you comply with the VCDPA. These include options like :

  • Cookie-less tracking
  • Creating consumer consent and opt-out forms
  • Giving consumers access to their personal data

  Try out the free 21-day Matomo trial today. No credit card required.

• Six Best Amplitude Alternatives

  10 décembre 2024, par Daniel Crough

  Product analytics is big business. Gone are the days when we could only guess what customers were doing with our products or services. Now, we can track, visualise, and analyse how they interact with them and, with that, constantly improve and optimise. 

  The problem is that many product analytics tools are expensive and complicated — especially for smaller businesses. They’re also packed with functionality more attuned to the needs of massive companies. 

  Amplitude is such a tool. It’s brilliant and it has all the bells and whistles that you’ll probably never need. Fortunately, there are alternatives. In this guide, we’ll explore the best of those alternatives and, along the way, provide the insight you’ll need to select the best analytics tool for your organisation. 

  Amplitude : a brief overview

  To set the stage, it makes sense to understand exactly what Amplitude offers. It’s a real-time data analytics tool for tracking user actions and gaining insight into engagement, retention, and revenue drivers. It helps you analyse that data and find answers to questions about what happened, why it happened, and what to do next.

  However, as good as Amplitude is, it has some significant disadvantages. While it does offer data export functionality, that seems deliberately restricted. It allows data exports for specific events, but it’s not possible to export complete data sets to manipulate or format in another tool. Even pulling it into a CSV file has a 10,000-row limit. There is an API, but not many third-party integration options.

  Getting data in can also be a problem. Amplitude requires manual tags on events that must be tracked for analysis, which can leave holes in the data if every possible subsequent action isn’t tagged. That’s a time-consuming exercise, and it’s made worse because those tags will have to be updated every time the website or app is updated. 

  As good as it is, it can also be overwhelming because it’s stacked with features that can create confusion for novice or inexperienced analysts. It’s also expensive. There is a freemium plan that limits functionality and events. Still, when an organisation wants to upgrade for additional functionality or to analyse more events, the step up to the paid plan is massive.

  Lastly, Amplitude has made some strides towards being a web analytics option, but it lacks some basic functionality that may frustrate people who are trying to see the full picture from web to app.

  Snapshot of Amplitude alternatives

  So, in place of Amplitude, what product analytics tools are available that won’t break the bank and still provide the functionality needed to improve your product ? The good news is that there are literally hundreds of alternatives, and we’ve picked out six of the best.

  1. Matomo – Best privacy-focused web and mobile analytics
  2. Mixpanel – Best for product analytics
  3. Google Analytics – Best free option
  4. Adobe Analytics – Best for predictive analytics
  5. Umami – Best lightweight tool for product analytics
  6. Heap – Best for automatic user data capture

  A more detailed analysis of the Amplitude alternatives

  Now, let’s dive deeper into each of the six Amplitude alternatives. We’ll cover standout features, integrations, pricing, use cases and community critiques. By the end, you’ll know which analytics tool can help optimise website and app performance to grow your business.

  1. Matomo – Best privacy-friendly web and app analytics

  Privacy is a big concern these days, especially for organisations with a presence in the European Union (EU). Unlike other analytics tools, Matomo ensures you comply with privacy laws and regulations, like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

  Matomo helps businesses get the insights they need without compromising user privacy. It’s also one of the few self-hosted tools, ensuring data never has to leave your site.

  Matomo is open-source, which is also rare in this class of tools. That means it’s available for anyone to adapt and customise as they wish. Everything you need to build custom APIs is there.

  

  Its most useful capabilities include visitor logs and session recordings to trace the entire customer journey, spot drop-off points, and fine-tune sales funnels. The platform also comes with heatmaps and A/B testing tools. Heatmaps provide a useful visual representation of your data, while A/B testing allows for more informed, data-driven decisions.

  Despite its range of features, many reviewers laud Matomo’s user interface for its simplicity and user-friendliness. 

  Why Matomo : Matomo is an excellent alternative because it fills in the gaps where Amplitude comes up short, like with cookieless tracking. Also, while Amplitude focuses mainly on behavioural analytics, Matomo offers both behavioural and traditional analytics, which allows more profound insight into your data. Furthermore, Matomo fully complies with the strictest privacy regulations worldwide, including GDPR, LGPD, and HIPAA.

  Standout features include multi-touch attribution, visits log, content engagement, ecommerce, customer segments, event tracking, goal tracking, custom dimensions, custom reports, automated email reports, tag manager, sessions recordings, roll-up reporting that can pull data from multiple websites or mobile apps, Google Analytics importer, Matomo tag manager, comprehensive visitor tracking, heatmaps, and more.

  Integrations with 100+ technologies, including Cloudflare, WordPress, Magento, Google Ads, Drupal, WooCommerce, Vue, SharePoint and Wix.

  Pricing is free for Matomo On-Premise and $23 per month for Matomo Cloud, which comes with a 21-day free trial (no credit card required).

  Strengths

  • Privacy focused
  • Cookieless consent banners
  • 100% accurate, unsampled data
  • Open-source code 
  • Complete data ownership (no sharing with third parties)
  • Self-hosting and cloud-based options
  • Built-in GDPR Manager
  • Custom alerts, white labelling, dashboards and reports

  Community critiques 

  • Premium features are expensive and proprietary
  • Learning curve for non-technical users

  2. Mixpanel – Best for product analytics

  Mixpanel is a dedicated product analytics tool. It tracks and analyses customer interactions with a product across different platforms and helps optimise digital products to improve the user experience. It works with real-time data and can provide answers from customer and revenue data in seconds.

  It also presents data visualisations to show how customers interact with products.

  

  Mixpanel allows you to play around filters and views to reveal and chart some useful customer trends. (Image source)

  Why Mixpanel : One of the strengths of this platform is the ability to test hypotheses. Need to test an ambitious idea ? Mixpanel data can do it with real user analytics. That allows you to make data-driven decisions to find the best path forward.

  Standout features include automatic funnel segment analysis, behavioural segmentation, cohort segmentation, collaboration support, customisable dashboards, data pipelines, filtered data views, SQL queries, warehouse connectors and a wide range of pre-built integrations.

  Integrations available include Appcues, AppsFlyer, AWS, Databox, Figma, Google Cloud, Hotjar, HubSpot, Intercom, Integromat, MailChimp, Microsoft Azure, Segment, Slack, Statsig, VWO, Userpilot, WebEngage, Zapier, ZOH) and dozens of others.

  Pricing starts with a freemium plan valid for up to 20 million events per month. The growth plan is affordable at $25 per month and adds features like no-code data transformations and data pipeline add-ons. The enterprise version runs at a monthly cost of $833 and provides the full suite of features and services and premium support.

  There’s a caveat. Those prices only allow up to 1,000 Monthly Tracked Users (MTUs), calculated based on the number of visitors that perform a qualifying event each month. Beyond that, MTU plans start at $20,000 per year.

  Strengths

  • User behaviour and interaction tracking
  • Unlimited cohort segmentation capabilities
  • Drop-off analysis showing where users get stuck
  • A/B testing capabilities

  Community critiques 

  • Expensive enterprise features
  • Extensive setup and configuration requirements

  3. Google Analytics 4 – Best free web analytics tool

  The first thing to know about Google Analytics 4 is that it’s a web analytics tool. In other words, it tracks sessions, not user behaviours in app environments. It can provide details on how people found your website and how they go there, but it doesn’t offer much detail on how people use your product. 

  There is also an enterprise version, Google Analytics 360, which is not free. We’ve broken down the differences between the two versions elsewhere.

  

  GA4’s audience overview shows visitors, sessions, session lengths, bounce rates, and user engagement data. (Image source)

   

  Why Google Analytics : It’s great for gauging the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, tracking goal completions (purchases, cart additions, etc.) and spotting trends and patterns in user engagement.

  Standout features include built-in automation, customisable conversion goals, data drill-down functionality, detailed web acquisition metrics, media spend ROI calculations and out-of-the-box web analytics reporting.

  Integrations include all major CRM platforms, CallRail, DoubleClick DCM, Facebook, Hootsuite, Marketo, Shopify, VWO, WordPress, Zapier and Zendesk, among many others.

  Pricing is free for the basic version (Google Analytics 4) and scales based on features and data volume. The advanced features (in Google Analytics 360) are pitched at enterprises, and pricing is custom.

  Strengths

  • Free to start
  • Multiple website management
  • Traffic source details
  • Up-to-date traffic data

  Community critiques 

  • Steep learning curve 
  • Data sampling

  4. Adobe Analytics – Best for predictive analytics

  A fully configured Adobe Analytics implementation is the Swiss army knife of analytics tools. It begins with web analytics, adds product analytics, and then wraps it up nicely with predictive analytics.

  Unlike all the Amplitude alternatives here, there’s no free version. Adobe Analytics has a complicated pricing matrix with options like website analytics, marketing analytics, attribution, and predictive analytics. It also has a wide range of customisation options that will appeal to large businesses. But for smaller organisations, it may all be a bit too much.

  Mixpanel allows you to play around filters and views to reveal and chart some useful customer trends. (Image source)

  

  Adobe Analytics’ cross-channel attribution ties actions from different channels into a single customer journey. (Image source)

   

  Why Adobe Analytics : For current Adobe customers, this is a logical next step. Either way, Adobe Analytics can combine, evaluate, and analyse data from any part of the customer journey. It analyses that data with predictive intelligence to provide insights to enhance customer experiences.

   

  Standout features include AI-powered prediction analysis, attribution analysis, multi-channel data collection, segmentation and detailed customer journey analytics, product analytics and web analytics.

   

  Integrations are available through the Adobe Experience Cloud Exchange. Adobe Analytics also supports data exchange with brands such as BrightEdge, Branch.io, Google Ads, Hootsuite, Invoca, Salesforce and over 200 other integrations.

   

  Pricing starts at $500 monthly, but prospective customers are encouraged to contact the company for a needs-based quotation.

   

  Strengths

  • Drag-and-drop interface
  • Flexible segmentation 
  • Easy-to-create conversion funnels
  • Threshold-based alerts and notifications

  Community critiques 

  • No free version
  • Lack of technical support
  • Steep learning curve

  5. Umami – Best lightweight tool for web analytics

  The second of our open-source analytics solutions is Umami, a favourite in the software development community. Like Matomo, it’s a powerful and privacy-focused alternative that offers complete data control and respects user privacy. It’s also available as a cloud-based freemium plan or as a self-hosted solution.

   

  

  Umami’s dashboard reveals the busiest times of day and which pages are visited when.(Image source)

   

  Why Umami : Unami has a clear and simple user interface (UI) that lets you measure important metrics such as page visits, referrers, and user agents. It also features event tracking, although some reviewers complain that it’s quite limited.

  Standout features can be summed up in five words : privacy, simplicity, lightweight, real-time, and open-source. Unami’s UI is clean, intuitive and modern, and it doesn’t slow down your website. 

  Integrations include plugins for VuePress, Gatsby, Craft CMS, Docusaurus, WordPress and Publii, and a module for Nuxt. Unami’s API communicates with Javascript, PHP Laravel and Python.

  Pricing is free for up to 100k monthly events and three websites, but with limited support and data retention restrictions. The Pro plan costs $20 a month and gives you unlimited websites and team members, a million events (plus $0.00002 for each event over that), five years of data and email support. Their Enterprise plan is priced custom.

  Strengths

  • Freemium plan
  • Open-source
  • Lightweight 

  Community critiques 

  • Limited support options
  • Data retention restrictions
  • No funnel functionality

  6. Heap – Best for automatic data capture

  Product analytics with a twist is a good description of Heap. It features event auto-capture to track user interactions across all touchpoints in the user journey. This lets you fully understand how and why customers engage with your product and website. 

  Using a single Javascript snippet, Heap automatically collects data on everything users do, including how they got to your website. It also helps identify how different cohorts engage with your product, providing the critical insights teams need to boost conversion rates.

  

  Heap’s journeys feature combines funnel and path analysis. (Image source)

   

  Why Heap : The auto-capture functionality solves a major shortcoming of many product analytics tools — manual tracking. Instead of having to set up manual tags on events, Heap automatically captures all data on user activity from the start. 

  Standout features include event auto-capture, session replay, heatmaps, segments (or cohorts) and journeys, the last of which combines the functions of funnel and path analysis tools into a single feature.

  Integrations include AWS, Google, Microsoft Azure, major CRM platforms, Snowflake and many other data manipulation platforms.

  Pricing is quote-based across all payment tiers. There is also a free plan and a 14-day free trial.

  Strengths

  • Session replay
  • Heatmaps 
  • User segmentation
  • Simple setup 
  • Event auto-capture 

  Community critiques 

  • No A/B testing functionality
  • No GDPR compliance support

  Choosing the best solution for your team

  When selecting a tool, it’s crucial to understand how product analytics and web analytics solutions differ. 

  Product analytics tools track users or accounts and record the features they use, the funnels they move through, and the cohorts they’re part of. Web analytics tools focus more on sessions than users because they’re interested in data that can help improve website usage. 

  Some tools combine product and web analytics to do both of these jobs.

  Area of focus

  Product analytics tools track user behaviour within SaaS- or app-based products. They’re helpful for analysing features, user journeys, engagement metrics, product development and iteration. 

  Web analytics tools analyse web traffic, user demographics, and traffic sources. They’re most often used for marketing and SEO insights.

  Level of detail

  Product analytics tools provide in-depth tracking and analysis of user interactions, feature usage, and cohort analysis.

  Web analytics tools provide broader data on page views, bounce rates, and conversion tracking to analyse overall site performance.

  Whatever tools you try, your first step should be to search for reviews online to see what people who’ve used them think about them. There are some great review sites you can try. See what people are saying on Capterra, G2, Gartner Peer Insights, or TrustRadius. 

  Use Matomo to power your web and app analytics

  Web and product analytics is a competitive field, and there are many other tools worth considering. This list is a small cross-section of what’s available.

  That said, if you have concerns about privacy and costs, consider choosing Matomo. Start your 21-day free trial today.

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• Matomo vs WP-Statistics – which web analytics plugin suits you best ?

  2 avril 2020, par Joselyn Khor — Analytics Tips, Plugins

  Due to the endless choices, you may be wondering which web analytics plugin (GA, Slimstat or WP-Statistics) to choose from on the WordPress directory. If the choice is between WP-Statistics and Matomo for WordPress, we’ve got you covered. Have a look at which could be the best option for you. Our team tested the WP-Statistics plugin to see how it compares. It’s hard not to be biased, but we’ll try our best to give you a fair assessment.

  The main considerations in this article : 

  • General overview
  • General comparison
  • Similarities
  • Differences
  • Three notable feature category comparisons
  • Which tool suits you better ?

  General overview

  What’s Matomo Analytics for WordPress ?

  Matomo for WordPress is a free, privacy-friendly web analytics plugin that lets you understand website visitors and how they behave on your site. With comprehensive insights, you get the opportunity to increase conversions, and the know-how to improve your website. 

  It lets you undertake essential analysis by tracking information, such as, where visitors are coming from, what your most popular pages are, and how visitors are using your site.

  In addition to the fundamentals, the tool also allows for advanced tracking and analysis with features that give you a full understanding of behavioural patterns and website performance. This enables you to optimise your WordPress website to increase sales or engagement.

  It offers a complete analytics package with the bonuses of 100% data ownership, no data sampling, and GDPR compliance. 

  What’s WP-Statistics ?

  WP-Statistics is currently the most used self-hosted WordPress statistics plugin. It provides reports that let you analyse who your visitors are, where they’re coming from, and to an extent what they’re doing on your website.

  Like Matomo for WordPress, it gives you an understanding of your audience which helps you make decisions on how to improve your website for more conversions. 

  As it’s self-hosted on your own WordPress servers it can be seen as a privacy-friendly choice with a few tweaks (more on this below).

  Like Matomo for WordPress, it gives you an understanding of your audience which helps you make decisions on how to improve your website for more conversions. 

  General comparison

  Let’s compare the installation process and the dashboards that get installed in your WordPress.

  Installation

  Both Matomo and WP-Statistics are installed directly in your WordPress so you’ll be able to see your analytics reports right in your WordPress dashboard. You can install them both straight from the WordPress Directory.

  The installation process for both plugins is beginner-friendly. You simply need to find them on the WordPress directory, click on ‘Install Now’, and tracking should start immediately in your WordPress dashboard.

  Dashboard

  For the main Matomo platform you’ll see :

  • Visitors – Overview, Visits Log, Real-time, Real-time Map, Locations, Devices, Software, Times, User IDs, Custom Variables, User Type
  • Behaviour – Pages, Entry Pages, Exit Pages, Page titles, Site Search, Outlinks, Downloads, Events, Contents, Engagement, Transitions, Users Flow, Top Paths, Page Author, Page Location, Page Type, Crawling errors
  • Acquisition – Overview, All Channels, Search Engine & Keywords, Websites, Social Networks, Campaigns, Campaign URL Builder, Crawling overview
  • Ecommerce – Overview, Ecommerce Log, Products, Sales, Multi Attribution
  • Goals – Overview, Multi Attribution, Choose Goals, Manage Goals
  • These may be worded differently from WP-Statistics, but they show you all the information you need to know about your traffic, pages, etc.

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  In the dashboard for WP-Statistics you’ll see :

  • Overview, Hits, Online, Referrers, Search Words, Search Engines, Pages, Visitors, Categories, Tags, Authors, Browsers, Top Visitors Today
  • These are the only things you can see in the dashboard. So you can’t click into them for a drop down section to get deeper insights. 
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  Key similarities between Matomo and WP-Statistics

  • Free to use
  • Self-hosted – All data collected is stored only within your own servers, no third parties have rights over your data, and logs or report data will never be sent to other servers. 
  • Beginner-friendly – Both offer simple reporting for people who are very much beginners and only want basic insights. With Matomo the advantage is also that you can get more details should you ever want/need to.

  Key differences between Matomo and WP-Statistics

  The main differences fall in these categories : features, privacy, documentation/support, security, active development, extensibility, price and ads.

  Features : 

  WP-Statistics – On a fundamental level, WP-Statistics is focused on simplicity and the basics. There are fewer reports than Matomo and they function on a level that suits beginners who are interested in seeing only the numbers of visitors on the website, and how often each page is viewed. 

  Matomo – provides an interface with similar simplicity. However, there is also a more feature-rich and more comprehensive user interface available. In addition to the basics, Matomo offers features like Goals, Ecommerce, in the free version which show a deeper level of insight. WP Statistics does not let you track essentials like Goals or Ecommerce.

  Privacy : 

  WP-Statistics – One of the concerns we wish to raise here is for data privacy. There doesn’t appear to be an opt-out option in WP-Statistics, which could be problematic for some privacy laws such as GDPR. There’s also no documentation on this.

  We were a bit concerned to see that WP-Statistics didn’t have IP anonymization enabled by default. Considering the IP address is personal data, it means you are not compliant with privacy laws such as the GDPR when you use this plugin unless you tweak the settings. They mentioned : “In previous versions, there was an option called Hash IP. When Hash IP was activated, the IP addresses wouldn’t be stored in the database, but instead, a unique hash would be used. In this new version, an option has been added to store IPs anonymously. This option is active by default.” However, when we installed this and tested it on multiple WordPress installations, this option was not active by default. 

  Matomo – has more measures in place to ensure privacy is respected, such as, opt-outs. Due to the stringent privacy features in place, Matomo is well equipped to ensure GDPR compliance. Matomo has an abundance of user guides and FAQs you can follow to configure your platform to fully comply with GDPR. There’s even an 12-step compliant checklist. The most compelling proof is that the leading voice on GDPR – The European Commission uses Matomo Analytics. 

  Documentation/Support : 

  WP-Statistics – has little documentation, FAQs, and no support.

  Matomo – has thousands of FAQs and user guides, as well as a dedicated support team and forum you can turn to for help. Should you ever run into any issue, this might be something important to consider.

  The contrast in support between WP-Statistics and Matomo for WordPress :

  

  

  Security :

  Matomo takes protecting your data very seriously. We have a security bounty programme giving security researchers money should they find any security issues. Matomo also performs a security review for every new release. We couldn’t find anything similar in WP-Statistics.

  Active development : 

  WP Statistics – doesn’t seem to have active development. The last change in this plugin was over three months ago (source : https://github.com/wp-statistics/wp-statistics/commits/master) and in general, only 10 people really contributed to it (source : https://github.com/wp-statistics/wp-statistics/graphs/contributors, the graphs shows little contributor activity.) 

  Matomo – has been built by hundreds of contributors (source : https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo/graphs/contributors), and is actively maintained by multiple developers including developers who work on this full time. This means you can rest assured that Matomo will be there for you in the future, it will receive regular improvements.

  Extensibility :

  WP-Statistics – have a section on their website offering customisation but for a price. 

  Matomo – should you want any changes and have some developer knowledge or some developers at hand, you can completely customise and extend Matomo for free. There are also one hundred additional plugins available for Matomo for free. 
  

  Price :

  The main WordPress plugins ‘WP Statistics‘ and ‘Matomo Analytics – Ethical Stats. Powerful Insights.‘ are both free.

  WP Statistics and Matomo also sell paid add-ons. However, WP-Statistics’ paid add-ons are ones already integrated in Matomo for free. These basic features are provided as the development team believe they’re necessities to a fully functional analytics platform. 

  Ads :

  WP Statistics shows you ads, whereas Matomo doesn’t.

  Three most notable feature category comparisons

  Both Matomo and WP-Statistics have basic tracking categories in the WP dashboard. In addition, Matomo has feature categories that can be expanded e.g. when clicked, Visitors drops down to reveal 11 more features. 

  We’ll compare three feature categories : Visitors, Behaviour, and Acquisitions.

  1. Visitors (WP-Statistics) vs Visitors (Matomo)

  Let’s dive into how each analytics platform provides insight into the visitors feature category.

  WP-Statistics

  

  WP-Statistics – We can see WP-Statistics gives you bare bones tracking capabilities so you don’t get a really detailed picture of your visitors. It allows you to monitor users currently online in real-time, which is useful to look at the most recent activity on your site. WP-Statistics doesn’t offer a dropdown section to see more about your visitor’s behavioural patterns. There is no Visitors category in WP-Statistics, just individual features in the dashboard but we can group three options together to compare with Matomo’s Visitors category, these are : Online, Browsers, Top Visitors Today.

  Matomo

  

  

  Comparison

  Matomo – In comparison, Matomo has a Visitors category with a dropdown list that lets you drill deeper into what your visitors are doing. It lets you evaluate every action an individual user has taken on your website which is compiled into a full historical profile. Matomo gives an in-depth view. E.g. you can look at individual visit logs, locations, and devices.

  This lets you see what the life-time journey of an active user looks like, or perhaps you want to see what a profile looks like for a user who comes back time-and-time again without ever purchasing ; there is no better way to gain insights to these journeys and this is why the Visitor Profiles feature is so widely used by Matomo users.

  2. Pages tracking (WP-Statistics) vs Behaviour (Matomo)

  For this comparison, WP-Statistics has a few features that can be combined to compare with Matomo’s Behaviour category. 

  WP-Statistics

  

  The Pages section in WP-Statistics gives a basic look at your most popular pages so you know which pages get more visits and those which aren’t performing. This helps with content improvement. You can also see other features in this Behaviour category like Browsers and Hits – these also provide basic stats to help you get a general sense of visitor behaviour. 

  Matomo

  

  Comparison :

  Matomo on the other hand has stats that go into greater detail. The features under the Behaviour section of the tool let you draw actionable conclusions e.g. seeing that a page has a higher exit rate than it’s supposed to, so you optimise that page to prevent people leaving and help them progress through your website. 

  Not only can you see popular pages, you can look at : which page people viewed first when they visited your website ; which page they left from ; what people search for on your site ; and see how people are flowing through pages. Most importantly you can see how each of these reports perform over time so you can improve engagement and conversions on your website.

  3. Referrers (WP-Statistics) vs Acquisition (Matomo)

  For this comparison, WP-Statistics has a few features that can be combined to compare with Matomo’s Acquisition category. 

  WP-Statistics

  

  WP-Statistics gives you Referrers, Search Words, and Search Engines. Which give a basic understanding of the channels that work best for you. This is helpful to know where to focus more of your attention.

  Matomo

  

  Comparison :

  With Matomo you see multiple layers of stats to understand how your acquisition channels are performing. So you can see tables of data that drill into visits, downloads, bounce rate, and newsletter sign ups. For example seeing that Facebook is the channel bringing in the most visitors to your site. This gives you a better sense of which acquisition strategy is working for your site. 

  Who suits WP-Statistics

  This is a great starter pack for people who want a lightweight, functional statistics plugin that gives you a basic overview of website hits and visitors. It’s very easy to use, so it’s great for beginners and those who want simple tracking. If you have basic goals for your website or blog’s success then WP-Statistics is enough for you to get numbers on visitors, page views, and hits, but won’t be suitable for a larger-scale business or organisation. 

  It’s suited for hobby websites, blogs, and freelancers who want simple, effective stats tracking, who don’t need detailed insights on site performance or tracking. 

  Who suits Matomo

  Matomo can be used for the same basic reporting, but has the capability for you to go deeper into more advanced reporting in a different UI if you need it. It’s an option that can work for a wider range of users – from beginners to analysts. There are features to suit all skill levels. This complete suite of features makes it a more comprehensive tool, as you can get more out of it. Ideal not only for bloggers and beginners, but also powerful enough to suit businesses, privacy-respecting organisations, and those who would benefit from conversion optimisation features. 

  You can draw insights from all stages of the customer journey – you’ll track behavioural patterns as soon as visitors enter your site, to their progression through your site, and ultimately to conversion and exit. It’s also an ethical choice because you get 100% data ownership. 

  If you’d like to look deeper into your data then Matomo would also be suitable for you. Matomo’s UI is lean, very easy to learn and shouldn’t overwhelm users in the way another tool like Google Analytics might do. If you think Matomo suits you best, you can install it for free now.

  Advantages of using Matomo

  Truly privacy-respecting

  There’s no messing about when it comes to privacy. As a lot of users are based in Europe, Matomo adheres to the strictest privacy laws and can be counted on as a privacy-respecting tool that’s used by many government entities. Needing to comply with major privacy laws (GDPR) in Europe means Matomo can proudly ensure users are making the ethical choice.

  GDPR compliance

  You mitigate the risks of getting caught out and fined for breaching GDPR regulations. There’s a complete list of documentation, guides, information, and tools to make sure you’re on the right side of GDPR. 

  All-rounder

  Matomo gives you a clearer picture of your visitors which helps you make better decisions for your website overall. The support and documentation is thorough which means you get more out of your Matomo experience.

  Conclusion

  Both tools will do you justice in terms of fundamental reporting, but Matomo Analytics will outshine if you want a greater understanding of your website and want to carry out deeper levels of analysis.

  You can draw useful insights with WP-Statistics so it has to be said that they are doing something right with an entry-level offering. The simplicity is great, but you won’t really get more than a basic idea of how your site is performing.

  On the flipside, this simplicity could also be a double-edged sword for WP-Statistics in that it’s too simplistic to draw actionable insights. If you’re wanting to know anything that could increase sales, conversions or subscribers – then you wouldn’t really get the reports to do so. 

  WP-Statistics also falls short when it comes to updates and support. So a major difference can be seen in support, active development, ads, security, documentation, which many people may think about until they’re in trouble and find they need these resources. Matomo offers support, continuous product development, and extensive documentation. There are also no ads, making it more enjoyable to use.

  One thing we’d like to raise awareness about is WP-Statistics’ claims of being privacy-respecting without much documentation to back up those claims. There is a lack of privacy features which could put some website owners at risk of non-compliance. Just be sure to check that you’ve carried out the steps to comply with the privacy laws in your country.

  Matomo makes it clear that privacy is essential as is compliance to privacy laws like GDPR. The strength also lies in the peace of mind you get from a tool that’s used by global privacy leaders such as the European Commission.