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• A Beginner’s Guide to Omnichannel Analytics

  14 avril 2024, par Erin

  Linear customer journeys are as obsolete as dial-up internet and floppy disks. As a marketing manager, you know better than anyone that customers interact with your brand hundreds of times across dozens of channels before purchasing. That can make tracking them a nightmare unless you build an omnichannel analytics solution. 

  Alas, if only it were that simple. 

  Unfortunately, it’s not enough to collect data on your customers’ complex journeys just by buying an omnichannel platform. You need to generate actionable insights by using marketing attribution to tie channels to conversions. 

  This article will explain how to build a useful omnichannel analytics solution that lets you understand and improve the customer journey.

  What is omnichannel analytics ?

  Omnichannel analytics collects and analyses customer data from every touchpoint and device. The goal is to collect all this omnichannel data in one place, creating a single, real-time, unified view of your customer’s journey.

  

  Unfortunately, most businesses haven’t achieved this yet. As Karen Lellouche Tordjman and Marco Bertini say :

  “Despite all the buzz around the concept of omnichannel, most companies still view customer journeys as a linear sequence of standardised touchpoints within a given channel. But the future of customer engagement transforms touchpoints from nodes along a predefined distribution path to full-blown portals that can serve as points of sale or pathways to many other digital and virtual interactions. They link to chatbots, kiosks, robo-advisors, and other tools that customers — especially younger ones — want to engage with.”

  However, doing so is more important than ever — especially when consumers have over 300 digital touchpoints, and the average number of touchpoints in the B2B buyer journey is 27.

  Not only that, but customers expect personalised experiences across every platform — that’s the kind you can only create when you have access to omnichannel data.

  

  What might omnichannel analytics look like in practice for an e-commerce store ?

  An online store would integrate data from channels like its website, mobile app, social media accounts, Google Ads and customer service records. This would show how customers find its brand, how they use each channel to interact with it and which channels convert the most customers. 

  This would allow the e-commerce store to tailor marketing channels to customers’ needs. For instance, they could focus social media use on product discovery and customer support. Google Ads campaigns could target the best-converting products. While all this is happening, the store could also ensure every channel looks the same and delivers the same experience. 

  What are the benefits of omnichannel analytics ?

  Why go to all the trouble of creating a comprehensive view of the customer’s experience ? Because you stand to gain some pretty significant benefits when implementing omnichannel analytics.

  

  Understand the customer journey

  You want to understand how your customers behave, right ? No other method will allow you to fully understand your customer journey the way omnichannel analytics does. 

  It doesn’t matter how customers engage with your brand — whether that’s your website, app, social media profiles or physical stores — omnichannel analytics capture every interaction.

  With this 360-degree view of your customers, it’s easy to understand how they move between channels, where they encounter issues and what bottlenecks prevent them from converting. 

  Deliver better personalisation

  We don’t have to tell you that personalisation matters. But do you know just how important it is ? Since 56% of customers will become repeat buyers after a personalised experience, delivering them as often as possible is critical. 

  Omnichannel analytics helps in your quest for personalisation by highlighting the individual preferences of customer segments. For example, e-commerce stores can use omnichannel analytics to understand how shoppers behave across different devices and tailor their offers accordingly. 

  Upgrade the customer experience

  Omnichannel analytics gives you the insights to improve every aspect of the customer experience. 

  For starters, you can ensure a consistent brand experience across all your top channels by making sure they look and behave the same.

  Then, you can use omnichannel insights to tailor each channel to your customers’ requirements. For example, most people interacting with your brand on social media may seek support. Knowing that you can create dedicated support accounts to assist users. 

  Improve marketing campaigns

  Which marketing campaigns or traffic sources convert the most customers ? How can you improve these campaigns ? Omnichannel analytics has the answers. 

  When you implement omnichannel analytics you automatically track the performance of every marketing channel by attributing each conversion to one or more traffic sources. This lets you see whether Google Ads bring in more customers than your SEO efforts. Or whether social media ads are the most profitable acquisition channel. 

  Armed with this information, you can improve your marketing efforts — either by focusing on your profitable channels or rectifying problems that stop less profitable channels from converting.

  What are the challenges of omnichannel analytics ?

  There are three challenges when implementing an omnichannel analytics solution :

  

  • Complex customer journeys : Customer journeys aren’t linear and can be incredibly difficult to track. 
  • Regulatory and privacy issues : When you start gathering customer data, you quickly come up against consumer privacy laws. 
  • No underlying goal : There has to be a reason to go to all this effort, but brands don’t always have goals in mind before they start. 

  You can’t do anything about the first challenge. 

  After all, your customer journey will almost never be linear. And isn’t the point of implementing an omnichannel solution to understand these complex journeys in the first place ? Once you set up omnichannel analytics, these journeys will be much easier to decipher. 

  As for the other two :

  Using the right software that respects user privacy and complies with all major privacy laws will avoid regulatory issues. Take Matomo, for instance. Our software was designed with privacy in mind and is configured to follow the strictest privacy laws, such as GDPR. 

  Tying omnichannel analytics to marketing attribution will solve the final challenge by giving your omnichannel efforts a goal. When you tie omnichannel analytics to your marketing efforts, you aren’t just getting a 360-degree view of your customer journey for the sake of it. You are getting that view to improve your marketing efforts and increase sales.

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  How to set up an omnichannel analytics solution

  Want to set up a seamless analytical environment that incorporates data from every possible source ? Follow these five steps :

  Choose one or more analytics providers

  You can use several tools to build an omnichannel analytics solution. These include web and app analytics tools, customer data platforms that centralise first-party data and business intelligence tools (typically used for visualisation). 

  Which tools you use will depend on your goals and your budget — the loftier your ambitions and the higher your budget, the more tools you can use. 

  Ideally, you should use as few tools as possible to capture your data. Most teams won’t need business intelligence platforms, for example. However, you may or may not need both an analytics platform and a customer data platform. Your decision will depend on how many channels your customers use and how well your analytics tool tracks everything.

  If it can capture web and app usage while integrating with third-party platforms like your back-end e-commerce platform, then it’s probably enough.

  Collect accurate data at every touchpoint 

  Your omnichannel analytics efforts hinge on the quantity and quality of data you can collect. You want to gather data from every touchpoint possible and store that data in as few places as possible. That’s why choosing as few tools as possible in the step above is so important. 

  So, where should you start ? Common data sources include :

  • Your website
  • Apps (iOS and Android)
  • Social media profiles
  • ERPs
  • PoS systems

  At the same time, make sure you’re tracking all relevant metrics. Revenue, customer engagement and conversion-focused metrics like conversion rate, dwell time, cart abandonment rate and churn rate are particularly important. 

  Set up marketing attribution

  Setting up marketing attribution (also known as multi-touch attribution) is essential to tie omnichannel data to business goals. It’s the only way to know exactly how valuable each marketing channel is and where each customer comes from. 

  You’ll want to use multi-touch attribution, given you have data from across the customer journey.

  

  Multi-touch attribution models can include (but are not limited to) :

  • Linear : where each touchpoint is given equal weighting
  • Time decay : where touchpoints are more valuable the nearer they are to conversion
  • Position-based : where the first and last touch points are more valuable than all the others. 

  You don’t have to use just one of the models above, however. One of the benefits of using a web analytics tool like Matomo is that you can choose between different attribution models and compare them.

  Try Matomo for Free

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

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  Create reports that help you visualise data

  Dashboards are your friend here. They’ll let you see KPIs at a glance, allowing you to keep track of day-to-day changes in your customer journey. Ideally, you’ll want a platform that lets you customise dashboard widgets so only relevant KPIs are shown. 

  

  Setting up standard and custom reports is also important. Custom reports allow you to choose metrics and dimensions that align with your goals. They will also allow you to present your data most meaningfully to your team, increasing the likelihood they act upon insights. 

  Analyse data and take action

  Now that you have customer journey data at your fingertips, it’s time to analyse it. After all, there’s no point in implementing an omnichannel analytics solution if you aren’t going to take action. 

  If you’re unsure where to start, re-read the benefits we listed at the start of this article. You could use your omnichannel insights to improve your marketing campaigns by doubling down on the channels that bring in the best customers.

  Or you could identify (and fix) bottlenecks in the customer journey so customers are less likely to fall out of your funnel between certain channels. 

  Just make sure you take action based on your data alone.

  Make the most of omnichannel analytics with Matomo

  A comprehensive web and app analytics platform is vital to any omnichannel analytics strategy. 

  But not just any solution will do. When privacy regulations impede an omnichannel analytics solution, you need a platform to capture accurate data without breaking privacy laws or your users’ trust. 

  That’s where Matomo comes in. Our privacy-friendly web analytics platform ensures accurate tracking of web traffic while keeping you compliant with even the strictest regulations. Moreover, our range of APIs and SDKs makes it easy to track interactions from all your digital products (website, apps, e-commerce back-ends, etc.) in one place. 

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

  Try Matomo for Free

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• Is Google Analytics Accurate ? 6 Important Caveats

  8 novembre 2022, par Erin

  It’s no secret that accurate website analytics is crucial for growing your online business — and Google Analytics is often the go-to source for insights. 

  But is Google Analytics data accurate ? Can you fully trust the provided numbers ? Here’s a detailed explainer.

  How Accurate is Google Analytics ? A Data-Backed Answer 

  When properly configured, Google Analytics (Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4) is moderately accurate for global traffic collection. That said : Google Analytics doesn’t accurately report European traffic. 

  According to GDPR provisions, sites using GA products must display a cookie consent banner. This consent is required to collect third-party cookies — a tracking mechanism for identifying users across web properties.

  Google Analytics (GA) cannot process data about the user’s visit if they rejected cookies. In such cases, your analytics reports will be incomplete.

  Cookie rejection refers to visitors declining or blocking cookies from ever being collected by a specific website (or within their browser). It immediately affects the accuracy of all metrics in Google Analytics.

  Google Analytics is not accurate in locations where cookie consent to tracking is legally required. Most consumers don’t like disruptive cookie banners or harbour concerns about their privacy — and chose to reject tracking. 

  This leaves businesses with incomplete data, which, in turn, results in : 

  • Lower traffic counts as you’re not collecting 100% of the visitor data. 
  • Loss of website optimisation capabilities. You can’t make data-backed decisions due to inconsistent reporting

  For the above reasons, many companies now consider cookieless website tracking apps that don’t require consent screen displays. 

  Why is Google Analytics Not Accurate ? 6 Causes and Solutions 

  A high rejection rate of cookie banners is the main reason for inaccurate Google Analytics reporting. In addition, your account settings can also hinder Google Analytics’ accuracy.

  If your analytics data looks wonky, check for these six Google Analytics accuracy problems. 

  You Need to Secure Consent to Cookies Collection 

  To be GDPR-compliant, you must display a cookie consent screen to all European users. Likewise, other jurisdictions and industries require similar measures for user data collection. 

  This is a nuisance for many businesses since cookie rejection undermines their remarketing capabilities. Hence, some try to maximise cookie acceptance rates with dark patterns. For example : hide the option to decline tracking or make the texts too small. 

  

  Sadly, not everyone’s treating users with respect. A joint study by German and American researchers found that only 11% of US websites (from a sample of 5,000+) use GDPR-compliant cookie banners.

  As a result, many users aren’t aware of the background data collection to which they have (or have not) given consent. Another analysis of 200,000 cookies discovered that 70% of third-party marketing cookies transfer user data outside of the EU — a practice in breach of GDPR.

  Naturally, data regulators and activities are after this issue. In April 2022, Google was pressured to introduce a ‘reject all’ cookies button to all of its products (a €150 million compliance fine likely helped with that). Whereas, noyb has lodged over 220 complaints against individual websites with deceptive cookie consent banners.

  The takeaway ? Messing up with the cookie consent mechanism can get you in legal trouble. Don’t use sneaky banners as there are better ways to collect website traffic statistics. 

  Solution : Try Matomo GDPR-Friendly Analytics 

  Fill in the gaps in your traffic analytics with Matomo – a fully GDPR-compliant product that doesn’t rely on third-party cookies for tracking web visitors. Because of how it is designed, the French data protection authority (CNIL) confirmed that Matomo can be used to collect data without tracking consent.

  With Matomo, you can track website users without asking for cookie consent. And when you do, we supply you with a compact, compliant, non-disruptive cookie banner design. 

  Your Google Tag Isn’t Embedded Correctly 

  Google Tag (gtag.js) is a web tracking script that sends data to your Google Analytics, Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform.

  A corrupted gtag.js installation can create two accuracy issues : 

  • Duplicate page tracking 
  • Missing script installation 

  Is there a way to tell if you’re affected ?

  Yes. You may have duplicate scripts installed if you have a very low bounce rate on most website pages (below 15% – 20%). The above can happen if you’re using a WordPress GA plugin and additionally embed gtag.js straight in your website code. 

  A tell-tale sign of a missing script on some pages is low/no traffic stats. Google alerts you about this with a banner : 

  

  Solution : Use Available Troubleshooting Tools 

  Use Google Analytics Debugger extension to analyse pages with low bounce rates. Use the search bar to locate duplicate code-tracking elements. 

  Alternatively, you can use Google Tag Assistant for diagnosing snippet install and troubleshooting issues on individual pages. 

  If the above didn’t work, re-install your analytics script. 

  Machine Learning and Blended Data Are Applied

  Google Analytics 4 (GA4) relies a lot on machine learning and algorithmic predictions.

  By applying Google’s advanced machine learning models, the new Analytics can automatically alert you to significant trends in your data. [...] For example, it calculates churn probability so you can more efficiently invest in retaining customers.

  Vidhya Srinivasan, VP of Measurement, Analytics and Buying Platforms at Google

  On the surface, the above sounds exciting. In practice, Google’s application of predictive algorithms means you’re not seeing actual data. 

  To offer a variation of cookieless tracking, Google algorithms close the gaps in reporting by creating models (i.e., data-backed predictions) instead of reporting on actual user behaviours. Therefore, your GA4 numbers may not be accurate.

  For bigger web properties (think websites with 1+ million users), Google also relies on data sampling — a practice of extrapolating data analytics, based on a data subset, rather than the entire dataset. Once again, this can lead to inconsistencies in reporting with some numbers (e.g., average conversion rates) being inflated or downplayed. 

  Solution : Try an Alternative Website Analytics App 

  Unlike GA4, Matomo reports consist of 100% unsampled data. All the aggregated reporting you see is based on real user data (not guesstimation). 

  Moreover, you can migrate from Universal Analytics (UA) to Matomo without losing access to your historical records. GA4 doesn’t yet have any backward compatibility.

  Spam and Bot Traffic Isn’t Filtered Out 

  Surprise ! 42% of all Internet traffic is generated by bots, of which 27.7% are bad ones.

  Good bots (aka crawlers) do essential web “housekeeping” tasks like indexing web pages. Bad bots distribute malware, spam contact forms, hack user accounts and do other nasty stuff. 

  A lot of such spam bots are designed specifically for web analytics apps. The goal ? Flood your dashboard with bogus data in hopes of getting some return action from your side. 

  Types of Google Analytics Spam :

  • Referral spam. Spambots hijack the referrer, displayed in your GA referral traffic report to indicate a page visit from some random website (which didn’t actually occur). 
  • Event spam. Bots generate fake events with free language entries enticing you to visit their website. 
  • Ghost traffic spam. Malicious parties can also inject fake pageviews, containing URLs that they want you to click. 

  Obviously, such spammy entities distort the real website analytics numbers. 

  Solution : Set Up Bot/Spam Filters 

  Google Analytics 4 has automatic filtering of bot traffic enabled for all tracked Web and App properties. 

  But if you’re using Universal Analytics, you’ll have to manually configure spam filtering. First, create a new view and then set up a custom filter. Program it to exclude :

  • Filter Field : Request URI
  • Filter Pattern : Bot traffic URL

  Once you’ve configured everything, validate the results using Verify this filter feature. Then repeat the process for other fishy URLs, hostnames and IP addresses. 

  You Don’t Filter Internal Traffic 

  Your team(s) spend a lot of time on your website — and their sporadic behaviours can impair your traffic counts and other website metrics.

  To keep your data “employee-free”, exclude traffic from : 

  • Your corporate IPs addresses 
  • Known personal IPs of employees (for remote workers) 

  If you also have a separate stage version of your website, you should also filter out all traffic coming from it. Your developers, contractors and marketing people spend a lot of time fiddling with your website. This can cause a big discrepancy in average time on page and engagement rates. 

  Solution : Set Internal Traffic Filters 

  Google provides instructions for excluding internal traffic from your reports using IPv4/IPv6 address filters. 

  

  Session Timeouts After 30 Minutes 

  After 30 minutes of inactivity, Google Analytics tracking sessions start over. Inactivity means no recorded interaction hits during this time. 

  Session timeouts can be a problem for some websites as users often pin a tab to check it back later. Because of this, you can count the same user twice or more — and this leads to skewed reporting. 

  Solution : Programme Custom Timeout Sessions

  You can codify custom cookie timeout sessions with the following code snippets : 

  • _setSessionCookieTimeout. Set a custom new session cookie timeout in milliseconds.
  • _setVisitorCookieTimeout. Sets a custom Google Analytics visitor cookie expiration time frame in milliseconds.

  Final Thoughts 

  Thanks to its scale and longevity, Google Analytics has some strong sides, but its data accuracy isn’t 100% perfect.

  The inability to capture analytics data from users who don’t consent to cookie tracking and data sampling applied to bigger web properties may be a deal-breaker for your business. 

  If that’s the case, try Matomo — a GDPR-compliant, accurate web analytics solution. Start your 21-day free trial now. No credit card required.

  21 day free trial. No credit card required.

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• France rules Google Analytics non-compliant with GDPR

  11 février 2022, par Erin — Privacy

  Breaking news : The French Data Protection Agency, CNIL (Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés), has concluded that the use of Google Analytics is illegal under GDPR. The CNIL has begun issuing formal notices to website managers using Google Analytics.

  This follows the January 2022 Austrian Data Protection Authority’s decision to declare Google Analytics illegal to use under GDPR.

  Google Analytics GDPR breaches continue to spread through the EU

  Since the invalidation of the Privacy Shield framework, an agreement between the EU and US that allowed the transfer of data to certified US companies, the CNIL and other EU data protection authorities have received numerous complaints regarding data transfers collected during visits to websites using Google Analytics.

  "It’s interesting to see that the different European Data Protection Authorities all come to the same conclusion : the use of Google Analytics is illegal. There is a European task force and we assume that this action is coordinated and other authorities will decide similarly."

  About the CNIL’s decision

  In this model case, the CNIL has found that an unnamed website’s use of Google Analytics is non-compliant with GDPR because it had breached Article 44 which prohibits the transfer of personal data beyond the EU, unless the recipient country can prove adequate data protection. 

  Under the GDPR, personal data covers a range of identifiers including email address, race, gender, phone number to name a few, but the less obvious identifiers include IP addresses or cookie IDs, for instance. 

  The CNIL’s decision was based on the fact that the US does not meet GDPR sufficient levels of data protection as a result of US surveillance laws. Therefore, the unnamed website’s use of Google Analytics created risks for their website visitors when their personal data was exported to the US. 

  At the time of writing, it is unknown if the CNIL has issued a fine for the GDPR breach. However, the website manager of the unnamed website has been ordered by the CNIL to comply with the GDPR and, if necessary, stop using Google Analytics under the current conditions.

  "One thing we’re certain of is that these decisions will continue to roll out throughout the EU and potentially beyond.

  Other countries are imposing their own privacy regulations that closely mirror the GDPR like Brazil’s General Data Protection Law (LGPD), India’s Data Protection Bill, New Zealand’s Privacy Act and Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) to name a few.”

  The CNIL offers an evaluation programme to help website managers determine whether web analytics solutions are exempt from collecting data prior to users’ agreement to opt-in through consent screens. Matomo, for instance, is a leading Google Analytics alternative that has been recommended by CNIL and is exempt from tracking consent. 

  

  English translation : “This is why I anticipated this announcement, gradually moving the analytics of my sites to @matomo_org since several weeks !

  “The @CNIL believes that the use of @googleanalytics is a violation of #GDPR”

  Immediate action required for Google Analytics users

  The CNIL and other EU-based data protection authorities have made their stance on Google Analytics clear and inaction will likely result in fines, which under the GDPR, can be up to €20 million or 4% of the organisation’s global turnover – whichever is higher.

  Based on the CNIL’s formal notice to the model case’s website manager, Google Analytics users should take immediate action to remove any chances of personal data being transferred to the US or find a Google Analytics alternative that is GDPR compliant. 

  

  English translation : “The CNIL considers that the use of Google Analytics is a violation of the GDPR. I use @matomo_org and I welcome it *winking face* It will squeal tires among growthackers who are slaughtering. Opportunity to look at alternative tools”

  Ready to begin your journey to GDPR compliance with Matomo ? Start your 21-day free trial now (no credit card required) and take advantage of our Google Analytics importer so you don’t lose any of your historical data. 

  Try 21-day free Cloud trial

  What does this mean for Matomo users ?

  As the GDPR continues to evolve, our users can rest assured that Matomo will be at the forefront of these changes. With Matomo Cloud, all data is stored in the EU or in your country of choice when you self-host on your own servers with Matomo On-Premise.

  Conclusion

  Google is in the EU’s crosshairs and organisations that continue to use their tools will be the one’s left to clean up the mess – not Google. Now is the time to act. Search for a Google Analytics alternative and close your compliance gaps today. 

  Join over 1 million other websites using Matomo now. Give Matomo a try with a 21-day free trial – no credit card required. 

  Try 21-day free Cloud trial

  We’d like to also bring attention to the privacy-fighting efforts from noyb and Max Schrems, as this should not go unnoticed. noyb is an independent, non-profit organisation that relies on the support of individuals. Support privacy by supporting noyb – donate or become a member now. 

  Contact details for media :

  For quotes or interviews, please email marketing@matomo.org