Online marketing
In addition to the familiar enthusiasm for Google Analytics, there is increasing demand for the privacy-friendly analytics tool Matomo. We get the best of both worlds by combining services!
On July 1, 2023, Google will stop supporting Universal Analytics. This old version of Google Analytics goes against the General Data Protection Regulation. Successor Google Analytics 4 does comply with the GDPR and offers insight into the customer journey of users as well as protection in accordance with current European requirements regarding privacy. For example, IP addresses are no longer stored.
For years, Google Analytics has been the most popular and trusted web analytics tool in the world. The tool monitors all traffic on your website and translates that into detailed reports on the behavior of your visitors and the performance of your campaigns and e-commerce efforts. By switching to Google Analytics 4 you are prepared for a cookie-free world and therefore future-proof. GA4 is based on events and parameters, works cross-platform and supplements data as realistically as possible using machine learning.
With a large number of new features and improvements compared to Universal Analytics, Google Analytics 4 is currently both future and privacy proof. Why then the increasing demand for Matomo ?
The growing interest in Matomo is due to increasingly strict privacy requirements. Google Analytics stores data in the United States. Because this is outside Europe, there is a real chance that GA4 will no longer meet the then applicable - and expectedly higher - requirements of European privacy legislation within a few years. And then Matomo comes into play. Just like Google Analytics, Matomo is a program to track website visitor statistics. The important difference is that Matomo stores personal data within Europe.
Both web analysis systems measure the performance of your website and give you a glimpse into the behavior of your visitors. Where Google Analytics 4 mainly measures events, Matomo goes deeper into the individual user by collecting detailed data. This includes data such as the duration of the visit, the operating system, the browser, the location, the screen resolution, the referrer and the pages visited by the visitor. Matomo then creates an anonymous but unique profile for each visitor, allowing you to determine whether someone visits your website more often. With servers in Germany, Matomo, unlike Google, is also allowed to collect this kind of valuable data. Moreover, with the free version of Matomo you store all data on your own server, giving you 100% ownership of the data. And that is exactly Matomo's added value for online marketers.
Another advantage of Matomo compared to Google Analytics is the offering of heat maps; maps that show where on a page users are most active. This feature is available as standard with Matomo's premium subscription, but also available as a separate module with the free version.
In the future, Matomo may be an excellent, privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics. For now, however, we prefer a combination of the two services, because Matomo is difficult to link to common reporting systems and dashboards such as Google Data Studio. We therefore focus on the advanced Google Analytics 4 with Matomo as a valuable addition. Our advice: set up GA4 properly, get used to the new interface and use Matomo alongside it. This way you are prepared if there is a ban on Google Analytics (which is already the case in several European countries) and you immediately benefit from the benefits of Matomo. Win win!
Need help setting up both services efficiently? Our experienced marketers are happy to help you!