Disclaimer: As of 10/07/2023, the European Commission announced on Monday that it had adopted a new adequacy decision for the transfer of data between the EU and the USA, validating the use of the Google Analytics 4 in Europe. Read more in this article: GA4 compliance CE decision 10/07/2023
Have you created a website for your business and are looking to maximize conversions? Are you a digital marketing expert looking to optimize a website's user experience? In all cases, the use of a site analysis tool is essential. To collect and analyze audience data, the first reflex is usually to use Google Analytics. However, there is a very relevant competitor: Matomo. Each has very relevant strengths, but Matomo can potentially meet your expectations, particularly with regard to compliance with the RGPD (General Data Protection Regulation).
Let's find out more the benefits of a traffic analysis toolbut also the features and the strengths of each platform.
Why opt for an analysis tool?
To stand out from the competition, it is essential to offer your customers a high-quality user experience. This includes an attractive home page, optimal page loading speed and personalized navigation and services.
To personalize your audience's experience and meet their expectations, you first need to understand them. This means understanding the behavior of website visitors and analyzing how they navigate the Web, analysis tools are essential.
These offer you the opportunity to fine-tune your marketing strategy by acquiring important information about your users. This may, for example, be the origin of visitors or the number of unique visitors. Audience measurement tools will centralize the data collected, enabling you to Site traffic and performance measurement via key indicators or KPIs.
The benefits of analytics tools
Analysis tools are essential if you want to improve the relevance of your digital marketing and increase the return on your investment.
Here are some of the advantages of these online solutions:
- Understanding your users : The first use of audience measurement is to identify the path taken by your users through the analysis of your website traffic. It also enables you to identify irritating points that could lead your users to leave your site.
- Identify growth drivers : Web analytics are ideal for identifying the channels used by your audiences, so you can redirect your marketing strategy if necessary. You can leverage your site statistics to focus on the channels from which your users come, and optimize the conversion funnel.
- Measuring performance : Having a large number of relevant statistics is useful for measuring the effectiveness of your marketing actions, be they SEO and SEA campaigns or even one-off website modifications.
- Optimizing ROI: By identifying areas for improvement, you can optimize your return on investment by responding more precisely to your users' expectations.
Matomo and Google Analytics: essential analysis tools
Among website analytics solutions, Matomo and Google Analytics are among the best-known.
Google Analytics
Since 2005, Google has offered an analysis solution called Google Analytics. It consists of the most widely used audience measurement tool. More than 10 million websites worldwide use it every day. Different iterations have been deployed over the years. The latest version of the platform is Google Analytics 4which takes over from Google Analytics 3, also known as Universal Analytics.
Matomo
The more recent Matomo platform has been around since 2007. Until 2018, it was known as Piwik Analytics. Like its competitor Google Analytics, Matomo provides an analysis of your website's page traffic. For example,the online solution lets you find out more about your audience via various KPIs such as page views, visits and conversion rates.
Matomo VS Google Analytics: The duel
The Matomo and Google Analytics analytics tools offer some similar features. Each platform allows you to precisely analyze your audience by identifying traffic sources and tracking visit statistics. However, there are a few differences, differences can be seen on certain points such as pricing and tool customization.
Ease of use
The use of analytics tools is essential to measure your audience and drive traffic to your website. However, depending on your level of technical expertise, ergonomics can be one of the sticking points when choosing the right software.
Fortunately, both Web Analytics platforms are easy to use. Each tool's dashboard is comprehensive and intuitive.
Reports available
Matomo and Google Analytics offer highly relevant reports for analyzing audiences and boosting web performance. In particular, they can be used to track the keywords on which you need to position yourself on search engines in order to improve SEO. You can also obtain data on each page visited, analyze visitor behavior and create audience segments.
Google Analytics offers powerful AI features such as predictive analysis. While Matomo places less emphasis on AI, it is more relevant in terms of data transparency and control.
Our rates
Google Analytics and Matomo allow you to get started with audience analysis quickly and free of charge via their basic offering. For example, creating a Google Analytics account is completely free. However, if you need more advanced features and a larger volume of data, you'll need to upgrade to Google Analytics 360. This platform, in its Google Analytics 4 starts at USD 50,000 per month.
Matomo for his part offers a free Matomo On-Premise plan. The more comprehensive Matomo Cloud pay version starts at 19 euros per month for 50,000 clicks.
Customization and extensions
Google Analytics is a great tool for tracking and analyzing every page on your site. The webanalytics statistics offered by the platform are relevant and varied, as you can access personalized reports and segment your audience.
But Matomo goes much further, thanks to its open-source design. All users can modify the tool's source code and develop extensions to meet the very specific needs of professionals.
Support and community
It's a good idea to use a Web analytics platform with a large and active community. This way, you can access essential information to understand how the software works and analyze web page audiences with great precision.
Although it's easy to find a large number of tutorials and forums on Google Analytics, here too Matomo benefits from its open source orientation. That's right, the community around this SaaS solution is large and very active. You can therefore count on them to guide you through the analysis tool.
RGPD issues
While the functionalities of both tools should all be taken into consideration, one criterion requires your attention, and that is the RGPD. Indeed, the CNIL (Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés) declared in 2022 that. Google Analytics did not comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (RGPD). Now, your site must necessarily comply with legal obligations concerning privacy protection. A company can be fined up to 4% of annual sales in the event of a data breach or non-compliance in accordance with Article 83 of the RGPD.
In this respect, Matomo comes into its own, as the solution is renowned for its transparency and respect for personal data. In fact, it has been approved by CNIL as a tool for protecting data confidentiality.
That's right, a set of Matomo-specific functions guarantee RGPD compliance:
- Data anonymization ;
- Users have the possibility of refusing any follow-up ;
- Data can be deleted on request;
- Visitor logs can be disabled ;
- Data stored within the EU ;
- Etc.
These features allow you touse an analysis tool while complying with legal obligations. And Matomo isn't just an RGPD-compliant platform. It also integrates unique features such as heatmaps or video analytics.
Matomo or Google Analytics, which tool should you choose?
Finally, choosing the ideal tool among these audience measurement platforms depends above all on your specific needs. If integration with the Google ecosystem is important to you, Google Analytics is an obvious choice. If data ownership and privacy are important to you, Matomo is a credible and even recommended alternative.
In any case, each tool will enable you to obtain quality Web statistics. You'll be able to measure website traffic, track conversions and optimize your conversion tunnel. The best solution is to compare features, but also test the tools to make up your own mind although we recommend you consider Matomo for its scrupulous compliance with RGPD.
