Web Analytics Beginner by Sheryl Gunno

Piwik PRO Core vs. Google Analytics Reasons to Consider an Alternative to Google Analytics W3Tech found that 56.8% of all websites use Google Analytics. It’s free, full of features and well known but there are a variety of reasons to consider an alternative : Google uses the data for their purposes and it is possible some customers may not like their data being used by them. Perhaps your business reputation has been impacted. Privacy compliance is important and you need a way to handle consent and data requests. You need secure options for storing data. You want to use Personal Identifiable Information (PII) to create customer views. You don’t want data sampling (Lunowicka, 2021). Ability to track properties with unique security concerns is necessary. Piwik PRO Core Plan Features , Pricing   and Overview Piwik PRO has a Core plan that is described as free forever and an Enterprise plan that requires a quote to determine price. While Piwik PRO is generally marketed as an alternative...

  Google Analytics Returning Visitors Explained Returning Visitors Defined Returning visitors in Google Analytics are visitors who have returned to your site within a 2-year period on the same device. If they return after the 2-year window, they will be counted as a new visitor. This gets complicated though as it is dependent upon Google’s tracking snippet . If the cookie is present, the visitor is returning. If not present, the visitor is new. If the same user visits from different devices, each visit is a new visit rather than a returning visit. Even multiple browsers on the same device can lead to new visitor counts rather than returning visitor. Adding in deletion and blocking of cookies will further count a visitor as new vs. returning. It’s important to remember that even though the definition of returning visitor is simple the reality is more complex causing the number to be lower than the actual number.   Returning Visitors Report To find the information on returni...

 What Are  Landing Pages in Google Analytics and How Can I Use Them? What Is a Landing Page? We spend time designing a website. The results are pleasing to look at and include all the features needed to collect lead information and facilitate purchases. However, the pages intended to be landed upon may not be the page where a session starts. The first page viewed in a session is the landing page in Google Analytics. When we look at first pages visitors view, we can learn not only what pages receive the most traffic but also which behaviors occur when a session begins on a particular page.   Landing Page Reports in Google Analytics To find the Landing Pages report, click Behavior>Site Content>Landing Pages. It will show the top landing pages sorted by most visits to least visits measured in sessions. We can see an estimated percentage of all sessions that are from new users as well as the number of new users. Each landing page on which a session has begun will have ...