Matomo Analytics: An alternative to GA4

Matomo Analytics is an open-source web analytics platform, alternative to Google Analytics 4, focused on privacy protection. GDPR-compliant and recommended by the CNIL, Matomo guarantees full data ownership.

Matomo stands out with several major advantages that make it a relevant choice for your data analytics needs. Let’s explore in detail the aspects that make Matomo a unique solution.

Open-source

Matomo is a free and open-source software, giving users total freedom to use, edit, share and study the code. Protected by the GPL (General Public License) v3, this software will always remain free and accessible, preventing any drift towards a proprietary model.

Matomo is distinguished by its active community, which contributes to the security, reliability and evolution of the software. It embodies the principles of free software, defending users’ technological autonomy.

No data sampling

Data sampling in Google Analytics 4 can result in inaccurate reports, which can lead to erroneous and costly business decisions.

For example, if you have 5 million views, only 500,000 will be accurately analyzed. Matomo, on the other hand, guarantees total data accuracy without sampling, providing a solid basis for informed decisions.

100% data ownership

Matomo enables customers to retain full ownership of their data without the intervention of external sources. The tool ensures that information remains in the hands of website owners and their visitors.

Privacy and GDPR compliance

With mechanisms such as IP address anonymization, DoNotTrack compliance, integrated GDPR tools, use of proprietary cookies and data deletion on demand, Matomo respects the privacy of your visitors.

Data is stored in the EU or in the user’s country of choice. In addition, Matomo is approved by the CNIL to collect data with consent exemption under a specific configuration .

Why Matomo in Server-Side?

Bypass ad blockers

Ad blockers (such as uBlock) block the loading of the Matomo script (matomo.js), even though Matomo has nothing to do with ad tracking.

Switching to server-side allows you to bypass this problem.

Data governance

By sending data to your own server, you can delete, alter or add data before sending it to Matomo. This allows great flexibility in managing your organization’s data.

Improve page loading time

Server-side tracking improves your website’s loading time by shifting the processing of tracking scripts from the browser to the server. This reduces the number of requests and resources required to load on the user’s browser, which in turn reduces page weight and accelerates page display.

Matomo Analytics server-side configuration

In this tutorial, you’ll configure the Matomo Analytics tag developed by our partner Data Marketing School and available in the Google Tag Manager Server-Side gallery.

You’ll discover the configuration steps for sending various events to Matomo, such as page views, actions, goals, outlinks, site search and e-commerce events. We’ll also explain how to configure custom dimensions and heartbeat requests.

But first, we’ll start by importing the tag into your GTM Server-Side container.

Import the Matomo Analytics tag

Search in gallery

On your GTM Server-Side container, go to Templates > Tag Templates > Search Gallery.

Add tag

Search the gallery for the Matomo Analytics tag from Data Marketing School.

Then click on Add to workspace in the top right-hand corner.

Configure the Matomo Analytics tag

Now that the Matomo Analytics tag is imported, it’s available when you try to create a new tag.

Select the recently imported tag from the gallery.

To configure the tag, two pieces of information are required:

• The Site ID on which to send data
• The Auth Token enabling communication with the Tracking API

Once you’ve retrieved the auth token and site ID, you can move on to the next step and start configuring the tag.

Tag presentation

Page views

In Matomo, page views are used to measure user activity on a website. They track the number of times a specific page has been viewed, helping to understand which pages are most popular, how long users spend on each page, and how they navigate from one page to the next.

To send page views to Matomo, you need to fill in the following fields:

Then trigger this tag when the client name is GA4 and the event name is page_view.

=> Check page view received data

Actions

In Matomo, an action represents any significant visitor interaction with your website. It’s a broader concept than the simple page view, capturing a wide variety of interactions.

Types of actions in Matomo:

• Page views: every page visited by a user is counted as an action.
• Events: specific actions you want to track, such as clicking a button, playing a video, etc.
• Goals: achievement of a predefined goal, such as making a purchase, subscribing to a newsletter, sending a form, etc.
• Outlinks: where your users go after leaving your website.
• Downloads: your audience’s interest in your downloadable content.
• Site search: identify your visitors’ intentions.

Events

Events in Matomo are specific actions you want to track on your website. They enable you to get more details about what your visitors do between two page views (this could be a scroll, a button click, etc.).

In short, with events you can track any metrics you like, giving you more freedom. Events generally represent micro-conversions; prefer goals for macro-conversions.

=> Check event received data

Goals

Goals in Matomo are the larger actions (macro-conversions) that your visitors perform on your website, such as submitting a quote request form or purchasing a product.

=> Check goal received data

Links

Outlinks in Matomo let you know where your visitors go after they leave your website.

=> Check outlinks and downloads received data

Site search

Site search enables you to analyze the terms your visitors use to find information on your website.

Among other things, this enables you to:

• understand the user’s needs
• improve and personalize their experience
• identify gaps/holes in your content

=> Check site search received data

E-commerce

E-commerce tracking allows you to track your visitors’ purchasing path.

What data can you track?

• Products viewed and added to cart: Which products and product categories are most attractive to your visitors?
• Conversion rate: What percentage of visitors make a purchase?
• Revenue per visit: What is the revenue generated by each visit?
• Traffic sources: Where do your customers come from (social networks, search engines, etc.)?

Category views

Category views represent the number of times a specific product category has been viewed. It’s an indicator that allows you to track your visitors’ interest in different sections of your catalog.

=> Check category views received data

Product views

Product views represent the number of times a specific product has been viewed. This indicator enables you to track your visitors’ interest in different products in your catalog.

=> Check product view received data

Cart updates

Abandoned carts are a key indicator in e-commerce analysis. Matomo enables you to track these carts and understand why customers don’t complete their purchases.

window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
dataLayer.push({
    event: "cart_update",
    ecommerce: {
        value: 2.99,
        items: [{ // current cart contents
            item_id: "123456",
            item_name: "Red shoes",
            item_category: "Shoes",
            price: 2.99,
            quantity: 1
        }]
    }
});

=> Check cart update received data

Orders

In Matomo, orders represent the final action in a purchasing process: the transaction carried out by a customer.

=> Check order received data

Contents

Content tracking lets you know how many times a specific ad or banner was displayed and viewed by your visitors, and how many times they actually clicked on these elements. By comparing impressions and clicks, you can calculate an interaction rate.

To find out how to use content tracking, see this guide on Matomo .

Impressions

=> Check content impressions received data

Interactions

=> Check content interaction received data

Custom dimensions

Custom dimensions are attributes you define to categorize and segment your data more precisely. Before configuring a custom dimension in the Matomo tag, you must first have created it in the Matomo settings.

Here’s a Matomo tutorial on how to create a custom dimension 

For this example, here’s the visit-type custom dimension I created in Matomo:

We’re going to send a value for this custom dimension on all page views.

=> Check custom dimensions received data

Heartbeat requests

Heartbeat requests are sent periodically to measure more precisely the time spent on each page. It’s a bit like the user_engagement event in GA4.

=> Check heartbeat requests received data

Check the data

Once your Matomo Analytics tag has been configured, it’s important to check:

• that your server container is sending data correctly to Matomo
• that the data received in matomo is consistent with what you wish to send

Check that requests are being sent

GTM Server-Side preview

The first step is to ensure that the Matomo Analytics tag is triggered correctly for the events specified in the trigger. For this example, we’ll take the case of sending page views to Matomo.

In the server container preview, confirm that the Matomo Analytics tag appears in the Tags fired section and that the tag status is Succeeded.

In the preview, click on the Matomo Analytics tag to check that a request has been sent to Matomo.

Check received data

Addingwell side via Tag Health: successful requests

Click on the Tag Health tab in your Addingwell container. Start by checking the number of requests made for Matomo Analytics over a given period, as well as the percentage of successful requests.

Click on the Matomo Analytics tag for more details.

This screen gives you details of the events sent by your server to Matomo Analytics, as well as the percentage of successful requests, which in our example is almost 100%.

To examine the requests in error, we’ll take a closer look at the error logs.

Go to the Logs tab and access the logs for each tag in place on your server. Click on the Logs linked to your Matomo instance (<your_subdomain>.matomo.cloud).

For example, in the error logs for our account, the most frequent error (63 occurrences) is not very explicit, but is due to the auth token.

Matomo side via the real-time visit log

In Matomo, the real-time visit log is used to verify the data received. There is no debugging tool like the DebugView in Google Analytics 4.

In this log, page views are displayed as gray folders.

If you hover a folder you’ll see more information about the page view:

• page title
• page URL
• date and time of page view
• time spent on page

Congratulations

You’ve finished configuring Matomo Analytics, and you’ve verified that your data is being sent to Matomo.

If you’d like to check for other events in the Matomo visit log, we’ve created a dedicated page that references all event types you can receive in Matomo.

If you encounter any problems during these steps, please do not hesitate to contact our support team.