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7 Reasons Why Your Commercial Site NEEDS Piwik…
Guest Blogger Marc Lindsay Is An Internet Marketer & Runs An SEO Company – mercurianmedia.com.au.
This is the first post of a new series all about “Using Piwik Effectively” and in a live environment. Designed to help both businessman & hobbyist make the most out of Piwik.
Analytics Set Free - No More Constraints
There is no doubt that we are now in a world where digital data, bits & bytes, 1′s & 0′s all have a value, and a very significant value at that. Just look at Google as a classical example of how valuable the digital world has now become.
Without data Google would have nothing to work with and I would be out of a job.
Previously when using say radio advertising or TV slots it has been a very hit and miss sort of game. You don’t have an in-depth view into EXACTLY what it is that your viewer is looking for, so you would have to profile a demographic and then hope your offer or advert was appealing enough to spark interest.
Now bring it into today’s digital world and you can track almost everything.
This puts an immense power in the beholder of the most data as not only would you know how people are using the internet, but you would also have so many small bits of data around each visitor that you are now able to start to profile your visitor or future customer.
So how on earth does this relate to Piwik?
Well…..
Let’s suppose you are using another of the many large third party tracking programs, who do you think owns all of that valuable data that is being tracked from your site?
It’s certainly not you. Sure you may be able to analyze that data and see some nice pretty reports, but at the end of the day that data does not belong to you and you are confined within the restraints that the third-party solution would put on you.
Now just imagine for a moment that you had access to a completely free piece of software that let you take control over your sites and the data collected from them….
Welcome To Piwik
Piwik is the ONLY software of its kind around that gives you total control over everything and the ability to expand and use your own data beyond your wildest dreams…
So on with the seven reasons.
#1 You Own The Data
This is one of the biggest reasons you would want to move to Piwik (this combined with #2 & 3) below and it becomes a knockout.
#2 Fully Expandable Feature Set Just Like WordPress
We all know that wordpress out of the box is nothing special. It’s just another blog solution, until you start adding in plugins to extend functionality. You could almost say the same about the Iphone, it’s the applications that make it.
Well this is one feature that makes Piwik REALLY shine out, the developers when setting out to build the ultimate free open source tracking system developed it with expansion in mind and built into it a plugin system that lets you just tap on entire new modules of function with simply a few mouse clicks.
This is HUGE when combined with #1 & #3
#3 API Developer Access
Complete API access is something that has been built into Piwik right from the very core. This means that you can access any data from within the current functions of Piwik and easily import it into your own application to even further enhance your experience.
If you need to access more data or access it differently then you can easily create a new plugin from #2 to handle and work with that data, this will then make it available as an API.
In case the alarm bells have not gone off in your head just yet let me put this in another way.
Let’s say that you wanted to be able to see the top 3 pages viewed by visitors by country. No worries all you need to do is create a new plugin that adds that functionality in and hey presto you can now do this. But taking this even further.
With the combination of points #1, #2 & #3 you can now create your own custom applications (adobe air, .NET, php or any other language you like) that can import any of this data and then use it however it likes.
Imagine if you could have a desktop application that when you opened it could show you the following at a glance.
1. How much you had made today in sales & from what products.
2. A comparison of today vs the same day last month.
3. The weekly average of your sales also in comparison to last week.
4. Your top performing traffic sources by ROI (because you custom created a plugin that let you set a specific traffic referrer by advertising budget with them)
5. The top pages that converted into a sale for you
This is just a simple example of how you now have an ROI & Commerce relevant application based entirely off your Piwik data.
Amazing right?
(Feel free to get in touch with me about developing custom Adobe Air applications I am looking for someone to give us a hand).
#4 Real Time Tracking
As its on your own server you can refresh stats as much as you want and get up to the second traffic stats.
#5 Total Privacy
Do you really know what all of these third party services are doing with your data? What if it were in any way able to help your competitor gain an advantage over you?
Not anymore you have Piwik
#6 It’s Free
Hey free is always good, just this good has sugar coated on top. Of course it is important to note that there are server costs or hosting costs though if you are running a few websites this is already covered.
#7 It Will Make You More Money
If data is valuable, and you now own all of your data, by default you have increased your wealth digitally. You can now very easily run custom search queries or strings across all of your sites, across all converted goals or products and find trends that you may never have even noticed.
Piwik being only 1 year old and already covering as much ground as it does really sets the future for what you can expect from Piwik.
As you can see Piwik really kicks butt and is a serious contender to the analytics game, one that in my opinion gives you more power than any of them.
I know it is giving us an edge over our competition by letting us develop custom applications and plugins that provide data in way that has never before been achieved.
Over the coming weeks I will be posting more Piwik guides on how you can leverage Piwik even further in a real environment with real sales coming through the door, these will be live case studies on sites making well over 7 figures.
Please if you have any queries or questions about topics you would like covered in this Using Piwik Effectively, Marketing Series feel free to post them as a comment and I will take note of them all.
Cheers
Marc Lindsay
marc
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Howdy would you mind stating which blog platform
you’re using? I’m going to start my own blog in the near future but I’m having a tough time deciding between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal. The reason I ask is because your design seems different then most blogs and I’m looking for
something unique. P.S Sorry for getting off-topic but I had to ask!
may do huyet ap Says:
1. How much you had made today in sales & from what products.
2. A comparison of today vs the same day last month.
3. The weekly average of your sales also in comparison to last week.
4. Your top performing traffic sources by ROI (because you custom created a plugin that let you set a specific traffic referrer by advertising budget with them)
5. The top pages that converted into a sale for you
là nó luôn mà
nhiet ke dien tu Says:
1. How much you had made today in sales & from what products.
2. A comparison of today vs the same day last month.
3. The weekly average of your sales also in comparison to last week.
4. Your top performing traffic sources by ROI (because you custom created a plugin that let you set a specific traffic referrer by advertising budget with them)
5. The top pages that converted into a sale for you
what is this?
costco coupons Says:
Yes I use piwik..my site need it !!
cheerios coupons Says:
Uhuu .. I think piwik devserve a coup
victoria secret coupon codes Says:
should to update a little …
victoria secret offer codes Says:
Another day where piwik is the no 1
victoria secret promo codes Says:
Yes … I think this is the key :)
ralph lauren coupons Says:
Ohh yeas … this is the best tool
ugg coupons Says:
No worried about piwik
Patagonia Coupons Says:
Using piwik have opened to me a lot of doors
Kam Agra Says:
what did we do before without piwiki? we sucked :)
Generika Says:
Piwiki is the best analystic tool i have seen in months
Permanente Haarentfernung Says:
You got me, I use it now
Justin Bieber Lyrics Says:
I admit, Commercial site does require Piwiki. With Piwik, commercial site we will feel safe. I’m sure of it.
rezeptfrei Says:
I use also piwiki , and this are really creat .. stay on this and i hope is coming a lot of updates :-)
WasKocheIchheute Says:
2 backlinks would be much betther
WasKocheIch Says:
I want to have a backlink ;-)
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Флексопечать Куплю ООО АвтоПак
Рецепты, Новогодние рецепты, Новогодние салаты Says:
Рецепты. Кушаем вкусно. Новогодние салаты
парфюмерия оптом,элитная парфюмерия Says:
Новая парфюмерия оптом в Москве
tinnitus cure Says:
I think it is much better than Woopra
Krankenversicherung Says:
Hallo, habe google Analytics schon lange aufgegeben, für mich ist piwik das beste.
HitDJ Says:
It would be interesting to know how it works.
T shirt printing Says:
Piwik is a great way to do your own analytics. I think it is much better than Woopra
T shirt printing Says:
Its all about monitoring your advertising spend and targeting your audience.
Richard Li Says:
and best of all Piwik is free!
The LIVE data has potential to be really useful if I develop smoe scripts… can’t wait to install and try.
poker online Says:
Piwik is great! I got myself a good solid dedicated server and took control of my own analytics.
Salza Says:
PIWIK indeed very good, I am very impressed with PIWIK. PIWIK indeed very helpful.
Shira Decoster Says:
amazing news mann !
infantino baby carrier Says:
Piwik is a good choice for Commercial Site .
Arie Says:
7 reasons the above is very true. Piwik is a very cool tool, I really salute with Piwik.
Syahrizal Says:
Piwik is very great, the commercial site for the development of the site requires Piwik. The reason this is very reasonable.
Spaidy Says:
I mean, these reasons make sense.
Spaidy Says:
The reason this is nonsense. Piwiki have very special advantages than the other.
Rummy City Says:
Great 7 reasons to get you started :)
Am going to give it a try.
Deenox Says:
Real seven reasons to try Piwik;)
curtis Says:
What is missing in Piwik (at least my out of box implementation is visitor information, i.e. what companies viewed by site. Piwik gives me the provider and IP, but no organization /company with it. Woopra, on the other hand gives me organization name; can this be (easily) added to Piwik functionality.
Finanzen Says:
using the java-script-tracking now we can see what the user is doing on our site. very usefull tool.
harry Says:
Hey what does it means about “Piwik” in general.
well is a wonderful tool !
webmaster Says:
It’s just good to see open source products making their way into the mainstream.Awesome stuff…..
mira Says:
Ein Freund hat mir deinen Blog gerade empfohlen und dann hatte ich gedacht schaue ich doch einmal vorbei. Und ich muss sagen er gefaellt mir richtig gut, ich glaube er koennte zu meinen Stammblogs dazu kommen bei denen ich regelmae
robert Says:
Will there be a chance to survey visits from AdWords (Paid clicks)? This is a very important tool from GA to control one’s marketing strategies.
gold diamond Says:
It is fast, private and free.
All in all, first impression : good job Piwik team. Keep it going.
Vide Says:
Disclaimer: I’m not yet using Piwik but will give it a try after the holiday’s season for sure.
Anyway, to answer rick: owning YOUR data is just “ideological” to you? are you serious?
Having your own stats server it ahs overhead, for sure, but the flexibility it gives you (if you are big) it’s just too important.
With SaaS and the cloud thing we are entering an even darker hour that with “old” closed source software and closed formats where vendor lock-in was normal. So having YOUR data in YOUR hands is a good idea.
Christliche partnersuche Says:
Piwik is really an Excellent tool.
The applications are exactly what I need and the ease of use is very high.
kredyty Says:
All opinions are good, so I`ll testing Piwik
Downloader Says:
We are also using piwik and are quite happy about it.
It is fast, private and free.
Also what I really appreaciate is customization !
Keep up the good work guys !
Decoration-maison Says:
Installed Piwik today on a dedicated server. My website is hosted in the US while I have hosted Piwik in France. Most of my visitors are from France and other Francophone countries. So it would be interesting to see the challenges it poses. I can see the DB size counter moving in frenzy.
Anybody has any inputs on how to manage the size and efficient indexing of the DB generated by Piwik?
All in all, first impression : good job Piwik team. Keep it going.
spameo Says:
I’m testing Piwik and must admit that it’s great. … and waiting for the IP exclude option!
Louis Chua Says:
@rick: One reason I use Piwik instead of Google Analytics is because Google Analytics is not able to track pages within my company’s SSO. With Piwik installed within my own network, my SSO do not block the data flow.
I presume this is the type of benefits that you are looking for?
But I must admit, this is due to the architecture demanded by the ancient, internally developed SSO. Not many would face similar issues, I guessed.
Rechnungen online schreiben Says:
For me, reason #1 ” You Own The Data” is the single most important feature.
Seo Optimierung Says:
Wir lieben Piwik. Piwik ist eines der Besten Tools für Tracking. Wir setzen es auch bei unseren Kunden für Tracking und Analysen ein. Weiter so..
Russell Smith Says:
It’s just good to see open source products making their way into the mainstream, especially in the web analytics field.
Jerome Potenzmittel Says:
We are on phpmyvisites currently and – yes – not dissatisfied. Anyone here who has used phpmyvisites.php script and can compare with piwik?
Regards
Rohit Says:
Good open source development product
Chicago Brick Says:
Are there any performance stats available?
Naati Says:
Is there any way to install on a local machine and then download the web logs file?
loinduciel Says:
I totally agree with Hans about the performance issue on production websites.
Need improvements.
nic Says:
Hi marc
Same problem here (as hans raker described), can you maybe contact me? We’ve tried now different approaches to make it work without slowing down our site, but so far didn’t got anywhere. (We have around 150T page views a day)
wpdig Says:
http://wpdig.com also use piwik.
Börse Says:
Awesome stuff. I think there are even more than 7 reasons for using Piwik.
chris faron Says:
Just installed piwik, great product. I now own my own data now, wow.
LMS Says:
This project represents the amazing power of open-source development. A great product!
Alex Says:
Piwik more accurate then GA! and also Live. I recomend it.
Marcus Says:
Within a few weeks our site will drop GA in favor of Piwik (>15,000 pages / 250k unique visitors p/m).
TransVisionary Solutions Says:
Hi
It was an interesting and useful article.And it is good to know that Piwik is the ONLY software of its kind around that gives you total control over everything and the ability to expand and use your own data beyond your wildest dreams
Konsulat Says:
mit Google Analytics macht man nur Google noch schlauer, wir werden in kürze umstellen.
28商机网 Says:
Die Anwendungen sind genau das was ich brauche und die Benutzerfreundlichkeit ist sehr hoch
Vertikalangeln Says:
Ich habe mich von Google Analytics getrennt und im gleichen Atemzug für Piwik entschieden und bis heute habe ich diesen Schritt nicht bereut. Die Anwendungen sind genau das was ich brauche und die Benutzerfreundlichkeit ist sehr hoch. Ich habe zwar noch nicht alle Funktionen im Detail verstanden aber man kernt ja bekanntlich nie aus.
Piwik, mach weiter so!!
Roshan Joshi Says:
yup. Two thumbs up for open source.
Nico Says:
Piwik is really a good tool.
But I think that it needs a lot of mysql connections.
I’m not 100% sure about this but I have never had any issues with my webserver until I installed Piwik. While opening the dashboard I sometimes need to wait very long or I get “too many connections” error. Could this be an issue?
If this can be fixed it will be a really great statistic!
Amit Pbx Says:
Yeah, definitely 7 good reasons to get you started working with Piwik.
Brad Edwards Says:
The features that would help me most in the commercial environment are things which still appear only in the web logs. These include page weight to help reduce bandwidth, a general bandwidth counter from images and downloads, error codes (404, 500, etc), and page load/response times.
As for performance, though running the reports can hit our admin server a little bit, my Piwik tracking site receives about 500K+ pageviews per day per server in the farm and I haven’t ever noticed the PHP process at more than a few % CPU. The DB server is also barely affected.
However, I’ve focused on splitting the tracking role which hands out the JS from the admin interface where we log in and run reports, as well as ensuring the DB server can handle the production load, which is many orders of magnitude harder than the Piwik piece.
Matteo Cisilino Says:
We daily use piwik reports to analyze our traffic , but more tips are always wellcome :)
Michael Says:
Most of the topics are handled by WebTrends Analytics similar – but it is not free and not cheap.. But it has some features, Piwik is missing (in the moment)
Michael
Hans Rakers Says:
And 1 reason why it doesn’t: performance.
I have tried Piwik on one of our busiest sites with 200K+ pageviews, with piwik on pretty much a dedicated server, and it took the whole server down to a crawl.
Fiddled around with some indexes on the db which improved it a bit (i already had the initial indexes) and turned off browser archiving, which improved it a bit, but still no reall production performance.
Definitely an area which needs more work. You can contact me for more info if you want.
basketballbuzz.ca Says:
Awesome stuff. Waiting for those exciting tips. Piwik is great. awesome!