Learn all about Piwik’s Analytics Features [9 minutes Video Tutorial]

1. Fortson Says:

   February 2, 2013 4:52 pm

   I like this because I can replace Google Analitycs on my site and take more control over my stats.

2. Piwik team Says:

   December 21, 2012 11:22 am

   Here is the Video transcript:

   Congratulations! Now you’ve installed Piwik, you’re in complete control of your analytics data This video will take you on a tour of Piwik, so you can familiarise yourself with the dashboard and all of Piwik’s powerful built-in features.

   Piwik has everything you would expect from a quality analytics solution. By default, the dashboard has a last visitors graph, keyword information, visitor countries, visitor countries, visitor browser, and referrers. The live widget shows real time visitor statistics that update every ten seconds. You are not, however, restricted to the default Dashboard. You can add and remove widgets, and drag and drop them to suit your own needs. Here’s a dashboard I created that focuses on visitor activity on my website. There are plenty of other widgets that you can use to create as many dashboards as you want.

   Report tables are the primary means for conveying your analytics information. Each report table will contain information specific to the data that it contains. For example, let’s take a look at the “Keywords” report table. Every table has four icons at the top right which let you refresh, minimize, expand, or remove that widget. At the bottom left hand corner there are icons that let you change how the data is displayed, and save that data to your computer. You can export your data in formats such as CSV and to Excel. For the Keywords information you can display your data as a basic table, or expand the table to get even more metrics. If you have goals set up, you can get information about whether you are meeting those goals.

   You can change how the information is displayed choose a bar graph, pie chart or tag cloud. The cog icon will give you contextual options for filtering and displaying your data. You can choose how much data you want to be displayed. And the search box lets you search for specific data. Every report table has options and functionality that is useful to that data type. Play around with them until you get comfortable.

   The visitor area gives you information about who is visiting your website. The overview provides you with general information about how your site has evolved over time. Feeling confused? Hover your mouse over the report’s name to bring up a help icon. Clicking on this will give you contextual help about what each of the reports are. When in doubt, look for the contextual help! The visitor log has information about where your visitor is from, how they got to your website, where they arrived on your site, and what actions they took. Clicking on the Locations and Providers tab will give you more detailed information about visitor location, along with their internet provider. Use the Settings tab to find out technical information about your visitors. What browser are they using? And what operating system? The information on the engagement tab tells you how well your website is engaging your users. You’ll find out how long your visitors spend on your site, and how many of them return. You can use the custom variables tab to set up your own custom metrics.

   The actions tab tells you how your visitors interact with your website. You can learn which pages attract the most visitors. By default this report is hierarchical. This means that data is aggregated under its directory, giving you a useful overview of the site. If you wish to know which page is the most popular overall you can click on the Cog icon and flatten the table. This will give you information about the most popular pages. Look for the cog icon on other widgets. Whenever it appears you can make adjustments to how you view your data. The actions tab also gives you information about a visitor’s first page view and final page view, popular page titles, exit links, and downloads.

   The referrers tab tells you how visitors find your website. Start by getting an overview of your referrers; find out whether most of your visitors arrive by search engine direct link, from a marketing campaign, or from a referring website. Remember, if you’re not sure what one of the reports is, click on the tab heading to learn more using the contextual help. The search engine and keywords tab gives you crucial information for search engine optimization. Learn which search engines send you most visitors, and the keywords that work for you. The websites tab tells you which websites are your top referrers. Here’s the cog icon again. This time specific pages are nested underneath their domains. This makes the report easier to manage. But if you want to know which specific page your top referrer click on the cog item to flatten the table. Now the table shows specific pages rather than domains. If you’re tracking how successful your marketing campaigns are at bringing you traffic, you should check out the campaign tab. You could use this tab to chart how well your banner ads perform, for example, or if your affiliates are bringing you traffic. On every table you can hover over the line and click on the graph icon. This will show the evolution of that row over time. This graph shows the effectiveness of an adwords campaign.

   Using Piwik’s goal tracking feature is a great way o track how effective your website is. If you have an ecommerce website, this is where you would track your statistics. Goals let you form a strategy for building your website traffic and increasing visitor engagement. If you’ve made a change to your website you can create a goal to monitor whether that the change has had the effect you intended. Goals are triggered based on a user action, such as downloading a file or playing a video, or visiting a specific page. In this website, goals have been set to track email campaigns, reviews, and job applications. Set up as many goals as you need to make sure your website is performing how you want it to!

   Piwik can deliver your analytics data straight to your email inbox. This lets you share analytics data with other people without having to create new users. To create and schedule a report, click on the Email & SMS reports link at the top of the page. Click “create and schedule a report” Choose your website and give your report a description. This will appear on the first page of your report. If you’ve added your own logo to Piwik this will appear on your email report, making your branding seamless across all your tools. Choose how regularly you want to receive your reports. Choose whether to send it to yourself or not. And then list the email addresses to which you want to send the report. Choose your preferred format – either PDF or HTML. Then, select the analytics data you want to include in the report. This lets you fine-tune the data that users will receive. Finally, click create report. The report will now be sent regularly to your chosen email addresses. If you want to check out your report straight away click on the download button. You can send as many reports as you want to as many people as you want.

   You can also send reports via SMS. To do so, select Mobile from the dropdown. Piwik will remind you that you need to activate a phone number in the Mobile Messaging Settings page. You can do this by clicking the link and entering the telephone number. An SMS will be sent to the number, with an activation code. Enter the activation code into Piwik and click validate. Once the number is validated, you can send SMS reports, showing statistics for either all of your websites, or for a single website.

   Now you should have everything you need to grow your website. You should now know your way around the basics of Piwik. Check out our Settings video to learn more about the specific Piwik settings, or visit our documentation for even more information. And if you’re having problems don’t forget to visit our support forums where someone will be on hand to help.

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