Piwik PRO – Analytics and data drivacy without compromises

High-quality web analytics is a crucial tool for various organizations' operations. It helps businesses and other organizations understand customer behavior and optimize marketing processes. Piwik PRO is an excellent choice for web analytics across a wide range of entities. It offers a robust, versatile analytics platform that combines advanced tracking capabilities with compliance with strict data privacy regulations, such as GDPR and HIPAA. This makes it an especially appealing solution for organizations handling sensitive data or operating in highly regulated sectors, such as public administration and healthcare.

Author: Paavo Virta

28.1.2025

• Blog

The key features of Piwik PRO

• Versatile analytics: Helps to understand website users and develop business solutions through a comprehensive set of metrics. Well-designed and implemented web analytics forms the foundation for building successful growth marketing strategies.
• Full data control: Provides the ability to store, manage, and own data within Europe, ensuring data security. Organizations can control and analyze it according to their own needs.
• GDPR and ISO 27001 compliance: The tool adheres to the strictest data protection regulations, allowing businesses to trust that data is handled securely.
• Cookie-free tracking: Piwik PRO also enables cookie-free tracking, which is an excellent option when users do not consent to the use of cookies. This ensures data collection without identifying individual users.

Who is Piwik PRO for?

Piwik PRO is an especially good choice for organizations that handle sensitive information or operate in heavily regulated industries. These include:

• Public sector and authorities: For these entities, data protection and transparency are of paramount importance.
• Healthcare: In handling healthcare data, Piwik PRO meets all necessary data protection standards, such as HIPAA requirements.
• Financial institutions and large corporations: In these sectors, data security is a key element of operational reliability.

However, Piwik is an excellent option for all companies that value data privacy and full control over their data. Businesses can benefit from flexible analytics solutions and efficient reporting tools to track traffic and user actions without compromising privacy. Cookie-free tracking can also be used alongside traditional cookie-based tracking, allowing essential event data to be captured in its unaltered form. Piwik is also integrable with advertising channels, and the data can be visualized in Looker Studio, making reporting even more sophisticated and high-quality.

Image: Piwik Pro analytics is also suitable as an analytics solution for WordPress Intranet or Extranet.

Tracking without tracking – Anonymous tracking with Piwik PRO and Matomo Analytics tools.

One way to ensure valuable analytics data is collected without losing users due to privacy requirements is by switching to cookie-free and anonymous tracking. This can be achieved by installing customized tracking directly on servers, but a simpler and more user-friendly approach is to use tools like Piwik PRO or Matomo Analytics.

These tools enable traditional cookie-based tracking, which requires user consent, but they also offer an alternative for cookie-free tracking. This ensures that the website can collect important traffic data and events even if users decline cookies.

We have encountered website data where around 50% of website analytics data is not collected due to users declining cookies. There are reports globally that cookie consent pop-ups can lead to situations where as many as 80% of users reject cookies, although we haven’t encountered numbers that high yet. Typically, the rejection rate on most websites tends to be in the range of 30-40%.

No matter the percentage on the site, it’s clear that a lot of valuable data goes uncollected. Cookie-free tracking is an excellent solution in cases where users do not wish to accept cookies or organizations want to avoid using cookies altogether.

The benefits of Piwik PRO Analytics in cookie-free tracking

Piwik PRO stands out especially in cookie-free tracking with the following advantages:

• Anonymous tracking: Piwik PRO enables efficient anonymous tracking without storing personal user data. This ensures compliance and allows data collection without consent.
• Free usage: Piwik PRO offers a free version that is suitable for websites handling up to 500,000 hits per month. This makes it a cost-effective option, even for large websites.
• Clear instructions: Piwik PRO’s user interface and documentation are quite straightforward, making it easy to implement and manage the tool, especially for organizations with limited technical resources.
• Comprehensive, yet more limited tracking: While cookie-free tracking can be somewhat restricted in some areas, such as engagement metrics (e.g., bounce rate and session duration), it still provides a comprehensive view of traffic, its sources, and key user interactions, as long as these have been set up for tracking.
• Event tracking: One of the key features of anonymous tracking is event tracking. You can define important events, such as form submissions, button clicks, and other user interactions, and monitor them closely.

What can you expect from cookie-free tracking?

Cookie-free tracking does not allow tracking of all traditional metrics, such as engagement and bounce rate, because user identification does not occur. Nevertheless, Piwik PRO’s cookie-free tracking provides valuable data for business development:

• Traffic volume in full: The amount of traffic and the types of devices used during visits are recorded without cookies.
• Complete traffic sources: You can see where users are coming from, such as search engines, social media, campaigns, or other websites.
• Complete events: Important events such as page navigation, form submissions, and button clicks are recorded in detail, as long as the related events are set up for tracking.

Cookie-free tracking and session hash

The way cookie-free tracking is implemented has a significant impact on the amount of data collected. Tracking can be done with very strict parameters or by using a session hash identifier.

The implementation of cookie-free tracking using a session hash identifier and without it differs significantly in terms of user identification and tracking accuracy. A session hash identifier allows for tracking user activity during a single session without cookies. It creates a unique identifier for the user during the site visit, enabling more accurate analysis of actions occurring within the website.

Without a session hash identifier, tracking is less precise, and the data often boils down to broader, anonymous usage statistics. In this case, individual user sessions aren’t as easily distinguishable, which limits the analytics’ ability to understand user journeys or use the data for personalization and marketing purposes.

The session hash improves the quality of tracking by providing a more individualized yet privacy-protecting way to analyze user behavior without using cookies. The table below outlines what different tracking methods allow for.

Table source: Piwik PRO: Collect data in a privacy-friendly way

Comparison: Piwik PRO vs. Matomo Analytics vs. GA4

Piwik PRO, Matomo Analytics, and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) offer different analytics solutions, each suited to different needs:

• Piwik PRO offers a strong privacy-focused solution, where organizations have full control over their data and the ability to track without cookies.
• Matomo Analytics is an open-source tool that offers similar privacy features but often requires more technical expertise. It is a good option for businesses and organizations that want to own and control their data independently.
• Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is designed to provide a comprehensive view of user behavior across multiple channels and devices. It leverages AI and machine learning, but the privacy settings and data management depend on Google’s infrastructure, which may not be suitable for all organizations.

Implementation of Piwik PRO

The implementation of Piwik PRO is a flexible process that starts with defining analytics needs and ends with ongoing support. The key steps are:

1. Defining analytics needs: Determine what data you want to track and how.
2. Choosing the right license: Select the appropriate license for the organization, such as the free Core Plan or the paid Enterprise Plan. For most Finnish organizations, the free version of Piwik is sufficient.
3. Technical implementation: Piwik offers its own Tag Manager solution to set up tracking codes. After that, basic settings are configured, such as whether cookie-based or cookie-free tracking will be used.
4. Training and support: The organization is supported after implementation with training and ongoing technical support.

Summary: A comprehensive analytics solution that combines privacy and efficiency.

Piwik PRO provides businesses and organizations with a comprehensive analytics solution that combines privacy and efficiency. Whether it’s cookie-based or cookie-free tracking, Piwik PRO ensures that organizations can comply with data protection regulations while gaining valuable insights to support decision-making. With cookie-free tracking, organizations can also enhance the user experience without complex cookie consent pop-ups, while retaining full control over their data.

Do you need help developing analytics and measurement?

Contact us

Paavo Virta

Head of Growth Marketing, Partner

Phone +358 40 530 1233

Email paavo@redandblue.fi

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