The default website visitor statistics program provided with our website hosting has been AWSTATS. However, as more of our customers are adopting security certificates for their websites (as we do recommend) AWSTATS is no longer such a good option. Primarily as it requires you to separately view secure and non secure statistics when we would all prefer to see the combined picture.
As a consequence after researching alternative options – with our requirement being that all traffic is combined and that statistics are presented in an easy to understand format – we settled on a new program – Matomo. Some of the features we particularly like are:
- Ability to configure your own dashboard with various statistics
- Ability to see real time data – you don’t have to wait 24 hours for daily log update
- Ability to have your stats emailed to you daily, weekly or monthly and you can configure which stats are included/excluded in the report.
There is however a key difference we became aware of between Matomo and AWSTATS as to what pages/files they count visits for. Comparing the two we discovered far less visits recorded by Matomo than AWSTATS. However, when compared to Google Analytics, Matamo was counting equally.
It is not that one is right and one is wrong but that AWSTATS counts access attempts to system files (eg. php extensions). There are very few legitimate reasons why these files would be accessed by website visitors (eg. wp-login.php).We know from our hacker shield logs there are significant malicious attempts made to these files.
Matomo counts visits to actual web pages (as does Google Analytics) and therefore we feel it is the better option as it will also make calculation of look to book ratios far more accurate.
If you are using Google Analytics to analyse your website statistics our change to Mataomo will not impact you. However, you may like to also make use of Matomo for an alternative view of your stats.
Below example matomo stats dashboard – click image to zoom.
Log In/Out
Dashboard Operation
Reports
Log In/Out
Log In
- Access the web address – https://stats.cmswebsite2go.com/
- Enter provided username or email address
- Enter password
- Click SIGN IN button
Contact Seekom web support for login access.
Log Out
- Click logout icon at top right of your screen
(highlighted in yellow in image below)[br][br]
Dashboard Operation
Dashboard Operation
We have setup a number of widgets on your stats dashboard thank we think you will most interesting.
To view your stats dashboard log into Matamo website stats.
Wherever you see a + click this for more information.
Modify the date range you wish to view by clicking the date field towards the top of the screen. Set as required and click APPLY button.
If you are technically minded you can modify your dashboard.
Click DASHBOARD selector towards top of screen – hover over available widgets and drag preview into required position on your dashboard.
Contact Seekom web support if you’d like help with this.
Reports
Scheduled Reports
Below are instructions to create and schedule a stats report.
Click here to view an example stats report.
- Log into Matomo website stats
- Click settings icon
See example screen image below
[br] - Click ‘Email Reports’ link in left panel
- Click link ‘CREATE AND SCHEDULE A REPORT’
- Select website
This option will be unavailable if you only have access to one website - Enter a Description (eg. Website Monthly Statistics)
- At ‘Choose a segment’ we recommend ‘All Visits’
- Select an Email Schedule
- Set time for report to be sent
- Leave sending as via EMAIL
- For report format we recommend PDF
- Check / uncheck default email address as required and optionally enter more
- Modify display option if required
- Check settings to display on report – our recommendations to check are:
Visitors – Visits Summary, Device Type, Device model, Device brand, Screen resolution, Operating Systems Versions, Browsers, Browser version, Length of visits, Pages per visit, Returning visits, Visits per local time, Visits by day of the week, Country
Referrers – Referrer type, All referrers, Keywords, Search engines, Websites, Social networks
Actions – Actions main metrics, Page urls, Entry pages, Exit pages, Site search keywords, pages following a site search, Search keywords with no results, Outlinks - Click CREATE REPORT button
One Off Report
If you have created one or more scheduled reports you can generate a one off report at any time (covering any date period) using settings for the saved report.
- Log into Matomo website stats
- Click settings icon
See example screen image below
[br] - Click ‘Email Reports’ link in left panel
- Click date field (towards top of screen) – set as required and click APPLY button
- To receive the report by email click link ‘Send Report now’ or to view/download PDF click link ‘Download’