Knowing what's happening with traffic to your website can be critical to understanding marketing results, search engine optimization, and determining the best promotion methods, but when it comes to web analytics, Google isn't the only game in town!
"Piwik," says their website, "is a downloadable, open source (GPL licensed) real time web analytics software program." Piwik is powerful software that provides you with a selection of detailed reports about your website visitor traffic from the search engines and keywords they used to find you, to the language they speak, your most popular pages, how often they visit, and so much more. For those who want great analytics for their website without giving their data to an outside provider like Google, Piwik is an excellent open source alternative choice already serving more than 150,000 individuals.
Piwik is written using PHP and the MySQL database. The software is downloaded and installed directly onto your own website server. The installation process takes about five minutes after which you will be given a JavaScript code to copy and paste on any websites (yes it can track traffic from one, several) you wish to analyze. There's even an available WordPress plugin to do it automatically for you. You can access your analytics reports in real time.
To put it in simple terms, you can check out who has been visiting your page, and see when, how and probably why. You can set tracking points called goals and even track your conversions. Piwik allows you to monitor an unlimited number of websites, and create user accounts with permission to view or administrate one or several websites. If english isn't your primary language, don't worry. Piwik has support for more than 40 different languages, and the list is steadily growing. That's the power of Open Source!
So what makes Piwik unique from the competition? Well, for one thing there are real time web analytics reports. That's right, in Piwik, reports are by default generated in real time. For high traffic websites, where volume may become an issue, you can choose the frequency for reports to be processed. If you install your own copy of Piwik you own, and will be the only one viewing, your web analytics data. Your data is stored in your own database, on your own server, and you access all the statistics using your own copy of the powerful Piwik Analytics API. There is a modern, easy to use, User Interface providing full customization right on your dashboard where you can drag and drop those widgets you want to display. Piwik range of features are each built inside a plugins. This allows you to add new features or to remove the ones you choose not to use. If you are a programmer, you can even choose to build your own web analytics plugins or hire it done. This allows you to have your own custom feature built right into Piwik. All of this comes from a vibrant international Open community of more than 100,000 active users tracking a growing number of websites that has passed the 150,000 mark.
The screen capture below is the example of the Real Time Visitor Log showing you all your site visits, the actions taken on your site, how visitors reached the website (which browser they used, which keywords they typed, or which link they clicked on), as well as a series of selectable custom variables, and more.
Piwik says their mission statement is "To create, as a community, the leading international open source web analytics application, providing access to all functionality through open components and open APIs" To achieve those admirable goals, the Piwik team, as well as the Piwik open development team and user community, have defined a vision for Piwik, as well as a growing, evolving, list of features they wish to provide. They have also created strong documentation to support the end user. There is also a community forum where information is shared and help can be obtained.
Download your copy of Piwik HERE.
Below is a list of available features offered in Piwik. Check with the Piwik website for the lastest update.
Web Analytics features
• Real time website analytical reports
• Detailed view of visitors, pages visited, goals triggered
• Customizable management dashboard
• Dashboard for All Websites
• Goal Conversions & Simple ECommerce tracking
• Track Custom Variables
• World map of your visitors
• Automatic tracking of File Downloads
• Automatic tracking of Clicks on external websites
• Optional tracking of 404 pages
• Feed (RSS/Atom) Analytics (via Feedburner)
• Analytics Campaign tracking
• Automatically detects Google Analytics Campaign parameters in your URLs
• More than 800 Search Engines tracked
• Scheduled Email Reports (PDF and HTML Reports)
• Embed Reports in your app or website, 40+ Widgets available
• Optionally make your statistics public
Administration options
• Manage unlimited Users
• Set User access to one or many websites
• Manage unlimited Websites
• Exclude IP, IP Ranges
• Exclude URL Parameters
• Timezone support, for each website
• Supports 100+ Currencies
• More advanced User settings!
More goodness!
• Official Mobile app for Android and iOs phones
• Free community support forums
• Professional Consulting services
• 43+ languages available
• Let your customers signup in your Piwik
• Google Analytics Data Importer
Tracking API
• Javascript Tracking API
• Asynchronous Code for faster page load
• PHP Tracking API
• Java Tracking API
• Track Custom Page URLs and Page Titles
• Track sub-domains
• Supports both 1st party cookies (default) and 3rd party cookies (optional)
Data Export & APIs
• Data Export in Excel, XML, Json and more!
• Fully featured Analytics API
• Administration API: manage users, websites, goals, etc.
• Segmentation support in the API
Technical
• Compatible with Windows, MacOs, Linux, Solaris, IIS, Apache, Nginx, and more
• 5 Minutes installation
• Other one click Installation options: SimpleScripts, Softaculous and Microsoft Web Platform Installer
• Easy One Click Update
• Strong focus on software security & Excellent track record
• Strong focus on software Quality Assurance & testing
• High traffic servers compatibility
• Supports server behind Proxies
• Works for Intranet websites
User Privacy
• Setting to Anonymise your Visitor IP
• Iframe include to let your visitor Opt Out of Piwik
Community Contributions
• Desktop Web Analytics for Piwik
• Piwik plugins built by third party Piwik developers
• Plugins for CMS: WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and more than 25 softwares with a Piwik Integration plugin
• Libraries for Programming languages: Python, Ruby, and more!
For a tour of the Piwik system, click HERE.
To read the Piwik documentation click HERE.
To read the Piwik FAQ click HERE.
To visit the Piwick forums click HERE.
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