What is Acquisition in Matomo: A Complete Breakdown

Acquisition in Matomo, refers to the various ways of analyzing how traffic is arriving on your website and the range of channels through which the visitors are coming on your site. You can track multiple reports and metrics by utilizing Acquisition channels in Matomo. You can improve your marketing efforts and improve the quality and quantity of traffic by identifying All channels performance.

Acquisition Channels

Acquisition channels are the sources from where the visitors access a website. Matomo provides reports related to different channels that drive traffic to the site. Following are the traffic channels that Matomo highlights:

• Direct Entry Traffic
• Search Engines Traffic
• Referral Traffic
• Campaign Traffic
• Social media platforms

Direct Entry Traffic: 

The users who visit your website through directly typing the URL into their browser, by clicking on a bookmark or through non-tracked links refer to the direct entry traffic of your website. The direct traffic represents those users who are already familiar with your website and are actively engaging into your site or business. 

Search Engines Traffic:

Search engine traffic involves Organic and Paid Traffic. The organic traffic enters your website through unpaid search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. These visits search your website through relevant keywords and clicking on the organic search results. It points out how well your website is ranking in the SEO frame. You can further improve your keywords and content as per user search results. While, paid search engine traffic comes from paid search advertisements on platforms such as Google Ads and Bing Ads. You can make necessary adjustments to your paid advertising by analyzing paid search engine traffic on your site.  Follow the blog Matomo for SEO: Improving Search Engine Rankings, to gain more SEO optimized website analysis.

Referral Traffic:

The visitors who click on the link of your website from external sources including website, blog, or forum are the referral traffic of your site. The referral resources can be news websites, online directories or bookmarks that show the influence of external platforms that are driving the most of your traffic and potential customers. Moreover, it helps in better User Experience and Website Performance. 

Campaign Traffic:

You can analyze campaign traffic that is the outcome of specific marketing campaigns such as email campaigns, online advertising, or other promotional efforts for gaining more traffic on your website. You can check the performance of these campaigns by targeting these campaigns with UTM parameters or more. We can estimate successful marketing campaigns. Matomo provides information about campaign names, campaign keywords, campaign source, campaign medium, campaign content and more metrics that analysts can utilize for thorough campaign performance analysis.

Social Media Traffic:

The traffic that you gain through the links posted to social media platforms like Facebook, twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn is your social media traffic. These visitors access your site by clicking on the links shared on these social media. You can improve your strategies with user engagement by monitoring social media traffic in Matomo. 

Acquisition Metrics 

• Visits: You can monitor the total number of visit by each channel type
• Unique Visitors: Monitor all of the distinct/ unique visitors from each channel 
• Page Views: Estimate the total pages viewed by users through all channel types 
• Bounce Rate: You can analyze how many visitors have bounced through channels
• Actions: See user actions like clicks, mouse movements or content interactions 
• Average Visit Duration: Acquisition can show you visitor’s average time duration 

UTM Parameters and Tracking for Acquisition

Urchin Tracking Module parameters or UTM parameters are the text codes that we’ll have to add for understanding the link’s source, channel, campaign, context, and term. This helps in the performance of all channels. The top UTM parameters are given below:

Source (utm_source):

The utm-source parameters are used for tracking the source of traffic like direct traffic, social media or else. For instance utm_source=google shows that the acquisition source is search engine, Google.

Medium (utm_medium):

This displays the medium of channels such as organic traffic, paid traffic or email. For example utm_medium=email shows the medium as email.

Campaign (utm_campaign): 

It tracks the campaign that we can associate with the link. It can be a product name, contest name, specific sale or promotion name like utm_campaign=summer_sale.

Term (utm_term):

This is an optional parameter provided by Matomo for tracking pay-per-click (PPC) ads. It helps tracking paid search keywords or other terms such as utm_term=running_shoes.

Content (utm_content): 

The content parameter is used for understanding the difference between different elements within a campaign (e.g., utm_content=header_banner or utm_content=footer_link).

Segmentation for Acquisition

You can segment your acquisition data based on visit attributes for analyzing how different visitor groups are accessing your site and interacting with the content and goals. You can use segmentation for acquisition analysis by choosing the following attributes:

• Visitor demographics: You can analyze the interaction of different user groups by visitor demographics such as age, gender, and location. 
• Device Type: Segment your data by device type like desktop, mobile, and tablet for checking the devices that are driving the most of your website traffic.
• Behavior Data: You can segment data based on behavior. It can be viewed pages, time spent on site, and completed conversion goals.
• Referrer: Your acquisition segmentation can be referrer based such as direct traffic, search engines, or social media.

Matomo acquisition tracking is an integral part of website analysis. By monitoring acquisition metrics and channels, you can enhance your marketing efforts that ultimately will improve your website performance. It shows the areas for improvement such as conversion funnels and website forms. You can gain an effective online presence from acquisition analysis. The channel’s analysis aids in a high conversion rate that brings the business to the apex of success.