Create and analyse Custom Reports
Custom Reports in Matomo provide a flexible way to create tailored analytics reports. While standard reports offer valuable insights, customisation may be necessary for more targeted analysis.
With Custom Reports, report structures can be defined to break down data by any dimension, helping to identify trends. Segments can also be applied to filter reports and examine key metrics for specific audience subsets.
Custom Reports is a premium feature available with our Cloud-hosted Business plan or as a separate purchase from the Matomo Marketplace for on-premise installations.
Managing Custom Reports
- In Matomo, navigate to Custom Reports in the left menu; or
- Open Administration Settings
> Measurables > Custom Reports. - Select Manage Reports to create new and view existing custom reports.
Available Actions for each report allow you to:
- Edit reports to modify their configuration and filters.
- View reports to analyse collected data.
- Delete reports to permanently remove reports that are no longer needed.
- Play or Pause to enable or disable selected custom reports (from Custom Reports Plugin version 5.3.0).
Paused reports retain all previously archived data but are no longer processed in future archives.This helps reduce system load by preventing unused or experimental reports from consuming resources. To disable a report, click the Pause icon or click the Play icon to restore its processing in scheduled archiving.
Creating and editing a Custom Report
To create a new report, click on “Create new report” in the bottom left.
To edit a report, simply click on the “edit” icon next to the name of a previously created report.
When you create a new report, the first thing you need to do is to define a name and optionally a description.
Name: The name of the report should describe the report in a short name as good as possible. Depending on your further configuration, the report name will be also used in the reporting menu.
Description: An optional description for your report will be shown when you click on the help icon next to the report title. For example, you could mention the purpose of this report.
Next you need to define which content you want to see in the report. For this you first select the visualization for this report (for example a table view or an evolution over time graph), and then the dimensions and metrics you want to see for this report. The table visualization will also let you view the report as a bar graph, pie chart, and cloud chart.
Did you know? A user with Super User access can make a report available for all websites with just one click. This way you don’t have to re-create each report for every website.
Report content
Dimensions typically describe characteristics and are usually shown in the first column of a report. You can select up to three dimensions, for example Browser, Country, City. Metrics on the other side are quantitative measurements.
For example, if you want to increase the traffic on your website, include « Visits », if you are improving the performance of your website, include « Avg. Generation Time ».
Report filter
Additionally, you can choose to define a filter so this report will show the results only for a subset of your visitors.
By defining filters, you can narrow down the data shown in a report to focus on a subset of your audience based on particular criteria. For example, you can filter a report down by mobile device users only.
When defining filters, you can use AND/OR operators to create more complex conditions.
The AND operator allows you to combine multiple criteria, ensuring that all specified conditions must be met for a data point to be included in the report. On the other hand, the OR operator allows for a broader selection, where a data point will be included if it meets any of the specified conditions. If you are already familiar with the segment editor, this will be straight forward for you.
Report page
By default, the created report will be visible under the “Custom Reports” category in the reporting menu and a new page for this report will be automatically generated. If you feel like the report you created is better placed under an existing category such as “Visitors”, or want to put the report on an existing reporting page in Matomo (Piwik), you can do this by choosing the relevant category.
Viewing Custom Reports
You can view custom reports just like any report in Matomo. They even support all the standard features like “Row Evolution”, “Segmented Visits Log”, “Pivoting”, and much more. You can also add any custom report to your dashboard and include them in your scheduled reports.
By default, you find a custom report under the “Custom Reports” category in the reporting menu. When configuring a custom report, you can also choose to show a report under any other existing reporting category or even add a report to any existing reporting page. If you for example choose to create a new custom report that shows more insights about Countries, you may want to add the report to the “Visitors => Locations” page to view all the location reports at a glance in just one place.
Testing a report configuration
When you create a report and are not sure if the report content gives you the results you are looking for, simply click on the “Preview Report” button before creating the report. This lets you quickly verify your configuration based on data for the current day and saves you from having to go back to the report configuration later.
Please note that if you have browser archiving disabled, the report may take up to an hour to become available. The just mentioned report preview will still work though, even if browser archiving is disabled.
Examples of custom reports
Performance of pages broken down by minute.
Want to see how the page generation time various broken down per minute instead of only getting a daily average? Custom reports lets you view any dimension and metrics broken down by hour or even down by minute.
Events over 3 dimensions
Matomo currently lets you only view two combinations of Event Category, Event Name, and Event Action. With Custom Reports you can choose to link all three dimensions to view for example event actions by event name by event category.
Revenue per country filtered by mobile devices
Wondering which countries contribute the most revenue when you only look at mobile devices?
Page URLs by User
Another useful report can be to break down any dimension by users. For example, you could analyze which pages each user has viewed:
There are literally millions of combinations possible and only the sky is the limit.
Reporting features
Custom reports supports common Matomo reporting features such as
Flattening
Pivoting
Different visualizations
Adding a custom report widget to the dashboard
Your custom report tables and/or custom historical graphs can be added to your dashboard as widgets. Learn more how to add custom report widget to your dashboard(s).
Sending custom reports by email
Custom reports can also be emailed on a schedule when you create Scheduled email reports.