Graphs and visualisations in Matomo

The main reporting area within Matomo is where you’ll review your data from the various sections of the main navigation. Analytics data within the Matomo reporting interface is displayed through four primary visualisations. These are the Evolution Graph, Table, Sparkline Summary Cards and Maps. Each of these is described in more detail below.

Evolution Graphs

The Evolution Graph visualisation shows a customisable line graph over the specified time period. You can change the period via the Date Selector in the data selector area. Each chart will typically load one metric by default. You can usually customise this chart by plotting different metrics. You can also display the numeric values for any metric by hovering your mouse over its point on the chart.

Changing Plotted Metrics

If you’d like to change the plotted metrics within any Evolution Graph, then you click on the line chart icon that is shown at the top left of the graph. This will bring up a list of all metrics which are available for this visualisation. Click on the checkbox of any metrics within the list that you’d like to activate and the page will refresh with your updated data.

Evolution Graph Menu

While your mouse is over the Evolution Graph card, you will notice a green icon menu appear in the bottom left.

In order, the features within this menu are:

• Calendar Icon – This lets you update the graph to display your data in days, weeks, months, or years.
• Share Icon – This allows you to export the data into various formats so you can work with it in other software.
• Image Icon – Clicking this loads your data as an image which can be helpful for compiling reports for clients or management. You will still have to right-click and Save the file to download it to your device.
• Annotation Icon – This annotation feature is extremely useful as it can help to provide context to changes in your data. Check out the documentation to learn more about how to use annotations. Within the Evolution Graph section, it will bring up a list of annotations within the selected date range and a button if you want to add your own.

Tables

Tables are another data visualisation format that is very useful for reviewing your data. Tables typically show a primary dimension such as a page or traffic source on the left hand side. This is then followed by a series of associated metrics in columns on the right hand side. You should experiment with hovering your mouse over rows and metrics to reveal additional data and features.

Flattening Reports

By default, many of the table reports are loaded hierarchically. Essentially this means that similar data types are rolled up into their high-level category, and can be expanded for you to view more specific data. For example, in the report below, you might be most interested to know the number of visitors from various channel types such as search engines. However if you were reviewing a table of landing pages to optimise on your site, you would probably want to see reports for each individual page instead of grouping them all.

To see the more detailed view, you will need to either expand your selection or flatten the table as a whole.

• Expanding your selection – Click on the plus icon to the left of the row to reveal individual items that have been rolled up into a top-level hierarchy. You can also re-flatten a row with the minus icon .
• Flattening your table – Do this if you want to see the complete data set broken down into individual entries. Move your mouse to the table section and click on the green cog icon that appears in the bottom left. This brings up a table configuration menu where you can Make it flat along with a few other options depending on the data being shown.

Show Table Totals

You may be interested to learn the metric totals for each column in the table. You can do this by moving your mouse into the table area and clicking on the green cog icon to bring up that same menu and then click on Show totals row.

Revealing Extended Table Data Options

Tables within Matomo will load all available data for the most common metrics. However, many reports provide options to customise the data shown in the table. To explore the available options for a table report, click the green cog icon in the bottom left of the table. The specific options will vary between reports but can include options such as, showing totals, or removing infrequent data values.

Searching within reports

You will also notice a search icon below most tables. Clicking this will reveal a search bar. You can then type in the data you are looking for and hit the Enter or click on the Search icon again to search. For example, in the “Keywords” report, you can search for nature and it would return all keywords matching nature. Learn more.

Viewing historical report about any data point

You can expand the data within any row in the tables to show a historical Row Evolution. To do this, hover the mouse over a row and click on the row evolution icon which will open a detailed view of the historical values for this specific row:

You can also compare several rows together, for example to compare Browser market share over the last 30 months. To do this click on the link to Pick a row to compare and then click the row evolution icon on the additional row you like to compare to load the comparison. The example described above would look a little something like this:

Changing number of rows displayed in the report tables

Tables containing a large number of rows are separated across multiple pages that you can navigate with the < Previous and Next > links shown below the table. The current number of rows per page will be displayed in green at the bottom right of the report when you hover the mouse over the table. You can change the number of rows displayed by clicking on the number and selecting an alternative. For example in the Operating System versions table below you can see the option to display 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 250, 500 rows, or all rows without any limit applied.

Alternative Visualisations of Table Data

There are also several types of graphs you can use to display table data which you may find useful. The icon shown for accessing these will vary depending on your current visualisation. By default you will start in the table view, so you would click the green table icon at the bottom left of the table to bring up the visualisation menu shown below.

Insights

Within the Insights visualisation, you can quickly reference the biggest increasing and decreasing metrics of your current report. This is also known as the Movers and Shakers report. Below the report you will be able to choose from a number of comparison periods depending on what makes sense for each specific report, including:

• Previous day
• Same day in previous week
• Same day in previous year
• Previous week
• Previous month
• Same month in previous year
• Previous year
• Previous number of days (Compared to a custom date range)

You can also see the results for a different time period by changing the date in the Date Selector at the top of the page. The data can also be filtered for example show only movers, only the new elements, or only show those that have disappeared from the report. By default, the report is set to show Increaser and decreaser, or you can update it to show either on its own.

The example below shows the most increased visits by Channel Type over a one-month period. You can see the actual number of additional visits and the percentage increase those visits represent.

Graphs

The Vertical bar graph visualisation is useful for a visual comparison of the numeric data values. Whereas, the Pie charts visualisation can easily show you the relative distribution of each item from the table.

Lastly the Tag cloud is great for generating a visual snapshot of your most populous data. Higher value items are shown in bold with an increased font size. The example report below shows how you might use this to identify your top search keywords.

Sparkline Summary Cards

These are most commonly shown on overview pages and provide a high-level summary of the data surrounding a topic. For example, on the Goals page, you will see a summary of the number of conversions, the conversion rate, and overall revenue associated with these goal completions.

Sparkline summary cards are shown with a line chart on the left and a text summary of the data just to the right of it. The line chart spans the date period you have selected with the Date Selector. Within this line chart, the red bubble represents the lowest data point, the green represents the highest data point, and there is a blue bubble at the end, representing your most recent data point.

There are no settings within these summary cards however, there are two significant features. You can hover over the text summary for a more detailed description of precisely what is being shown. Additionally clicking on any of these items will update the Evolution graph to display this data.

Maps

The final data visualisation is the Map view which is only relevant when looking at location-based data. By default, this shows a world map. You can drill down, by clicking on a country to see a breakdown of regions, and you can click on these to reveal an Evolution Graph for the selected region. It is important to remember when you are reviewing location data, that this is being pulled from the IP address. This means the accuracy may vary depending on how you have configured your privacy settings.

Learn more in the guide Visitors maps (World, country and region)