Matomo basics under 30 minutes

Video transcription

Introduction & What You’ll Learn

Hi everyone, and welcome to this Getting Started with Matomo demo.

If you are new to Matomo, starting a trial, or still deciding if Matomo is the right analytics platform for your organisation, you are in the right place.

Today, we’ll keep things simple.

Because when you open an analytics tool for the first time, it can feel like a lot: reports, graphs, filters, dashboards, menus… and usually one big question: “Where do I even start?”

That is exactly what this demo is for.

Matomo helps you understand what is happening on your website, so you can make better business decisions.

Not just “how many visits did we get?”, but more useful questions like:

• Which campaigns bring potential customers?
• Which pages help people move closer to a signup, purchase, booking, or contact request?
• Where are people getting stuck before they convert?
• And what should your team focus on next to get better results?

That is the real value of analytics: knowing what is working, what is not working yet, and where to take action.

A quick story before we start clicking around…

Matomo was originally called Matomo. It started in 2007, then became Matomo in 2018. When Matthieu Aubry created Matomo in 2007, his vision was simple: to build a transparent, open-source alternative to Google Analytics that gave organisations full control over their data.

That vision still drives Matomo today: clear analytics, data you can trust, and data you control.

Matomo is open-source and privacy-first. You can use it in the Cloud, or host it yourself with Matomo On-Premise.

It also gives you accurate, unsampled data. In simple words: you can analyse your real data, not an estimate.

In fact, this is one of the main reasons many organisations choose Matomo: its data accuracy. Unlike many analytics platforms that rely on sampling, Matomo lets you analyse your complete data with confidence. And depending on your privacy setup, you may also be able to collect more complete data than with other analytics platforms, thanks to Matomo’s consent exemption capabilities.

And that matters when you need to decide where to invest, what to improve, or how to explain your results.

In this demo, we’ll follow a simple path:

• First, we’ll look at the interface.
• Then, we’ll see how to read your main reports.
• We’ll learn how to read your data, understand who visits your website, where they come from, what they do, and what drives real business results.
• And I’ll also show you a few advanced features, like heatmaps, session recordings, A/B tests, and Tag Manager.

But don’t worry, you do not need to use everything on day one!

My advice is: start with one clear business question, find the report that answers it, and build from there.

One final thing before we start: please don’t worry about taking notes or remembering everything. You can simply follow along, explore your own Matomo account if you want to, and watch the replay of this video later.

Ready? Let’s start with a quick tour of the interface.

1. Tour of the interface

Now let’s start with a quick tour of the interface.

At first, Matomo can look like it has a lot of options. And yes, it does.

It is a powerful and professional analytics platform, so you have many reports, settings, and ways to analyse your data.

But don’t worry: you do not need to know everything.

The most important thing is to understand the logic, and where to find the most useful information for you and your business.

If you have used Universal Analytics before, some parts of Matomo may feel familiar. If you are coming from GA4, Matomo may feel simpler to use once you understand where things are.

Today, I’m using the Matomo demo website, but the same logic applies if you use Matomo Cloud or Matomo On-Premise.

Some menus, settings, or features may vary depending on your setup, your permissions, and the plugins enabled. But the main structure stays the same.

Okay, let’s start at the top.

Main navigation

Here, you have the main navigation.

The Dashboard is usually your main view for each website. It gives you a quick overview of your reports and key metrics.

All Websites gives you a high-level view of all the websites you track.

So, whether you manage one website or one hundred websites, you can monitor them from the same place.

Matomo Tag Manager (MTM)

Then, you may see Matomo Tag Manager.

Tag Manager helps you measure important actions on your website, such as button clicks, form submissions, downloads, or video plays, without relying on developers for every change.

It is very powerful, but we are not opening that box today. It deserves its own training.

Settings

You also have the settings area.

This is where you can manage personal preferences, users, websites, privacy settings, API access, and admin features, depending on your permissions.

Main dashboard

Now, let’s go back to the main dashboard.

Before reading any number, I recommend checking three things in the top selector bar.

First, the website selector. Make sure you are looking at the right website. It sounds obvious, but it avoids a lot of confusion.

Second, the date selector. Here, you choose the period you want to analyse. For example: yesterday, last week, last month, or a custom date range.

You can also compare periods. This is useful because one number alone can be misleading. Trends and comparisons usually tell a better story.

Third, the segment selector. Segments help you focus on a specific audience. For example, mobile visitors, visitors from one country, or visitors from one campaign. We will come back to segments later, because they are one of the best ways to make your data more useful.

Main reports

Now, on the left side, you have the main reports. This is where most of the analysis and magic happens!

The logic is simple, I promise:

• Visitors helps you understand who is coming to your website.
• Behaviour helps you understand what people are doing on your website.
• Acquisition helps you understand where they came from.
• And we’ll end with my favourite, Goals and Funnels. They help you understand what converts, and where people drop off before completing an important action.

So if you feel lost, come back to these four questions:

• Who is coming?
• What are they doing?
• Where did they come from?
• And what converted?

That is the basic structure of Matomo.

Now that we know where things are, let’s look at some tips and tricks on how to read your data inside a report.

2. Reading Your Data: Tips & Tricks

Before we look at the main reports, let me show you a few quick tips to read your data in Matomo.

Most reports follow the same logic: At the top, you usually have the main numbers and the graph.

This gives you the quick overview: what happened, and how it changed over time.

Below, you usually have a table. This is where you can look at the details, sort the data, and understand what is behind the numbers. My first tip: Click on a line if you want to learn more about a specific metric.

That is where annotations are useful. Annotations are small notes you can add to your data, for example: “newsletter sent”, “campaign launched”, or “tracking issue fixed”. This helps you understand later why traffic went up or down.

In tables, you will also see filters, display options, and export options. For example, in Behaviour, then Pages, you can switch between a hierarchical view and a flat view.

The hierarchical view groups pages by URL structure.

The flat view shows each page separately.

You may also see small green icons when you hover over some data. These are shortcuts to explore faster, for example to see a graph, compare a row, or open more details. No need to memorise them. Just hover over them and Matomo will tell you what they do.

So the simple method is:

• You can start with the graph.
• Add annotations when context matters.
• Use filters and green icons to explore.
• And export when you need to share the data.

One quick bonus before we move on: we also have a new AI connector, so you can connect Matomo to your favorite AI tools and ask questions about your analytics data in plain language! I love it and use it a lot, but we won’t cover it today. If you want to learn more, look for “Matomo MCP” or download the guide I created.

Now, let’s dive into the three main report families in Matomo: Visitors, Behaviour, and Acquisition.

3. Understanding the Three Main Reports

Now let’s look at the three main report families in Matomo.

The logic is really super simple:

• Visitors tells you who is coming to your website.
• Behaviour tells you what they are doing.
• Acquisition tells you where they came from.

So if you ever feel lost in the interface, come back to these three questions:

• Who is coming?
• What are they doing?
• Where did they come from?

That is the easiest way to know which report to open.

Let’s put this into practice, starting with “Who”: your Visitors.

Quick thing: What is “a visit”?

Before we move on, quick answer to a question we often get: “What is a visit in Matomo?”

A visit is one session of activity on your website.

By default, Matomo starts a new visit if someone comes back more than 30 minutes after their last tracked action, arrives from a new campaign source, or continues browsing after midnight in your website’s configured time zone.

So one person can generate several visits in the same day. For example, if I visit your website in the morning, then come back later in the afternoon, Matomo may count that as two visits.

A unique visitor is about the person, or more precisely, the browser or device Matomo can recognise during the selected period.

To keep it simple:

• A visitor is who came.
• A visit is one session.
• And a hit is one tracked interaction, like a page view, event, download, outlink, or site search.

That’s why visitors, visits, and hits are not the same thing.

Now let’s start with Visitors.

A. Visitors, WHO

Visitors answers the question: WHO is coming to your website?

This is where you understand your audience: where people are located, what devices they use, when they visit, and whether they are new or returning visitors.

From a business perspective, this helps you check if your website is attracting the right audience.

• For example, are visitors coming from the countries you want to target?
• Are they mostly on mobile or desktop, and do you need to adapt your website accordingly?
• Are they visiting at specific times of the day?

This can help you adapt your content, prioritise website improvements, and choose better times to publish content or send campaigns.

In the Overview, you get the main visitor metrics and trends over time. Then, in Locations, you can see the geographic distribution of your audience. In Devices, you can understand how people access your website: mobile, desktop, tablet, browsers, and screen sizes. And in Times, you can see when people tend to visit your website.

You may also hear about the Visits Log and Visitor Profile, which show more detailed visitor-level journeys. Depending on your privacy configuration and local requirements, these reports may be disabled, anonymised, or configured differently.

So, to keep it simple: Visitors helps you understand WHO your audience is. And we can also go deeper with the segments, but we’ll talk about that later in the demo.

Next, let’s look at Behaviour: what people are doing, once they are on your website.

B. Behaviour, WHAT

Behaviour answers the question: WHAT are people doing on your website?

This is where we move from: “How many visits did we get?” to: “What did people actually do?”

In Behaviour, you can analyse your pages, entry pages, exit pages, downloads, internal searches, events, and user paths.

The Pages report helps you see which pages are viewed the most, and which ones may need more attention. This is useful to understand which topics or content works well, which pages support your business goals, and which pages could be improved.

Entry Pages show where people start their visit. Exit Pages show where people leave your website. A high exit rate is not always bad. Sometimes people leave because they found what they needed. But if an important page has many exits, it may be a sign that something needs to be improved. Downloads help you see which files people click on, for example guides, brochures, PDFs, or product documents.  You may also have Events, for example clicks, form submissions, video plays, or other interactions.

For more advanced tracking, Matomo Tag Manager can help you set up and manage those interactions.

So, to keep it simple: Behaviour helps you understand content performance and user actions. Use it to identify what works, what creates friction, and what should be improved. Next, let’s look at Acquisition: where your visitors are coming from.

C. Acquisition, WHERE

Acquisition answers the question: WHERE are your visitors coming from?

For example, did they come from search engines, social networks, another website, a campaign, an AI assistant, or direct traffic?

From a business perspective, this is where you start connecting marketing activity to results. Because a good channel does not only bring traffic. A good channel brings the right people: people who stay, explore, download, sign up, contact you, buy, or complete another useful action.

In the Overview, you can see all your acquisition channels in one place. This helps you compare your main sources of traffic quickly.

Then, in All Channels, you can go deeper and compare channels like search, social, websites, campaigns, direct entry, and AI assistants when available.

And one of my favourite reports: Campaigns! In Matomo, a campaign means traffic coming from links you’ve tagged, for example in emails, ads, newsletters, or social media posts. It helps you measure which marketing activities actually drive results.

For example, newsletters, paid ads, partner campaigns, webinars, or product launches. To track campaigns properly, you usually need campaign parameters in your links, such as UTM or Matomo campaign parameters, called MTM. Matomo also has a Campaign URL Builder to help you create those tracking links more easily.

So, to keep it simple:

Acquisition helps you understand which channels bring visitors, and which channels bring value. Use it to decide what to scale, what to improve, and what to stop.

Now that you know the essential structure of Matomo, we can move to the heart of it all: measuring what really matters for your business.

4. Goals & Conversions: Measuring What Matters

Now that you know the essential structure of Matomo, we can move to the heart of it all: understanding what actually brings value to your business. Because counting visits is useful. But counting visits alone does not prove impact.

The real question is: “Did people do what we wanted them to do?” That is where Goals and Conversions come in.

A goal is simply an important action you want people to complete on your website.

For example, a newsletter signup. A contact form submission. A demo request. A trial signup. A document download. A newsletter subscription. A purchase. Or even a visitor spending enough time on an important page.

In simple words, Goals help you define what “success” means for your website. And this is where Matomo becomes much more business-focused. Instead of only saying: “We had traffic.”. You can say: “We had traffic, and this percentage of visitors completed the important action.”. That percentage is your conversion rate.

This is one of the most important metrics you can track, because it connects your website activity to business outcomes.

Here, in the Goals overview, you can see your conversions, your conversion rate, and, if you configure it, the value generated by your goals. This is useful when you need to report results to your manager, your team, your client, or your leadership team.

For example, let’s say you have a demo request form. If you create a goal for that form submission, you can measure how many people completed it. Then you can analyse where those conversions came from. Did they come from organic search? From a newsletter? From a paid campaign? From a partner website? From a specific country?

This is where everything we saw earlier becomes much more useful:

• Visitors tells you who converted.
• Behaviour tells you what they did before converting.
• Acquisition tells you where they came from.
• And Goals tells you whether they completed the action that matters.

You can also create different goals for different stages of the journey. For example:

• One goal for downloading a guide.
• One goal for signing up to the newsletter.
• One goal for requesting a demo.

Because not every goal is the same, and not every goal has the same value:

A guide download may show interest.

A newsletter signup may show engagement.

A demo request may show stronger intent.

And a purchase or subscription is usually much closer to revenue.

That is why it is important to choose goals that match YOUR business!

This is where you start proving the ROI of your website. Not just traffic. Not just pages viewed. But real actions that matter to your business.

Now, once you know what people converted on, the next question is: where did they get stuck before converting? That is what we’ll look at next with Funnels.

5. Funnels: Finding Where People Drop Off

A goal tells you if people converted. A funnel helps you understand what happened before the conversion. In simple words, a funnel is the path you expect people to follow before completing an important action.

For example, for a demo request, the funnel could be:

• Product page.
• Pricing page.
• Demo request form.
• Form submitted.

Each step matters, because each step is also a place where people can drop off. And this is where Funnels are really useful. They help you see exactly where people abandon the journey. Funnels help you stop guessing. They show you where the journey breaks, so you can fix the right step instead of changing everything.

So instead of saying: “Our demo request conversion rate is low.”. You can say: “People reach the pricing page, but they do not continue to the demo form.”. Or: “People open the form, but they do not submit it.”. That is much more useful.

Because now, you know where to investigate. Maybe the call to action is not clear enough. Maybe the pricing page needs more reassurance. Maybe the form is too long. Maybe the value proposition is not strong enough. Maybe people are missing one key piece of information before they convert,… This saves time because you do not need to change everything on your website. You can focus on the step where people drop off.

A few real-life examples:

• For an ecommerce website, a funnel can show where people abandon the checkout.
• For a SaaS website, it can show where people stop before starting a trial or requesting a demo.
• For a content website, it can show whether people move from a blog post to a guide, then to a newsletter signup.
• And for a public sector or institutional website, it can show whether people find the right service page and complete the expected form.

My tip is: start with one simple funnel. Do not try to map the entire website. Choose one important journey, with three to five steps. Then ask: Where do people drop off? Is that expected? And what can we improve on that specific step?

So, to keep it simple:

Goals show whether people converted. Funnels show where people got stuck before converting. And together, they help you improve conversions with the traffic you already have.

Now, once you know which numbers and reports matter, you probably don’t want to search for them every time… So let’s quickly look at Dashboards, and how to keep your most important reports in one place!

6. Dashboards: Your Analytics Command Centre

Think of your dashboard as your command centre, and the homepage of your Matomo instance! It is the screen you can open every morning to see what matters most.

But a good dashboard should not be a wall of numbers. It should answer your recurring questions quickly. For example:

• How is my website performing?
• Are my campaigns bringing results?
• Are conversions going up or down?

And that’s all!

In Matomo, dashboards are made of widgets. You can add widgets, remove them, move them around, and organise them depending on what you need.

You can create different dashboards for different goals or teams. For example, a marketing dashboard. An SEO dashboard. A campaign dashboard. A content dashboard. Or an executive dashboard for leadership reporting.

My tip is: do not put everything in one dashboard. Build one dashboard around one clear purpose. You build it once, and then it helps you every day.

And if you need to share insights regularly, you can also create scheduled email reports, so key metrics are sent directly to you or your stakeholders.

Now, let’s move to Segments, because they help you make your reports much more specific and useful.

7. Segments: Focus on the audience that matters

Segments help you focus on the audience that matters. In simple words, a segment is a filter. It does not delete your data. It does not change your data. It only changes how you read your reports.

By default, you usually see All Visits. But sometimes, “all visits” is too broad. You may want to focus only on mobile visitors. Or visitors from France. Or people who came from one campaign. Or returning visitors. Or visitors who completed a goal.

This is where segments become very useful. You can apply a segment from the segment selector at the top. And once you apply it, Matomo recalculates your reports for that specific audience.

So the same reports we just saw (Visitors, Behaviour, Acquisition, Goals, Funnels, and Dashboards) can ALL become more specific. For example:

• What do mobile visitors do differently?
• Do visitors from France convert better than visitors from other countries?
• Which pages do people from one campaign visit?
• Do returning visitors behave differently from new visitors?
• And you can also compare a segment with All Visits.

This helps you understand whether one audience performs better, worse, or simply differently. That is the real business value. Instead of exporting everything to Excel and trying to filter manually, you can ask a precise question directly in Matomo. One precise question. One precise answer.

My tip for this is to start simple. Create or use one segment at a time. Give it a clear name. And always check at the top of the page if a segment is active, because it applies across your reports.

To summarise: Segments help you isolate the audience you care about. They do not change the data. They change the way you analyse it. 

Now that we’ve covered the core reporting features, let’s take a very quick look at a few advanced features you can explore later, when you are ready to go further.

8. Advanced Features: Grow with Matomo

Before we finish, I want to quickly show you that Matomo can go much further…

Everything we covered today is enough to get started.

But when you are ready, Matomo also gives you more advanced tools to go even deeper to understand, optimise, and scale your analytics:

• For example, Matomo Tag Manager helps you manage tracking and marketing tags from one place.
• Heatmaps help you see which areas of a page get the most attention.
• Session Recordings help you understand friction by replaying how visitors interacted with your website.
• Form Analytics can help you see where people complete or abandon your forms.
• A/B Testing helps you test different versions of a page or campaign to see what performs better.
• Custom Dimensions let you add more business context to your data. For example, content type, customer plan, logged-in status, or any other information that matters to your analysis.
• Custom Reports help you build reports tailored to your own questions, instead of only using standard reports.

You can also go further with Ecommerce tracking, Media Analytics, Multi-Channel Attribution, Advertising Conversion Export, APIs, data warehouse exports, and integrations with tools like WordPress, WooCommerce, BI platforms, consent management platforms, or your own systems through APIs.

And, as I mentioned earlier – and because I really love this feature, Matomo can also connect with AI tools through our AI Connector, our MCP. This way, you can ask questions about your analytics data in plain language.

But don’t worry, you do not need to use everything on day one. Start with the essentials. Then, as your team becomes more mature, Matomo can grow with you. More precise tracking. More advanced analysis. More optimisation. More automation… Everything is there when you are ready.

And if you need help, you can always reach out to us, our support team is here for you!

9. Recap

And that’s it! Well done, you made it through the Getting Started demo.

Let’s quickly recap:

• Visitors tells you who is coming to your website.
• Behaviour tells you what people are doing.
• Acquisition tells you where they came from.
• Goals help you define what success means.
• Funnels help you understand where people drop off before converting.
• Dashboards keep your most important KPIs in one place.
• Segments help you focus on the audience that matters.
• And our advanced features help you gain deeper insights as your business grows.

I really want you to remember this for today: Matomo is powerful, but you do not need to use everything on day one.

Start with one clear business question, find the report that answers it, and build from there.

After this demo, I recommend three actions:

• First, check your dashboard: the right website, the right period, and the right KPIs.
• Second, set up or review one goal: a signup, form submission, download, demo request, purchase, or any action that matters to your business.
• Third, apply one segment: mobile visitors, visitors from one country, visitors from one campaign, returning visitors, or converted visitors.

If you need help, you can use our free educational guides, search your answer in the Matomo Knowledge Base, contact our support team or your Customer Success Manager.

And if you are already receiving our onboarding emails, keep an eye on them. They are designed to guide you step by step through the next useful actions in Matomo.

I also encourage you to subscribe to our Matomo newsletter if you haven’t already.

Every month, I share useful updates about Matomo, web analytics, privacy, AI, new educational resources, upcoming webinars, and practical tips to help you get more value from your Matomo!