How the ecommerce advertising platform Shopping24 optimizes its website’s performance with Piwik PRO

Shopping24 is a part of mrge, a leading global platform for commerce advertising. The company has been on the market for 15 years and operates an ecommerce network of 10 product search engines, over 1000 shop partners, and more than 100 publishers. The online shops place their products on 25 websites within the network to increase their sales and audience.

The company’s primary objective is to provide its users with the most relevant product recommendations and effectively direct them to online shops.

Balancing analysis of high traffic volumes with cost pressures and data protection obligations

Comprehensive data traffic analysis is a crucial success factor for Shopping24. However, it is equally important to maintain the highest level of compliance with GDPR. The company had already used Google Analytics for some time, but it couldn’t fully deliver on GDPR compliance. As a result, Shopping24 initiated an in-depth selection process to find privacy-compliant software with a balanced pricing model.

Various options were carefully examined, including comprehensive tools such as Matomo, Econda, and Etracker, as well as specialized data protection software like OneTrust. However, none of these solutions could successfully address the specific challenges faced by Shopping24. Some required more specific consent management functions, some had complex implementation processes, and others were prohibitively expensive.

Other vital criteria in the evaluation process were:

• Data residency.
• Effective handling of large data pools.
• The option to collect additional data.

It was in this crucial context that Shopping24 came to look at Piwik PRO.

Piwik PRO provided the company with a tailor-made solution that ensured the highest level of GDPR compliance and offered specific consent management functions. The balanced price and transparent implementation process made the decision even easier. The software enabled Shopping24 to analyze traffic accurately while meeting all data protection requirements.

Piwik PRO Analytics Suite – the compelling and complete package

Initial product research and tests gave promising results. Piwik PRO Analytics Suite employs a data model that the Shopping24 team was already familiar with. The general logic of transmitting and linking events posed no problem. It promised an easy transition on a technical level.

It quickly became apparent that the platform offers an optimal price-performance ratio, and that its users can rely on comprehensive implementation and technical support.

Due to the high traffic volume of the Shopping24 websites and their specific analytical needs, implementing and fine-tuning all settings required time and consultation with the Piwik PRO support team. Nevertheless, full implementation was achieved right on schedule.

The web development team found Piwik PRO Analytics Suite intuitive and accessible. They also appreciated that it offers data protection features that are easy to understand, even for non-experts. Shopping24 easily balanced GDPR compliance with its own goals. Some of the solutions they tried before saw the team go through a series of trials and errors that cost a lot of time and frustration.

The successful implementation of Piwik PRO has significantly improved the efficiency and transparency of data handling. Shopping24 can now make informed decisions based on high-quality analytics insights while fully complying with strict privacy regulations. Piwik PRO has proven to be a reliable partner and contributes significantly to their success.

In-depth understanding of user behavior using custom events

The web development team is the main user of Piwik PRO Analytics Suite. The platform primarily helps them to track user behavior on product search pages.

About 80% of the interactive elements on pages are tracked with custom events, which help the Shopping24 team monitor users’ interactions with the website. The team checks whether users click on particular buttons, how they navigate the website, and what they enter in the search field. They also observe reactions to page updates, such as image carousel modifications.

By applying these methods, Shopping24 can better understand whether their site optimization measures positively affect user behavior. The web development team monitors how users interact with navigation features and performs A/B tests to identify which variant works best.

Custom events also provide the company with aggregated information about the effectiveness of the offer presentation.

The Shopping24 team analyzes custom events for the filters used on the website to determine which product features visitors prefer. This is a continuous effort, as trends are by nature limited in time. The team is also interested in outliers because they also consider them as trends. The goal is to understand how visitors navigate the website to find their desired products. The team achieves this goal by linking each interaction area to a specific event.

The web development team collaborates with account management to analyze how Shopping24 can expand its product range in specific areas, especially when handling certain trends presents challenges.

Understanding traffic in the proper context

The success of Shopping24, a company that primarily redirects traffic from product aggregator sites to target stores, relies on analyzing traffic sources. Piwik PRO Analytics Suite is a powerful platform that helps the company’s web developers carefully examine edge cases, such as unexplained increases in direct traffic. After analyzing the user agents, they can determine whether the traffic is potentially harmful. If so, they can limit it using other tools.

As for visitors that use product search, their behavior varies greatly depending on how they found the website: through other search engines, Google Shopping, Google Ads, or by direct visits. In some cases, they may not even realize they have landed on the Shopping24 website.

Using Piwik PRO Analytics Suite, the team examines the context in which a user arrives at the site, understands their behavior, and decides how to influence it. Shopping24 has a powerful tool enabling them to determine the volume and characteristics of traffic sources, identify discrepancies, and optimize device-specific topics.

Controlling the technical aspects of operating a product search engine

The Shopping24 web development team monitors technical metrics, such as website performance, based on response time. As the platform interacts with millions of products from multiple services, fast page speed is crucial for success.The team needs to determine if slow response time is due to the product search engine or an external service.

Additionally, employees monitor conversion rates, as a sudden drop may indicate JavaScript issues.

Result

Shopping24 was searching for software to perform an in-depth analysis of traffic sources on frequently visited websites while adhering to data protection standards. Piwik PRO provided a comprehensive solution that included affordable pricing, customizable analytics features, and support.

Thanks to Piwik PRO, Shopping24 can now analyze user behavior on 25 pages in detail while adhering to GDPR standards without involving data protection experts. Employees work with a familiar data model and can access information quickly thanks to the convenience of the integrated Analytics, Tag Manager, and Consent Manager package.