Discrepancy between Backend Database and Matomo Tracking

I am writing to report a significant discrepancy between the number of conversions recorded in our backend database and the number of goal conversions tracked in Matomo. Upon closer examination, I have determined that this issue is not related to incorrect goal definitions in Matomo.

Upon analyzing a specific visit, it has come to my attention that certain mandatory steps in our conversion funnel are not being properly recorded in Matomo. For instance, when reviewing a visit associated with a purchase action, I noticed that only the action corresponding to the cart page is captured, while the actions for the product page, payment page, and confirmation page are missing.
As the conversion goal is triggered when the user visits the confirmation page, this visit is not labelled as converted.

This discrepancy raises concerns as it prevents us from accurately tracking and analyzing user journeys within our conversion funnel.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Hi Adeline - were you able to find a solution for this? I’m running into a similar issue in terms of visits

Hi, not yet unfortunately.

Hi,

I have a similar problem with the goal conversion of our donations. The goal is very simple and does not even include a funnel. It’s set to track the URL vcoe.at/…/success which is the confirmation page for donations. Matomo seems to track at random when this page is accessed.

Our CMS registers about four times as many successfully delivered donations than Matomo counts conversions. There is also no difference between the different service providers (credit card company, paypal or bank). Goal conversion works fine with most other sites.

I’m really stuck here. It would be very helpful to get any comment on this from the Matomo team.

Thanks
Florian

@Adeline_DEPAEPE ,

First: check whether the matomo tracking snippet is in the document of the product page, payment page and confirmation page. See the source code.

Second: check in the browser inspector the network analysis and in this the requests to the matomo.php on the product page, payment page and confirmation page.

Third: post here the urls of the matomo.php request from the product page, payment page and confirmation page.

Hi there,

sorry it took a awhile for me to get back. Our website agency checked everything and say that the tracking snippet is where it should be. So the scripts are inserted correctly and in the network analysis contact to matomo is established. When they tested (with different IPs), however, their visits weren’t listed in matomo.

Please find the the matomo.php with the URL parameters below. I would really appreciate any help with this. Frankly, I don’t see the point in paying 400 euros or so a year if an important feature is not working properly.

Thanks, Florian

{
“POST”: {
“scheme”: “https”,
“host”: “vcoe.matomo.cloud”,
“filename”: “/matomo.php”,
“query”: {
“action_name”: “Spenden - Mobilität mit Zukunft”,
“idsite”: “1”,
“rec”: “1”,
“r”: “033705”,
“h”: “8”,
“m”: “48”,
“s”: “26”,
“url”: “https://vcoe.at/vcoe-unterstuetzen/spenden”,
“urlref”: “https://vcoe.at/”,
“_id”: “dd9e789fb392aa1e”,
“_idn”: “0”,
“send_image”: “0”,
“_refts”: “0”,
“pdf”: “1”,
“qt”: “0”,
“realp”: “0”,
“wma”: “0”,
“fla”: “0”,
“java”: “0”,
“ag”: “0”,
“cookie”: “1”,
“res”: “1920x1080”,
“pv_id”: “uXWcHX”,
“fa_pv”: “1”,
“fa_fp[0][fa_vid]”: “qIj6aa”,
“fa_fp[0][fa_id]”: “donation_162”,
“fa_fp[0][fa_fv]”: “1”,
“pf_net”: “424”,
“pf_srv”: “115”,
“pf_tfr”: “1111”,
“pf_dm1”: “915”,
“uadata”: “{}”
},
“remote”: {
“Adresse”: “3.126.133.169:443”
}
}
}
{
“Status”: “204”,
“Version”: “HTTP/2”,
“Übertragen”: “245 B (0 B Größe)”,
“Referrer Policy”: “strict-origin-when-cross-origin”,
“Anfrage-Priorität”: “Lowest”,
“DNS-Auflösung”: “System”
}
{
“Antwortkopfzeilen (245 B)”: {
“headers”: [
{
“name”: “access-control-allow-credentials”,
“value”: “true”
},
{
“name”: “access-control-allow-origin”,
“value”: “https://vcoe.at”
},
{
“name”: “date”,
“value”: “Fri, 29 Sep 2023 06:48:26 GMT”
},
{
“name”: “server”,
“value”: “Apache”
},
{
“name”: “vary”,
“value”: “X-Forwarded-Port-Override,X-Forwarded-Proto-Override,User-Agent”
},
{
“name”: “X-Firefox-Spdy”,
“value”: “h2”
}
]
}
}
{
“Anfragekopfzeilen (925 B)”: {
“headers”: [
{
“name”: “Accept”,
“value”: “*/*”
},
{
“name”: “Accept-Encoding”,
“value”: “gzip, deflate, br”
},
{
“name”: “Accept-Language”,
“value”: “de,en-US;q=0.7,en;q=0.3”
},
{
“name”: “Connection”,
“value”: “keep-alive”
},
{
“name”: “Content-Length”,
“value”: “0”
},
{
“name”: “Content-Type”,
“value”: “application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8”
},
{
“name”: “Host”,
“value”: “vcoe.matomo.cloud”
},
{
“name”: “Origin”,
“value”: “https://vcoe.at”
},
{
“name”: “Referer”,
“value”: “https://vcoe.at/”
},
{
“name”: “Sec-Fetch-Dest”,
“value”: “empty”
},
{
“name”: “Sec-Fetch-Mode”,
“value”: “no-cors”
},
{
“name”: “Sec-Fetch-Site”,
“value”: “cross-site”
},
{
“name”: “TE”,
“value”: “trailers”
},
{
“name”: “User-Agent”,
“value”: “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/118.0”
}
]
}
}

Hi @Florian_vcoe
I don’t understand; you wrote:

But the HTTP tracking request is on https://vcoe.at/vcoe-unterstuetzen/spenden

Can you check:
The number of times the page success has been hit (in the pages report), and also how your goal has been exactly configured (screenshot of the goal settings)?

Hi @heurteph-ei ,

Thanks for getting back. Hope, we are getting closer to a solution of the issue now :slight_smile: .

There were 52 hits for spenden/status/success and the conversion of the goal “Spenden” was also 52 - so that’s correct. The thing is, we had way more donations and everyone who donated sees the /success page.



Best regards,
Florian

Hi @Florian_vcoe
As you have only 52 hits, but more donations, that means that sometimes the tracking doesn’t happen on the page at all.
Some browser blockers can be the cause. What is the difference between real and measured?

Hi @heurteph-ei ,

The real number is about five times higher than the measured one. Any idea what causes this break(?) in tracking?

Best,
Florian

Hi @Florian_vcoe
Is it possible users do several donations in one single visit?
Is it possible the success page is not displayed each time (for any reason): What is the difference (in number of hits) between the previous page, the success page and the real number of donations?
Is it possible to donate via another way (from another app, for example)?
Did you try with different browsers (at least Chrome, Edge, Safari, Brave, Opera, desktop and mobile)

Hi @heurteph-ei,

  1. It is possible that some users make several donations in a single visit - but it’s very unlikely or will happen rarely.
  2. Not matter if the user donates via direct debit, paypal or credit card, they URL will always contain ‘spenden/status/success’ as defined the goal settings.
  3. About 20 times as many people visit the donation page than actually send the form an donate. This would be a realistic conversion rate (of 25 percent) using the online donation we track from the CMS.
  4. All online donations run via the website and that thank you page “success”)
  5. I haven’t tried any other browsers - but what difference would it make if I logged into Matomo from Brave, Opera of Firefox? Or am I missing something here?

We also have a couple of other goals that are not working properly, cancellations of subscriptions e.g.

Thanks for your help so far. If you come across anything useful, please let me know :).

Best wishes,
Florian

Hi @Florian_vcoe
It seems that goal calculation is well configured, some trackings are missing as the number of success page is the same as:

  • The number of goals is the same as the number of success page views
  • The conversion rate seems OK
    Reading back previous messages, I saw:

The source of problem is really on tracking side. That’s why I mentioned the test with different browsers in my last message. Sometimes browsers prevent tracking (for user privacy purposes). You have to identify why your web agency is not tracked.
With their help, when they navigate to your site, can you check:

  • Their JavaScript console if there is any error
  • Their network console if there is any error
    :question:

Hi @heurteph-ei,

Thanks, I’ll double check with the agency, but they said earlier that there hadn’t been any errors in the consoles.

Best regards,
Florian

Hi @Florian_vcoe
How is the site configuration, about what should or not be tracked?
image

How is the DNT parameter configured in your Matomo? :gear: > Privacy > Anonymize data > Users opt-out

Hi @heurteph-ei,

Thanks for pointing this out.

  1. Under Administration-Websites-Manage I find this setting


    Up to now I’ve been unaware of this setting at all. As far as I understand, however, it shouldn’t solve my tracking problem - or I’m I wrong on this?

  2. We chose the recommended setting “Enable do not track support”. I don’t believe that more than a few people are aware of this browser setting plus it is not a default in e.g. Firefox. So I would doubt very much that it is responsible for the wrong count.

Thanks again,
Florian

Hi @Florian_vcoe

If the checkbox were checked, this could have been the source of the problem…

This setting will be turned off by default in future release…

Also, If I am not wrong, the DNT parameter was set true by default on Firefox, and most of users do not even know the existence of such a parameter (then they cannot switch if off). Have a try and disable this setting for one week, just to check (then you’ll be able to decide which value you keep). Please note that not taking DNT setting into account is still GDPR compliant.

Many thanks for this @heurteph-ei! I’ll change the DNT-setting and see what happens. The “Only track visits…” box in Websites-Manage has been unchecked, so that’s not the problem

Re the Firefox default it seems you were right: “In 2018, we introduced Enhanced Tracking Protection and turned it on by default for all Firefox users in 2019, reflecting our commitment to actively protect our users rather than expect them to protect themselves. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/firefox-rolls-out-total-cookie-protection-by-default-to-all-users-worldwide/

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