Read your first reports

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Matomo has many reports, and that can feel like a lot at first. The good news: you do not need all of them. You need the logic, and where to look.

Start with three simple questions and learn where to find the answers. By the end of this page, you’ll know where to look and find your first useful insight.

The logic in three questions

Matomo groups your reports around three simple questions. When you feel lost, come back to these:

• Visitors, who is coming? Go to Visitors to understand your audience, including visits, devices, locations and languages.
• Behaviour, what do they do? Go to Behaviour to understand what happens on your site, including your most viewed pages, entry pages and exit pages.
• Acquisition, where do they come from? Go to Acquisition to see how visitors reached your site, including search engines, websites, campaigns, social networks and direct traffic.

That is the backbone of Matomo. Everything else builds on it.

Before you read any number

Check two things in the selector bar at the top:

• The right website. Make sure you are looking at the site you want.
• The right dates. Choose the period you want to understand.

Try it now: find your first insight

Pick one question and open one report. For example:

Where do my visitors come from?	Open Acquisition > All Channels. Look at your traffic sources and identify your main channel.	You might discover: “Search engines bring most of our visits.”
Which pages do people view most?	Open Behaviour > Pages. Find the pages receiving the most page views.	You might discover: “Our blog article about this specific topic is one of our most viewed pages.”

That is your first insight. You now know one useful thing about your website or audience.

Good to know

Coming from another analytics tool? Your numbers will not match Google Analytics or other analytics tools… And that’s okay. The totals might differ, and that is expected.

Small differences are normal, because the tools count and process data differently between each tool.

Also, Matomo does not sample your data, so it often gives a more complete picture. Larger gaps usually point to a setup detail worth checking.

One tip to avoid overwhelm

Do not try to read every report!

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

As you get more comfortable, you can decide which questions and metrics matter most to your organisation.

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