Analytics Archives

Site Point

How Analytics Helped Solve a UX Issue — SitePoint

Admin Posted On June 12, 2019

UX and analytics make a great team. Your website analytics can give you insights enabling you to learn about your users, track their journeys, and find potential problem areas. You can use the quantitative data to inform your qualitative UX approach. Remember, your analytics tell you what’s happening on your website, while UX techniques such as usability testing will help uncover why things are happening.

There are various ways that Google Analytics can be used to uncover how your users are navigating your website. Within the Pages report you can drill down to see how users are navigating to, and from, a selected page in your website. But the User Flow and Behavior Flow reports give more information on multi-step journeys from your most popular landing pages onwards.

user/behavior flow in google analytics

These reports can be hard to analyze, particularly for large websites, due to the fact that there are unlikely to be a series of clear pathways through your website. You’ll find that there are huge numbers of paths that different users can take, which makes finding insights from these reports quite challenging. However, they can be useful for getting a good top-level overview and showing the most dominant pathways through a site. While they suffer from grouping multiple pages, you can often get a good idea of the most common journeys taken by users.

One example of how I’ve used these reports in the past to inform my UX work has been looking out for pogo sticking.

Pogo Sticking

Pogo sticking describes where users bounce between two pages on a website instead of progressing their journey through the site. It can be a sign of confusion on the users’ part and is unlikely to help you convert those users.

The Nielson/Norman group wrote this guide to pogo sticking, which explains it in more detail. It covers some possible reasons behind pogo sticking behavior, and also gives some potential solutions to these problems.

A Pogo Sticking Case Study

A client of mine ran a travel website offering bespoke holidays based a variety of activities and locations. They believed there were opportunities to improve their conversion rate, and I started looking for those opportunities within their analytics.

The Problem

One big issue became apparent when I first looked at their behavior flow reports. As the simplified diagram below shows, there was a clear case of pogo sticking between the home page and the search results page.

As seen below, there are lots of users landing on the home page before going on to the search results page as their next step. The problem is that the next step for a lot of these users is to return to the home page rather than move on to other pages.

google flow chart showing users going from the home page to search back to the home page

The home page placed search front and center, so it was no surprise that the search results pages were the most popular destination from the home page. However, it was a surprise to note the pogo sticking, as this suggested that users were not seeing the search results they expected. Looking in more detail at the home page, we noticed a potential issue. The search functionality allowed users to search by activity or location, but the way the boxes were laid out on the home page made it look like users were able to search by location and activity.

separate dropdowns for chosing a city and choosing an activity

This meant that users thought they were searching for specific activities within a destination but were then presented with search results showing all activities at a destination.

We ran some usability testing sessions on the website and these showed, as expected, that there was confusion over the search functionality. During the testing sessions, users would attempt to search by location and activity without realizing that the option was not available. This led to unexpected search results and users returning to the home page to attempt their search again. Seeing individual users displaying the same pogo sticking behavior as that demonstrated in Google Analytics enabled us to dig deeper into why this issue was occurring.

The Solution

The client didn’t have the development resources available to make major changes to how the search functionality worked, so we couldn’t suggest large-scale changes. Instead, we set about finding a design to minimize the pogo sticking by simplifying the search functionality and making it clear to users that they could search by destination or activity.

After sketching out and discussing various solutions, it was decided that introducing tabs was the best approach — to ensure it was clear that there were two separate search options available. This meant that users were able to choose between “activity” or “location” searches. The following wireframe shows our initial design.

choose a city dropdown

This design required minimal development and was aimed specifically at tackling the pogo sticking issue.

The Results

This design was implemented on the home page and saw an immediate reduction in pogo sticking between the home page and search pages. This, in turn, led to more users getting to view destination and activity pages and also led to an overall increase in conversions. The following screenshot shows that pogo sticking was still an issue, but that there was a notable reduction in this type of behavior.

Google flow chart showing reduced user returns to home page after search

The longer-term plan is to further improve the search functionality by adding in a level of faceted search — allowing users to filter their search results and find the right destinations and activities for their requirements. This will reduce the pogo sticking even further and lead to a much more efficient way to find the right holiday.

Other Ways to Use Analytics to Inform Your UX

We’ve looked at one example of how analytics data can be used to identify a particular issue with the user journey. There are lots of other ways analytics can be used to help inform your UX decisions.

Starting off your UX work by looking at your website analytics for potential issues is a great way to find problems you might not have even been aware of. Website analytics are often overlooked during the UX process, but your analytics can be used to:

analyze key user journeys
identify potential problem areas on your website
find out more about your website users
measure the impact of your design changes
create reports to show the value of your UX work

Taking an analytics-first approach to your UX work is great, low-cost way to start your initial UX investigative forays. Website analytics tools like Google Analytics can be free to use and you can pick up some key insights very quickly from them.

To find out more about taking an analytics-first approach to your UX work, check out my book Researching UX: Analytics.

Daniel Schwarz is a UX/UI designer, web developer, and maker by background, but a writer, editor, author, and teacher at heart. Currently the design editor at SitePoint (ex Toptal), founder of UX Tricks, writer at .net Magazine and Web Designer Magazine, and occasionally a collaborator with top design companies such as Adobe and InVision.

Credited Source

13 Views

WP Beginner

How to Add Scroll Depth Tracking in WordPress with Google Analytics

Admin Posted On June 10, 2019

How to Track User Scrolling in WordPress Using Google Analytics

Do you want to add scroll depth tracking on your WordPress website?

Scroll depth tracking allows you to see how far a user scrolls on any page. This data helps you see if your visitors are actually reading your long posts and when they lose interest, so you can modify the content to keep them engaged.

In this article, we will show you how to easily track user scrolling in WordPress using Google Analytics.

Why Track User Scrolling in WordPress?

Generally, scrolling occurs when a user wants to see your content below the preview screen. It is a primary activity that all users perform to look at your content.

This makes scroll depth tracking an important measure to track user engagement. In addition to that, it gives you plenty of insights about user interaction on your site and helps you improve pages for optimal length.

For example, you can find out how much an average user scrolls when viewing your site, which long reads they liked the most, what makes them lose interest, etc.

With these insights, you can then optimize your pages for better user engagement and higher conversions.

Tracking Scroll Depth in WordPress with Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool offered by Google to help you better understand your website visitors.

It allows you track who your website visitors are (age, gender, interests), where they are from, which pages they visit, how long they stay on those pages, how far down they scroll on the pages, and more.

Google Analytics tracks the basic metrics like total page views, total number of visitors, top pages, etc. by default.

For more advanced metrics like scroll depth, eCommerce tracking, form submissions, file downloads, event tracking, and others, Google analytics require you to setup custom tracking.

Manually setting up advanced Google analytics tracking requires a lot of technical skills. As a beginner, this is nearly impossible. Even some developers can’t do it properly.

Thankfully, there are easy to use WordPress plugins that can help you track advanced metrics like scroll depth with Google Analytics.

Let’s take a look at two plugins that you can use to setup scroll depth tracking in WordPress.

1. Scroll Depth Tracking in WordPress with MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is the most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress with over 2,000,000+ active installs. It helps you easily install and use Google Analytics on your WordPress website without using any code.

With MonsterInsights, you can enable advanced tracking like eCommerce tracking, file downloads, affiliate links, forms tracking, scroll depth, and more with just a single click (no coding needed).

MonsterInsights comes with scroll-depth tracking enabled by default. This means you don’t even need to configure any settings. All you need to do is setup the MonsterInsights plugin.

First, you need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go to Insights » Settings page and then click on the Engagement tab. As shown in the screenshot below, you will see the scroll tracking option enabled by default.

MonsterInsights Scroll Depth Tracking Option

MonsterInsights trigger events in Google Analytics as your website visitors scroll down the page. It will then be tracked with Google Analytics as 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% scroll.

You can see your scroll tracking stats and other helpful stats right inside your WordPress admin area by going to the MonsterInsights Publishers Report (Insights » Reports » Publishers). The scroll depth data appears next to the Interests section.

Scroll Tracking Reports in WordPress

You can use the scroll depth data to optimize your pages for more conversions. It gives you a better picture of how your visitors are interacting with your content and helps you decide the best place for your important calls to action, ads, and more.

View User Scrolling Data in Google Analytics

Now that you have set up scroll tracking with MonsterInsights, you can view reports also in your Google Analytics account.

Log into your Analytics account and then visit Real-Time » Events to see your real-time or recent scrolling data within the last 30 minutes.

Google Analytics Scroll Tracking in Real-time

For the complete data, you can go to Behavior » Events » Overview from your Analytics dashboard.

Scroll Depth Data in Google Analytics

You can click on the Scroll Depth link to get more details.

If you want more granular details, then you can use Google Analytics’ secondary dimension feature alongside the Scroll Depth event to see the scroll data for each individual landing page.

2. Track User Scrolling With WP Scroll Depth Plugin

If you don’t want a comprehensive Google Analytics solution and would rather use a single plugin, then you can use WP Scroll Depth.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the WP Scroll Depth plugin on your site. For detailed instructions, here’s our step by step guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.

Upon activation, you need to go to Settings » Scroll Depth to configure the plugin settings.

WP Scroll Depth Plugin Settings

The default options will track scroll depth for all pages on your WordPress site. All you need to do is click on the Save Changes button to store plugin settings.

WP Scroll Depth plugin uses jQuery to track scrolling on your WordPress site. It monitors four scroll points 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of the page height. When a user reaches a scroll point, the plugin sends an event to Google Analytics using jQuery.

After that, you can view Scroll Depth event data under Real-Time » Events on your Google Analytics dashboard.

WP Scroll Depth Real-time data

We use MonsterInsights on all our websites because it’s the most complete Google Analytics plugin for WordPress, and we recommend all our users to do the same. They have a free MonsterInsights plugin, and you can also upgrade to the premium version to unlock more powerful tracking.

We hope this article helped you learn how to track scroll depth on your WordPress site using Google Analytics. You may also like to see our guide on 10 website marketing data you must track on every WordPress site.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add Scroll Depth Tracking in WordPress with Google Analytics appeared first on WPBeginner.

Credited Source

1 Views

OnlineRockersHub

How to Install Google Analytics to WordPress?

Admin Posted On May 28, 2019

If you are a newbie blogger, you would probably be checking out the stats of your website in your WordPress dashboard or any other Blogging platform. But, have you ever thought how accurate your WordPress dashboard results? WordPress dashboard shows stats far better than Blogger stats. But, in this busy online marketing era, accuracy is so important. Hence, we need to install Google Analytics – the Best site Analytics Tool.

What is Google Analytics?

Google analytics is a free site analytics tool from Google. It allows you to track and analyze your website’s performance. With Google Analytics, you can analyze so many things on your website like:

Where your audience are from?
Where did your audience land up?
Which page on your website gets a lot of traffic?
Which page, you readers don’t like and often click the back button?

And so many.

How does Google Analytics work?

Google Analytics will offer you a piece of javascript code called Google Analytics tracking code. You will be placing this code on your website. Every time, your page loads up, this code will also load up. Hence, Google analytics will be tracking it. And, this is how Google Analytics works.

For measuring all these performances of your audience on your website, first, you need to integrate Google Analytics in your website.

Let me tell you in this Google Analytics tutorial, how to integrate Google Analytics on a website.

Google Analytics Tutorial for beginners:

There are a few methods of integrating Google Analytics to your website. I will be explaining the simplest method.

Step 1:

First, you need to log onto your Google Analytics account. To log in to Google Analytics, you need a Gmail account. If you don’t have one, you can create it here.

Step 2:

Once, you logged in to your Google Analytics account, you need to click the Admin tab in the Google Analytics dashboard.

Step 3:

Click “ Create New Account”. In the following screenshot, I already have one.

Account in Google Analytics

Step 4:

Enter the details of your website in the form. Once, you finished entering those details, you need to click “ Get Tracking ID”

Create new account in Google Analytics

Step 5:

You will now be provided with a piece of code. You need to add this Google analytics tracking code to the header of your website.

Google Analytics tracking code

Tutorial to Install Google Analytics to WordPress site:

If your theme has an option to add code to the header, you can make use of that feature and add that code to your header.

If your theme doesn’t support, you can make use of this plugin – Simple Custom CSS and JS plugin.

If you have no idea, how to install a plugin, you can refer to this tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once you installed this plugin, in your WordPress dashboard sidebar, choose Custom CSS & JS -> Add Custom Js

Give a title to that page like Google Analytics Code for future reference, paste this code and click “ Publish”

Make sure that this code loads up in the header and not in the footer.

Method 2: Using MonsterInsights Plugin

MonsterInsights Plugin is a dedicated plugin to integrate your Google Analytics account with your WordPress site. Apart from integrating, there are many other benefits of using MonsterInsights Plugin.

For this step, you need to install and activate MonsterInsights Lite Plugin from WordPress repository.

monsterinsights free

And then from your WordPress sidebar, choose MonsterInsights -> Settings and then head over to the General Settings. Here you will find the section named Google Authentication.

Google Authentication in MonsterInsights Plugin

Here you have two options. You can use Connect MonsterInsights to connect this plugin with Google Analytics or you could copy and paste the UA code just like in the previous method.

Just proceed with whatever method you find comfortable!

For Blogger / Other Blogging platforms:

Here are quick tutorials on how to add code to your header:

If you are on any other blogging platforms, you can do a quick Google search.

Now, you have installed Google Analytics on your website. Google Analytics will start tracking all traffic to your website.

Now, you will now have to start playing with your analytics. You need to learn how to use Google Analytics. The following tutorials will be helpful in going in-depth:

Conclusion:

I hope, you would have liked this tutorial and installed Google Analytics to your website. Comment below, if you need more help to install Google Analytics on your website.

Here are some hand-picked articles for you to read:

If you find this tutorial useful, pin this.

How to use Google Analytics for website?

Image Credits: Freepik

Credited Source

1 Views

OnlineRockersHub

How to Track affiliate link clicks in Google Analytics?

Admin Posted On May 28, 2019

I have earlier covered some nice beginner-friendly articles on affiliate marketing and how to get started with it. The first step to affiliate marketing is to find a suitable affiliate program and to join them. But, what happens next?

After you join an affiliate program, you will receive an email from the respective Affiliate Manager with an affiliate link. All they request you to do is to share the affiliate link. And whenever any sale takes place through this affiliate link, you will get a commission.

Wait!

But, who will be purchasing through your affiliate link? How are you going to keep track of it?

That’s what we are going to discuss today.

Note: This is a sponsored post and I have received a payment of $25 for this article. If you want your product/service to be promoted, check my sponsored post pricing. Maybe the next post could be yours.

How not to use Affiliate Links?

Before worrying about tracking affiliate links, let’s dig some basics. It is highly important that you understand how to use these affiliate links.

It is not recommended to share your affiliate links just by copying and pasting from your affiliate dashboard. They are called naked affiliate links. For bluehost affiliate link, it would look something like

https://www.bluehost.com/track/XXX/

Where the XXX represents your Tracking ID (or Affiliate ID). When you share your affiliate links everywhere directly like this, you could end up with some major problems.

What worse could happen if I Share Affiliate Links Directly?

Problem 1: Google Hates It

First and foremost is Google And SEO. They don’t like it. And they consider it as a paid endorsement for an affiliate website. And so they want you to devalue these links.

To comply with Google’s SEO guidelines, we need to use the nofollow tag for these links.

But, manually adding nofollow tags is a tedious task.

Problem 2: Affiliate Links can be Broken

The next problem you will come across is broken affiliate links. Over a period of time, your affiliate program can change the affiliate link structure. In such cases, you need to update your affiliate links. But, you would have used the same affiliate link in multiple places.

Changing all these affiliate links is another tedious task!

How cool it would be if you could change affiliate link at one location and the rest would be changed automatically?

Problem 3: Your Competitors Know the Worst Tricks

The worst case of using naked affiliate links is allowing your competitor to know your affiliate ID. If he isn’t an ethical blogger, he could add your affiliate ID in many spam websites.

And that could be the end of your Affiliate Marketing journey for the particular program!

(Seriously! Your account can be blocked. Read the Affiliate Terms and Conditions for more info)

What’s the Solution?

To overcome all these problems, you need to cloak your affiliate link.

But, what is cloaking affiliate links?

Link cloaking is the process of disguising the affiliate link URL, provided by an affiliate program, to obfuscate your affiliate ID and make the link shorter. This protects your affiliatecommissions by making the affiliate ID less visible and makes the link more visually appealing to visitors. (By ThirstyAffiliates)

By cloaking, my affiliate link for Bluehost,

https://www.bluehost.com/track/XXX/

will become like this.

https://www.onlinerockershub.com/recommends/bluehost

To cloak my affiliate link, I used ThirstyAffiliates plugin and I would recommend it for your website too.

Okay, Let’s back to the topic.

How to track these Affiliate Link Clicks?

I recommended you to use the ThirstyAffiliates Plugin for various reasons. First, it helps you cloak affiliate links. And next, it can also support you to keep track of affiliate link clicks at Google Analytics.

By default, Google Analytics will not track the cloaked Affiliated links. But we can track these affiliate link clicks using a plugin called MonsterInsights.

MonsterInsights is a freemium plugin. The premium plans start at $99.5 per year. However, the Lite version available at the WordPress repository is more than enough for tracking affiliate link clicks.

monsterinsights free

Now, let’s get to the tutorial!

Step 1: First, you will have to install the MonsterInsights Plugin from the WordPress repository.

Install Monsterinsights plugin

And then activate the plugin.

Activate MonsterInsights Plugin

Need more assistance, feel free to check our tutorial on installing WordPress Plugin.

Step 2: In your WordPress sidebar, choose MonsterInsights -> Settings and Proceed to the General Settings. Here you will notice a section called Google Authentication.

Google Authentication in MonsterInsights Plugin

You could use the Authentication feature to connect Google Analytics with MonsterInsights plugin or else you can simply copy and paste your Google Analytics UA Code (This code can be obtained from your Google Analytics account)

Step 3: After successfully connecting your Google Analytics, Proceed to the Publisher tab.

Tracking Affiliate Link Clicks with MonsterInsights Plugin

I have entered the path and Label for my Affiliate Links.

Path – It is the base in your affiliate permalink. In my affiliate link (https://www.onlinerockershub.com/recommends/bluehost), it is ‘/recommends/’.

Label – This is for your own reference. You can identify your affiliate link clicks in Google Analytics using this Label.

So, now you have configured MonsterInsights plugin to track your affiliate link clicks. Now, let’s test it.

How to check your affiliate link clicks in Google Analytics?

After getting enough affiliate link clicks, now you want to check the traffic source for these affiliate links. To do that you can simply go the Google Analytics dashboard.

And then navigate to Events -> Overview

Overview section under Events at Google Analytics

Here you could notice my affiliate link clicks being tracked.

Affiliate Link Clicks Tracked under Google Analytics

It works!

Wrapping Up:

With this Google Analytics Report, you can know which links get more clicks and which don’t get. You could optimize placing these affiliate links and play with it.

I hope this trick, will help you understand your shortfalls and you can focus on boosting your affiliate marketing revenue.

If you find this tutorial useful, pin this.

How to Track affiliate link clicks in Google Analytics - Pinterest Image

Image Credits: Freepik

Here are some more useful resources for you to read next:

Credited Source

1 Views

WPMU Dev

Hub Client Reports for WordPress got a Hot New Analytics Update

Admin Posted On March 5, 2019

Activate white label analytics from in the Hub

The Hub (all-in-one WordPress site manager) client reports now include analytics! As promised, we’ve integrated the WPMU DEV Dashboard white label analytic stats and graph into reports.

If you missed it, in December we introduced incredibly easy WordPress analytic tracking into the WPMU DEV dashboard plugin. No hunting down and adding tracking codes. No third-party integrations. No extra plugins. “Just turn it on and start tracking.”

If you build and manage multiple WordPress sites, WPMU DEV makes them faster, more secure, higher performing, and optimizes both content and speed. Automate backups, scans, uptime monitoring, core, theme, and plugin updates. Everything you need for premium WordPress site management.

You need reports for two reasons:

It’s a huge time saver. If you’re currently logging into each site, running scans and manually sending updates to your clients, the Hub can do all the dirty work for you.
It’s key for client retention! Sending reports to your clients on a schedule shows them how hard you’ve been working on their behalf. It shows them you care about the details.

No need to trust our bias 😉 Get started on a full all-access membership with Hub and Reports free for 30-days. Try it and fall in love with it.

Now for the New Analytic Goodies

For the rest of this post, let’s look at how easy it is to get Analytics up and running with Reports.

I’ll assume your sites are already synced to the Hub. That sounds super fancy but it just means you’ve installed the WPMU DEV Dashboard plugin and logged into your account. Our secure API does the rest.

From the Hub, select the Reports tab on one of your connected sites and choose New Report or Create Report. Or, if you’ve already created a report and just want to add analytics, click the gear icon and select edit.

In the services tab, you’ll see the new Analytics option. If analytics is not active, click Activate. Yep, I just did that all from the Hub.

And, of course, you can toggle and activate the other features you want to include in your Reports to your heart’s content.

We’ve covered scheduling, customizations, and email settings in great length so I won’t insult your intelligence by re-explaining picking colors, adding your logo, and adding email users that should receive the Report.

Save, and that’s it. Next time your reports go out a new section displaying analytics will be featured on your client report.

Google analytics in client reports — Beautiful analytic graphs embedded into your client reports.

Look at Those Sexy Graphics

First, I would like to note, if you’re getting as excited about these fly reports as I am, you’re pretty much a nerd.

So, let’s nerd-out for a minute.

Look at that graph. Each report includes a comparison chart of current visits to the previous period. Plus a break down of:

Visits
Unique visits
Pageviews
Unique Pageviews
Visit Time
Bounce Rate
Generation Time – (or, the average time it takes for a page to load)

What about analytics for my Multisite?

This is pretty awesome. Each of your subsites can have their own report. Use a subdomain to set up a report that includes only the analytics for that site.

All of your clients have different needs. From networks to single sites, the Hub simplifies WordPress site management.

Analytic Tracking, Security, And Safety

We use anonymize IPs, don’t track/store any PII, and unlike Google Analytics, we respect the DoNotTrack header.

Does it replace Google Analytics? You can use both!

For elaborate tracking and statistical deep dives use custom dashboards or other services like Mixpanel. Our white label reports are just what you need for providing a basic overview to your clients.

If that’s not enough, sneak peek, we’ve got a Google Analytics integration coming as well (right after Google Analytics + gets a UX upgrade…surprise). Choose what analytics data you want to include in your reports. It’s gonna be awesome.

Ready to get started?

The Hub just keeps getting better. More control and better organization.

You don’t need me to convince you. Start using Reports, and all the WPMU DEV plugins, services, and support absolutely free. Cancel anytime in the next 30-days, you won’t be charged.

Credited Source

81 Views

WP Beginner

How to Install Google Analytics in WordPress for Beginners

Admin Posted On February 28, 2019

Ready let’s get started.

Why is Google Analytics Important for Bloggers?

Once you start a blog, your #1 goal is to get more traffic and subscribers. Google Analytics help you make data-driven decisions by showing you the stats that matter. You can see:

Who visits your website?

This part of analytics answers what is the geographical location of your audience, which browser did the user use to visit your site and other important information such as screen resolution, JavaScript support, Flash support, language and more.

This data is extremely useful, and it can help in numerous ways. When getting a custom design, you can use the user data to make sure that your site will be compatible with your audience.

If most of your users don’t have Flash support, then you should avoid adding the flash element in your site. If most of your users are on 1280 screen resolutions, then make sure that your design is compatible with that resolution or smaller.

What do people do when they are on your website?

You can track where the users are going on your website, how long do they stay on your website, and what is the bounce rate (the percent of users exit your site on the first visit).

By using this information, you can decrease the bounce rate and increase your pageviews.

You can also find your most popular articles, articles that are not doing so well, and what kind of content your users are looking for.

When do people visit your website?

By looking at the hottest hours in the day for your site, you can pick the time when you publish your post. If that time zone is not compatible with yours, then you can schedule your post to meet that hour.

How do people find your website?

This section of the analytics shows you where did the users come from (for example: Search Engines, Direct Links, Referral links from another site).

It also shows you what percentage of your visitors came from each of these sources. Google analytics gives you the breakdown of each of these categories. If it is the search engine category, then it shows you which search engine got you the most traffic, Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.

The breakdown of referral sources shows you which sites you need to work with the most. If your top referral source is Facebook, then you need to have exclusive Facebook content to make your Facebook audience feel special.

If your top referral source is an external website, then you might want to consider having a partnership with that website (guest post exchange or something else).

How do people interact with your content?

Google analytics shows how your users interact with your site’s content. It shows you what percent of the user clicked on which link on your site and much more.

You can run A/B split tests by creating content experiments in Google Analytics to understand what works best to meet your goals.

By seeing the user interactivity, you can work your content around your users. By seeing the answers to the questions above, you can focus on the strategies that work for your site and avoid strategies that don’t work.

Simply put, eliminate the guesswork and focus on stats that matter, so you can make data driven-decisions.

How to Signup with Google Analytics

Google Analytics is available for free and all you need is a Google or Gmail account to sign up. The sign up process is quite simple, follow the step by step instructions below to create your Google Analytics account.

Step 1: First you need to visit Google Analytics sign up.

You will be asked to login with your Google account. If you already have a Google or Gmail account, then you can use that to sign-in. Otherwise, you can go ahead and create a Google account for yourself.

Step 2: Once you sign-in with your Gmail account, you will be prompted to a screen like the one below. This is where you will signup for Google analytics with your Gmail account.

Step 3: On the next screen, you will be given choice to choose between a website or mobile app. Make sure you select website.

After that, you need to enter account name (It will be the Google Analytics profile name for this website), Website name, website’s URL, country, and the time zone.

Fill in your website information

Once you have entered this information, click on the Get Tracking ID button. You will be presented with Google Analytics terms and service which you must agree to, so click on ‘I Agree’ button.

Step 4: Now you will be presented with your Google Analytics tracking code. You can copy this tracking code because you will need to enter it in your WordPress site depending on the method you use below.

Your Google Analytics tracking code

We suggest leaving the analytics browser tab open as you may need to revisit it, once you have installed the code on your WordPress site.

Now that you have setup a Google Analytics account, lets take a look at how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

How to Install Google Analytics in WordPress

There are a few different ways to setup Google Analytics in WordPress. We will show you three methods where the first option is the easiest and the last being the hardest.

You can choose the one that best suits your needs.

1. Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is the most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. Over 1 million websites use it including the likes of Bloomberg, PlayStation, Zillow, and more.

It is the easiest and by far the best way to add Google Analytics to WordPress (for all users beginners and experts alike).

MonsterInsights is available as both, a paid premium plugin, and a free version. In this tutorial, we will be using the MonsterInsights free version.

You can use the MonsterInsights Pro version if you want more advanced features like E-commerce tracking, Ads tracking, Author tracking, etc. The process of setting them up is the same.

Let’s get started.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin will add a new menu item labeled ‘Insights’ to your WordPress admin menu. Clicking on it will bring the MonsterInsights setup wizard.

MonsterInsights setup wizard

First, you will be asked to choose a category for your website (a business website, blog, or online store). Select one and then click on ‘Save and Continue’ button.

Next, you need to click on the ‘Connect MonsterInsights’ button.

Connect MonsterInsights

This will bring up a popup which will take you Google accounts where you will be asked to sign in or select a Google account if you are already signed in.

Next, you will be asked to allow MonsterInsights to access your Google Analytics account.

Allow MonsterInsights to access your Google Analytics account

Click on the ‘Allow’ button to continue.

The final step is to select the profile you want to track. You need to select your website here and then click on the ‘Complete authentication’ button to continue.

Select your website profile to compete setup

MonsterInsights will now install Google Analytics on your website. After that you will be asked to select the recommended settings for your website.

Recommended settings for Google Analytics

The default settings would work for most websites. If you use an affiliate link plugin, then you need to add the path you use to cloak affiliate links. This will allow you to track your affiliate links in Google Analytics.

Click on the Save and Continue button to save your settings.

Next, MonsterInsights will show you paid add-ons that you can access if you upgrade to PRO. You can simply click on the ‘Save and Continue’ button to skip this step.

Upgrade to pro

After that, you will be asked to install WPForms plugin, which is the best WordPress contact form plugin. You can install it or simply click on ‘Skip this Step’

Recommended plugin

That’s all you have successfully installed and setup Google Analytics on your WordPress site. Remember, it will take Google Analytics sometime before showing your stats.

Google Analytics successfully installed using MonsterInsights

The best part about MonsterInsights is that you can view your Google Analytics reports inside your WordPress dashboard. Simply visit Insights &raqo; Reports page to check out a quick overview of your analytics data.

Your Google Analytics reports in WordPress dashboard

Note: MonsterInsights was formerly known as Google Analytics for WordPress by Yoast. WPBeginner’s founder, Syed Balkhi, acquired the plugin in 2016 and rebranded it to MonsterInsights. Now it is part of our family of premium WordPress plugins.

2. Insert Headers and Footers Plugin

This method is not as not as good as MonsterInsights because you will not be able to do advanced tracking configuration, and you will not be able to view Google Analytics data in your WordPress dashboard.

First, you need to install and activate the Insert Headers and Footers plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » Insert Headers and Footers page. Here you need to paste the Google Analytics code that you copied in step 4 into the headers section.

Adding Google Analytics tracking code using Insert Headers and Footers plugin

Don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.

That’s all, you have successfully installed Google Analytics on your site.

3. Install Google Analytics in WordPress Theme

This method is for advanced users who are familiar with the code. It is somewhat unreliable because your code will disappear if you switch or update the theme. We almost never recommend using this method.

If this is your first time adding code to your WordPress files, then you should check out our guide on how to copy paste code snippets in WordPress.

Add code in header.php file

Simply edit the header.php file in your WordPress theme and paste the code you copied in step 4 right after the <body> tag.

Don’t forget to save your changes and upload the file back to your server.

Add via Functions File

You can also add Google Analytics tracking code to WordPress functions file. It will then automatically add the tracking code to every page on your WordPress site.

You will need to add this code to your theme’s functions.php file.

Credited Source

1 Views

BobWP

Make Google Analytics Easier to Understand on Your WooCommerce Site

Admin Posted On December 10, 2018

I have been using Google Analytics for years. Sure, there are other solutions out there, but it has served my needs well. In fact, modifications on both the design of our site and our content have often been the result of using analytics to understand what our visitors and readers are doing when on our site—and what they like.

But I know for new users, it can be overwhelming. You log into your account and then comes the deep dive into the Google Analytics’s navigation. It can take some serious time to wrap your brain around it.

At the end of the post I will point out how it works so well with WooCommerce. Of course this plugin would be an asset to any WordPress site, and I will go through the basics to give you a broader idea of what you will find.

Analytify: Making Google Analytics Easy

Analytify.io is a whole new way of looking at Google Analytics in your WordPress dashboard. There is a free version, but in this post I want to focus on Analytify Pro.

Watch this video and / or read the post.

When you first install it, you will need to connect it to your Google Analytics, which is easy to do:

The next few steps are for setting up what reports you want to show. You have three options.

Front – this allows you to display stats to specific user roles.

Admin – this displays under your posts, pages or custom post types.

Dashboard – choose what to show in the dashboard of your WordPress site.

Depending on which one you are setting up, you will be able to show specific reports, control which user roles can access them, toggle off and on post and pages, and exclude any posts or pages.

There are a few advanced settings as well:

The Reports in Your Dashboard

First let’s look at the overall dashboard, which gives you detailed data displayed in a way that is much easier to make sense of at a glance vs. looking in your GA dashboard. I’ll break it up into the panels we have selected.

Filtering and Additional Views

At the top of the page, you can filter your stats by dates and you have three shortcuts to a more expanded view of Real Time, Demographics and Search Terms.

Real Time Stats

I have always liked checking out the real time stats that GA gives you. Displayed is a simple view of what is going on. And as it does in your Google Analtyics account, the numbers change as you are viewing it.

And at the top of this page you are able to filter by date for all the reports on this page.

If you want a more detailed view of these, you can choose the menu up in the corner.

Visitors and Views

Next we see a nice chart that can be viewed by lines or bars.

General Statistics

I really like the birds-eye view that you get here and the comparison from a month ago. This information is something I like to be able review quickly so having it all listed in this one spot is great.

Top Pages by View

This is something that I like being able to check while I’m in my dashboard. Access to this gives me a lot of data for repurposing content. And the ability to easily filter date span for this here makes it even more useful to me.

Geographic

Some very useful information displayed for easy viewing:

System Stats

This is one stat that I always find interesting and it gives you your browser, OS and mobile statistics.

Keywords

You always want to see which keywords are working for you and which aren’t. Having access to these readily really helps. (I have yet to set these.)

Social Media and Top Referrers

More helpful data:

What’s Happening

I thought this was an interesting stat. It pulls in your top pages and tells you want is happening. They show you how many entered in the post, and how many of those exited that same post from your site. Fascinating stuff.

For example, let me disclose a stat of ours. The first page is our homepage. 50% of those who land there are moving on into the site.

The second one is a post on WooCommerce variable products. As you can see, people find this more specific post, it, read it and leave. This is typical for our site. Most of our readers are searching for a single solution and when they find it, they consume it and move on with their life.

comparison of whats happening with two pages

Demographics

There is also an option in the top menu to view demographics. I am sharing our actual numbers and stats:

Front View for User Roles

If I want, I can add the stats to the front-end, to show at the bottom of the post. You can set these for specific users and stats.

Here I have set them for administrators only:

I will now see the icon as the end. (Of course, only administrators will see it when logged in to any post.)

And if I click, it tells me which reports are available to my role.

If I click on this, a window opens with the stats:

Now you can view several view options based on user roles.

Adding a Stat to a Post

If you wanted to manually add a single stat to a specific post based on user role, you would open up that post and insert a simple or advanced short code.

Let’s say I want to put the number of page views of a post for administrators only, and place it at the very top. I would use the insert tool and choose the metrics and who it will be visible to.

Then I would insert have this short code:

And if I were to look at the post while logged in, I would see that number:

Since that number is lifetime views, you may want to get a bit more detailed on what you show there. With the advanced short code, you can put in many more parameters for details.

If I am logged in as an administrator, I will now see these stats at the top of the post:

Stats for Post, Page or Custom Post Type in the Dashboard

For added convenience, anytime you are inside your dashboard on a post, page or custom post type, and have admin enabled on the settings, you can see your stats for that specific post or page. This is a huge time saver.

At the top, you will see a button that can click that will take you down to the stats on the editor window.

And if you click to view, you will see the full stats as you did for your site, but only on the existing post or page.

WooCommerce – Enhanced eCommerce Google Analtyics Tracking

We talk about WooCommerce a lot on our blog here, so this is something I’m sure many of our readers will love. As you can imagine, with what you have seen with this plugin so far, this covers quite a bit of WooCommerce analtyics helpful in managing and growing your online store. For example, it can track the number of times a product gets an impression on the homepage (shop page), archive pages and related products. You can see further details of those clicks as well.

It also shows you how your coupons are being used and their conversion rates. You can also see how many transactions were made using coupons. The total refunds stat helps you analyze your coupons for better metrics the next time.

There are other important tracking metrics, such as country, checkouts and purchases. You can also view product performance and behaviors based on product revenue, cart-to-detail rate, unique purchases and buy-to-detail rates.

Lastly, with the integration of google analytics tracking, you can better measure your shopping behavior funnel.

Google Analytics Campaigns Manager for WordPress

If you use UTM parameters to track your campaigns, you are going to like this add-on.

Analytify has a UTM tags URL generator that you can use. Once you have those in place, the UTM Campaigns Dashboard lists all of your campaigns, including names and the corresponding, detailed statistics. This easy access is so much more helpful than having to dig in your Google analytics dashboard.

Google Analytics Goals

When it comes to tracking conversions using Google Analytics, it’s all about goals. Of course you will create those in your GA dashboard, but once you do, the Goals Dashboard simplifies the data in a way that will help it make more sense to you or anyone else who has access to your analytics.

Email Notifications

If you want to email your clients or someone else the analytics on a specific site, you can set up weekly or monthly reports to go out automatically. The screenshot shows you all that you can send and you can choose from any of the set of metrics, including but not limited to general statistics, top pages, and keywords. The email reports are nicely formatted and designed for easy reading.

Final Thoughts

As you can see from this post, Analytify has taken those cumbersome metrics you constantly dig for in your Google Analytics dashboard and brought them to your WooCommerce site in an accessible, easy-to-read format. As someone who pays attention to my stats and uses them to inform decisions, I was so impressed with how all this works that I have decided to use it myself as a tool to improve my workflow.

There are several options for licensing in the pro version and add-ons can be purchased separately or in bundles. I encourage you to check out their Pro version and get a firm grip on your own WordPress sites analytics.

Credited Source

2 Views

WPMU Dev

WPMU DEV Dashboard Now With Built-in Analytics And Plugin White Labeling

Admin Posted On December 5, 2018

The WPMU DEV dashboard plugin is currently used on a quarter of a million sites (Wowzas!). And why wouldn’t it? It unlocks better security and performance, backups, one-click installations, automated updates, reports and improved support access.

Some would say it’s the magic behind the magic 🙂

The WPMU DEV Dashboard plugin works behind the scenes and is hidden to your clients. So it really is like your brands secret sauce running in the background and – making WordPress work better.

Something Super Rad For Account Managers, Resellers, Freelancers and Agencies

We try not to change our Dashboard too often, because we want to keep it lightweight and it just works as is – system information, reports, a connected user experience and secure support access. Nice.

But we came up with a few surprises that we think you’re absolutely going to love… especially our agency users. White label Analytics and the all new WPMU DEV hero hider.

Not Your Mother’s Analytics

Or maybe it is (if your mother is a badass). Now you can activate basic tracking analytics with a single click. No setup. No third-party integrations. No extra plugin. Just turn it on and start tracking.

We even made it so you can set which users can see your traffic data from the WordPress dashboard.

Set user role for access to dashboard analytics — It even let’s you set what user roles have access to your analytics.

WPMU DEV analytics tracking not only adds a cool new widget to the WordPress admin dashboard area, but we’re also adding analytics to the Hub. And yes, you’ll also be able to add them in your Hub Reports.

Go try it!

What’s A Hero Hider? I Want One!

Our branding is pretty awesome (thanks design team!), but some of you don’t want your clients to see our happy heroes when they log into your sites.

We’ve started a new project that removes the hero graphics from all our flagship products and gives you the option of even adding in your own custom graphic.

WPMU DEV Hero Image Replacer — Replace all the WPMU DEV branding and hero graphics with your own custom image.

For example, upload your own logo and next time one of your clients log into Smush or Hummingbird they’ll get a personalized experience that makes you look even better.

Don’t want to show our Smush hero? Replace it with your rockstar logo!

See what I mean? It’s the magic behind the magic!

This feature is currently already available for Smush and Hummingbird. UX updates for the rest of the team and will be rolled out over the next several months – including Hustle, Defender, Snapshot, and SmartCrawl.

Your WordPress Upgrade Awaits

I can keep you here boasting about our products all day but tbh our 30-day free trial makes this all dribble. Seriously, if you are interested in automating the management of your WordPress sites and want the *best* WordPress support in the world, get started free.

Or get a feel for our quality and service with our free plugins and services on WordPress.org

You’re gonna love it. Promise.

Credited Source

86 Views

BobWP

How to Make Google Analytics Easier to Understand on Your WordPress Site

Admin Posted On December 5, 2018

Analytify: Making Google Analytics Easy

Analytify.io is a whole new way of looking at Google Analytics in your WordPress dashboard. There is a free version, but in this post I want to focus on Analytify Pro.

Watch this video and / or read the post.

When you first install it, you will need to connect it to your Google Analytics, which is easy to do:

The next few steps are for setting up what reports you want to show. You have three options.

Front – this allows you to display stats to specific user roles.

Admin – this displays under your posts, pages or custom post types.

Dashboard – choose what to show in the dashboard of your WordPress site.

Depending on which one you are setting up, you will be able to show specific reports, control which user roles can access them, toggle off and on post and pages, and exclude any posts or pages.

front admin dashboard setups

There are a few advanced settings as well:

advanced settings