The Best WordPress Analytics Plugins
If you have a WordPress website up and running then it’s vital to make sure you have the best analytical plugins giving you feedback about your website. Without any WordPress analytics you might as well be left in the dark as they can really give you heaps of valuable information. So which are the best WordPress analytics plugins you can get?
Why Bother With Analytics?
You might be asking yourself, what’s the point? Why do I need these analytics plugins? I know exactly how to manage my website! Well maybe you do, but with analytical plugins you’ll be able to manage it even better.
Analytics of a website are key to understanding what your audience wants. By tracking things such as click through rates, average stay time and bounce rate you can work out which content gets visitors hooked and which are best to avoid. By acting on this valuable information and making chances to your website accordingly you can improve visitor engagement, conversions and ultimately your profits. Let’s have a look at some of these awesome plugins.
Clicky
Clicky is an analytical plugin produced by the much loved Yoast, who also creates a whole array of other SEO plugins for WordPress. The plugin provides you with a range of information such as who is visiting your website and where they are from. Clicky allows you to see all the individual IP addresses of your visitors. This is very useful if you’re running an ad words campaign or something similar as it allows you to target those specific IP addresses with adverts! If they’ve already visited your website before but didn’t convert, then they might need just a gentle reminder to get them back on your website.
Google Analytics
Although there is no official Google plugin on the WordPress library there is a popular alternative that incorporates the data from Google directly. With other 10 million downloads Google Analytics by Monster Insights is the go to plugin when it comes to Google Analytics. And with a setup time of less than 5 minutes this plugin will be pumping out all the relevant analytics in no time. No wonder it’s one of the most popular analytical plugins on our list.
With one click you can see how people use your website, including which pages they visit first and their average stay time. In addition to this the plugin also allows you to see how people find you with the referral detection feature that shows you exactly where people are coming from.
With so many options and stats it’s hard to cover everything it’s capable of in a paragraph. If you want a full list of all the features and things it’s capable of be sure to check out its official website.
JetPack
JetPack is at the top of the list for many website managers as it provides a huge array of statistics and analytics about your website. Ranging from traffic growth about your website to image performance and how well optimised your images are JetPack does it all.
The plugin itself can keep track of detailed information such as the number of view per country, peak visitor hours, clicks and what search engine terms have given you the most traffic. In addition to this it can also include a stats section on your main WordPress dashboard that you can check every time you login. Talk about handy!
With other 1 million active installs on WordPress websites you can see it’s a popular plugin and loved by many.
Crazy Egg
This unique plugin allows webmasters to see their website through the eyes of visitors and see what they are up to! This new type of analysis is called “heat mapping” and allows you to visualise how visitors are interacting with your website which can give you a wealth of information.
Once you have the plugin all set up any new visitors that visit your website will have their interactions tracked such as mouse clicks. Once a number of people have visited your website you can build a heat map that shows you the areas where visitors are clicking and interacting the most. This helps you understand what visitors are up to and if any parts of your website needs improvement.
By analysing this data you can improve your conversion and engagement rates significantly.
Hotjar
Hotjar is listed as an all in one analytics and feedback plugin that allows you to understand your visitors and finds the hottest opportunities for growth. The all in one software combines many features from other plugins such as heat maps, individual visitors records, form analysis, feedback polls and even personalised surveys for visitors.
Not only does the plugin track visitors to your website but it also allows you to get direct feedback from site visitors to help improve your content and website overall. Instead of having 5 plugins to do 5 different jobs Hotjar combines all those plugins into a one easy to use tool.
The WordPress plugin itself actually just installs the Hotjar code onto your blog for you. You’ll still need to register an account over a Hotjar in order to use it.
Bonus Analytics: LinkedIn
Now this isn’t exactly a plugin especially for WordPress websites but it’s still a useful tip to know. Many business owners have LinkedIn profiles nowadays and if you’re looking to outreach to new clients then this tip might be something you’re looking for.
If you didn’t know already once you’re logged in to LinkedIn you can be tracked anywhere around the web. This is good news for webmasters as it allows them to see exactly who is visiting their website. By placing an invisible embedded page on your website somewhere, every time a visitor visits your webpage if they’re still logged in to LinkedIn you will get a notification saying they have visited your profile.
Now you can see exactly who is visiting your website! If they look interested and have spent a considerable amount of time on your website then it might be worth reaching out to them to discuss a potential deal. When it comes to tracking this nifty trick is the most personalised tracking you can get.
