Statistics tell a lot about your site performance. Whether you want to know how many visits your site gets, where your visitors come from, or which of your posts or pages get the most clicks, you can track everything. Google Analytics is the most widely used statistics tracking tool that you can use to get detailed stats on your site performance.
If you're running a WordPress powered website, there are some great news for you. You can now access all of your Google Analytics reports right from your dashboard using Google Analytics WD plugin. It gives you detailed reports in comprehensive colorful charts, and allows you to compare reports from different periods and download them in PDF or CSV files.
If you want to know how Google Analytics WD works and what you can actually track this post is all about it. I’ll walk you the plugin installation and setup process, and afterwards present the features and functionalities that it comes with. Let’s go.
Installation of Google Analytics WD plugin
To be able to access your reports, you’ll have to download and activate the plugin either from
WordPress plugin directory, or from the plugin’s
official website. Once you
download the plugin, it will ask you for account authentication, which is basically asking for permission to access your data. After you provide your GA tracking code the plugin will start doing its work.
Tracking using Google Analytics WD plugin
To get the plugin reporting interactions on your site, you’ll have to first configure the tracking settings. It’s the first page the plugin will take you after authentication, where you can enable/disable some of the essential tracking settings. Below the tracking options you’ll find custom dimensions, which are the dimensions which Google Analytics doesn't automatically track. Those allow you to track data based on logged in users, post types, specific tags and categories, authors, etc.
From the same page you can manage the tracking exclusions and exclude activities by
specific roles or users from being included in the reports.
How to Analyze Your WP Site Performance
There are many different menu and option available in the Google Analytics WD plugin. The different available options are discussed below.
# Overview - Google Analytics WD plugin
Google Analytics WD comes with an overview page, where you can quickly view some of your site’s stats. The overview page offers quick reports for real time visitors, audience, site visitors, browsers and locations. Just make sure to select the reporting period and the site you want to get reports for.
# Reports - Google Analytics WD plugin
This is the page where you can find all of your site reports. Google Analytics WD comes with a number of built-in report types that cover almost everything happening on your site, from user geolocations to
Adsense and Adwords reports. Find the full list of the reporting types below.
The reports are displayed in comprehensive line and pie charts or in columns view. Also, if you want to download the reports in different file formats (PDF, CSV) or email them to multiple recipients you can absolutely do that. The reports are responsive and scale perfectly for any screen size.
You can also compare reports from different periods. Just make sure to choose the reporting period from the date picker.
# Custom reports on Google Analytics
This is the outstanding and most widely used feature of Google Analytics WD. Although it already comes packed with a myriad of reporting types it also allows you to set custom reports and track specific data that you’re most interested in. There are seriously hundreds of metrics and dimensions you can set a custom report for, and access it in the plugin’s reporting page.
To set a custom report, just go to the custom reports section of the plugin, give the report a name, choose the metric and dimension you want to get a report for, and you’re done.
For example, you can select users as a metric and
keyword as a dimension, and track what keywords bring users to your website.
# Goal Management From Google Analytics plugin
Goals represent completed activities, and measure how well
your website fulfills your targeted objectives. Google Analytics WD allows you to easily set and manage goals to track the activities your visitors accomplish on your site. For example, you can set visiting a specific page as a goal, or a specific number of page views as goal.
To set a goal you have to go to the goal management section of the plugin, and fill in the relevant fields. There are three types of goals you can set: destination, duration, pages/screens per session. Depending on what you want to track, you just make the necessary adjustments and here you go. You can check your goals on the plugin’s reporting page.
# Settings - Google Analytics WD plugin
Google Analytics WD comes with an advanced set of settings that you can fully adjust to your needs. Under the settings section you’ll find alerts and Pushover notification options, filtering settings, email options and options for frontend reports, Adsense link tracking, and more.
With Google analytics WD you can set alerts, that will keep you informed about highest or lowest number of sessions, users, bounces or session durations on your website. Setting an alert is super easy, you just have to fill in the relevant fields, provide your email address, and configure some other options. The notifications can be sent daily, weekly or monthly, based on the conditions you select.
You can also set to get Pushover notifications on any of your tablets or smartphone.
Final thoughts
Google Analytics WD is a great tool to track your site's performance and get detailed reports about everything happening on your site. It’s super easy to setup and customize, and has a very straightforward backend. Check out
plugin demo and the detailed
user guide to learn more about it.
| About the Guest Author:
Gayane Mar is the founder of
WPCapitan.com, a WordPress enthusiast and blogger. She is a contributing author to a plenty of well-known WordPress related blogs and enjoys sharing her experience to help people with WordPress.
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