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Digital Photography Tips, Tutorials and Resources
Digital Photography Tips, Tutorials and Resources
Last updated on Jun 11, 2024 by Southie Williamson
Google Analytics is an essential tool for understanding your website’s performance and visitor behavior. However, integrating Google Analytics with your WordPress site and finding your data in GA4 can be a challenge. Thankfully, that’s where Google Analytics plugins come in.
In this article, we’ll review the best Google Analytics plugins for WordPress, highlighting their key features, pros/cons, and pricing to help you choose the perfect fit for your website.
Google Analytics plugins for WordPress are third-party extensions that help you effortlessly connect your website to Google Analytics, without touching any code account. Many of the top plugins also help you set up advanced tracking and bring key reports right inside your WordPress dashboard. Advantages include:
MonsterInsights is a powerhouse when it comes to Google Analytics integration for WordPress. With over 3 million users, it’s the most popular and feature-rich solution on the market. The plugin lets you set up Google Analytics tracking in just a couple of clicks. Then, you can monitor your website’s performance, visitor behavior, traffic sources, and more from within your WordPress dashboard.
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Cons:
What We Love: MonsterInsights excels in making complex analytics data accessible and actionable. It’s beginner-friendly, extremely easy to set up, and the intuitive dashboard provides a clear overview of your website’s performance, empowering you to make data-driven decisions.
We use MonsterInsights on this website, and I’d personally hate to be without it!
Pricing: Starts at $99.60 / year (free version available)
ExactMetrics (formerly Google Analytics Dashboard for WP) is another popular choice among WordPress users for integrating Google Analytics. Similar to MonsterInsights, it offers a wide range of features and customization options, making it a powerful tool for tracking and analyzing website performance.
The highest subscription plans offered by most plugins include 25-50 sites, but ExactMetrics offers more affordable pricing for up to 500 sites, which makes it particularly appealing to agencies and freelancers.
Pros:
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What We Love: ExactMetrics strikes a perfect balance between functionality and simplicity. Its straightforward setup and clean dashboard makes it easy to use, while still providing the essential analytics data you need. Plus, ExactMetrics’ deeply discounted rates for users who have between 100-500 sites makes it extremely scalable.
Pricing: Starts at $99.50 / year (free version available)
Developed by Google, Site Kit provides a free and seamless way to connect your website with various Google services like GA4, Search Console, and AdSense. It’s a top choice for WordPress users seeking a hassle-free solution to incorporate Google Analytics and other essential Google services into their websites.
Simply connect your Google account to the plugin, and it will add Google Analytics 4 tracking tag to your site. After that, you can easily view traffic data and see how your content is performing.
Pros:
Cons:
What We Love: Google’s Site Kit is a reliable and user-friendly plugin that streamlines the process of integrating Google Analytics with your WordPress site. Its a great option for beginners who need a quick, free way to see basic analytics data for their site.
Pricing: Free
Analytify is a freemium Google Analytics plugin that offers a range of features for tracking and analyzing website performance. It’s known for its clean and intuitive interface, making it a popular choice for WordPress users.
Pros:
Cons:
What We Love: Analytify supports a variety of languages and offers a large number of addons, which allows you to tailor the experience to your specific needs.
Pricing: Starts at $75 / year (free version available)
Conversios is a Google Analytics plugin that’s specialized for helping you optimize your WooCommerce store for conversions. With its focus on conversion tracking and funnel analysis, it’s an excellent choice for businesses looking to increase their online sales.
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Cons:
What We Love: Conversios is laser-focused on conversion optimization for Woo stores, which sets it apart from general Google Analytics plugins. Its behavior analysis and AI capabilities provide valuable insights to help you improve your website’s performance and increase conversions.
Pricing: Starts at $99 / year (free version available).
GA Google Analytics is a lightweight and fast plugin that provides a straightforward integration with Google Analytics. While it lacks many of the advanced features of other plugins, its simplicity makes it an attractive option for those seeking a no-frills solution to setting up Google Analytics.
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What We Love: GA Google Analytics excels in its simplicity and performance. If you’re looking for a lightweight solution that won’t bog down your website, this plugin is a great choice. Its straightforward approach makes it easy to set up and start tracking your website’s performance.
Pricing: Free (Premium starts at $20 / year)
WP Statistics is a free, self-hosted analytics solution that offers an alternative to Google Analytics for those concerned about privacy and data ownership. While it may not have the same level of features as Google Analytics, it provides a solid amount of data without relying on third-party services.
Rather using cookies to track individual visitors (the way Google Analytics does), WP Statistics tracks overall traffic trends and anonymizes users’ IP addresses.
Pros:
Cons:
What We Love: WP Statistics is a refreshing alternative for those who value privacy and data ownership. By keeping your analytics data self-hosted, you maintain complete control over your information and visitors data while still benefiting from website insights.
Pricing: Free (Premium addons available)
Selecting the most suitable Google Analytics plugin for your WordPress website is crucial to ensure you’re gathering the right data and insights to drive your online success. Consider factors like your website’s size, traffic volume, and specific goals when choosing a plugin.
While free or lite versions may suffice for basic analytics on a small website or personal blog, high-traffic sites or e-commerce stores will likely require a more robust plugin with advanced tracking capabilities.
You should also prioritize data privacy and compliance to ensure your website follows all applicable regulations like GDPR / EU. When evaluating Google Analytics plugins, pay close attention to their data privacy and compliance features. Look for plugins that prioritize user consent, offer anonymous tracking options, and provide clear documentation on how to ensure GDPR / EU compliance.
Top Google Analytics plugins offer advanced tracking and reporting features, such as:
Interpreting and acting on data insights is where the real value of Google Analytics lies. Regularly review your analytics reports to identify trends, pinpoint areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions. Look at metrics like bounce rate, average session duration, and traffic sources to understand user behavior and adjust your content strategy, site design, or marketing efforts as needed.
Integrating Google Analytics with other marketing tools can provide a more comprehensive view of your online presence and performance. For example, you can connect Google Analytics with your email marketing platform to track how email campaigns drive website traffic and conversions. Additionally, integrating with social media management tools can help you understand the impact of your social media efforts on website engagement and conversions.
The MonsterInsights plugin is widely considered the best Google Analytics plugins for WordPress. It provides an all-in-one solution for easily connecting your WordPress site to Google Analytics and viewing important metrics right from your WordPress dashboard. MonsterInsights offers a user-friendly setup wizard, real-time stats, eCommerce tracking, custom event tracking, and other advanced features. It’s easy to use, regularly updated, and integrates with many other popular plugins.
While other plugins like ExactMetrics and Analytify offer compelling alternatives, MonsterInsights’ combination of features, ease of use, and widespread adoption make it the standout choice for most WordPress users seeking a comprehensive Google Analytics solution.
You don’t necessarily need a plugin to add Google Analytics tracking to your WordPress site, but using a dedicated plugin makes the process much easier and provides additional features. You can manually add the tracking code to your site’s header, but it’s not a beginner-friendly process. A plugin automates this and offers other benefits like tracking specific events, filtering data, displaying stats in your dashboard, and more. While not required, using a Google Analytics plugin is highly recommended for most WordPress site owners.
There are two primary ways to integrate Google Analytics with a WordPress website: manually or using a plugin. To manually integrate Google Analytics, you need to sign up for a Google Analytics account, obtain the tracking code, and add it to the header.php file of your WordPress theme. Alternatively, you can use a dedicated plugin like MonsterInsights, which streamlines the integration process using a handy setup wizard. Plugins offer a more user-friendly approach and often include advanced customization options, making them the preferred choice for most WordPress website owners.
Yes, there are several alternatives to Google Analytics that offer unique features and benefits for WordPress users. While Google Analytics is considered the holy grail for website analytics, some may prefer different options for various reasons, such as ease of use, privacy concerns, or specific analytical needs.
As reviewed in our list of analytics plugins above, WP Statistics is a popular GA4 alternative that offers self-hosted analytics for WordPress. It provides data without relying on external services and brings user-friendly reporting inside your WordPress dashboard. Here are some other notable alternatives:
Choosing the right analytics tool for your WordPress site is crucial for gathering accurate data and actionable insights. Whether you’re a beginner looking for a simple solution or an advanced user seeking granular tracking and reporting, there’s a plugin on this list to suit your needs.
MonsterInsights is our top choice for unlocking Google Analytics’ full potential!
We hope this article helped you find the best Google Analytics for WordPress. Be sure to also check out: Skyrocket Your Website: 7 Best SEO Plugins for WordPress.
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Envira Gallery helps photographers create beautiful photo and video galleries in just a few clicks so that they can showcase and sell their work.
Is there a plugin which counts how many times an Envira Gallery is opened, and how many times each image in the gallery is viewed?
Hi David, unfortunately there isn’t an integration like that right now, but I’ve added it as a feature request for our team!
To help with tracking gallery views, here are a couple of workaround things you could also consider:
1. Standalone galleries (enabled in your Envira settings), will give all of your galleries a unique URL instead of having to embed them in a page or post. This allows you to easily link to the gallery and track views the same way you would a page or post.
2. Deeplinking (enabled in the Lightbox configuration tab) will give all your images in the gallery they’re own URL using anchor links. So when a visitor views an image in the lightbox, the URL will have “#image-title” at the end of it. Google Analytics doesn’t track anchor links by default, but MonsterInsights does have a 1-click feature to turn on anchor link tracking, which would allow you to track individual lightbox images as pages.
I hope this helps! Feel free to reach out to support if you have any questions. 🙂