Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress

Most website hosting packages offer some sort of statistical reports on your website traffic; how many visits you get a day, which pages do visitors look at the most, what country are they from etc. The few people who do actually check their stats don’t tend to use them for much more than a quick confirmation that visitor numbers are increasing.

Use Your Website Stats to Improve Your Website

By signing up for a free Google Analytics account, you get access to the most detailed and (more importantly) most useful website reports I’ve ever used. Website Reports firstly shows you a visual representation of everything happening on your website. You can click on the graphs for more detail or use the navigation options on the left side of the page.

Information is split into: Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content and Goals.

Each section expands into even more detailed sub-sections, the best of which are:

• Keywords - a list of search keywords people are using to reach your website.
• Map Overlay – where in the world your visitors come from (with percentages)
• New vs Returning – the percentage of new visitors as opposed to repeat visitors
• Depth of Visit – the number of pages people looked at on your website
• Top Landing Pages – pages where visitors entered your website
• Entrance Paths – choose a page on your website to see where visitors ended up
• Content by Title – the most viewed pages and posts on your site
• Export Reports – download any report in Acrobat or Excel format (see sample)

Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress

Add your Analytics code to your WordPress website by pasting just one piece of code.

1. Upload and activate the Google Analytics Plugin
2. On your admin sidebar, go to Settings/Google Analytics
3. Login to your Analytics account and follow the prompts to setup reports for your website
4. Once you are done, copy the UA code (you will see this beside your website address on the main page when you login)
5. Click on Analytics Settings (top left) if you need to get back to the main page
6. Go back to your WordPress settings page, tick ‘Manually Enter your UA code‘ button
7. Paste your code into the box which appears
8. Update your settings.
9. Wait 24 hours, then login to Google Analytics and click on ‘View Report’ link.

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