Google Analytics and 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
• Site Useage
• Map Overlay
• Traffic Sources
• Content

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)

My absolute favourite report feature is Site Overlay (under Content).
Clicking on Site Overlay brings up a new window showing your website with a fade over it and percentage text next to any element which can be clicked on such as navigation buttons, text links etc. You can use these to see where people click from each page on your website.

For example. Looking at my homepage using site overlay (see image on right), I can see that the majority of people, click on the text link which reads “View websites I have designed…”, a smaller percentage click on the About Jo button at the top and a certain number click on the ‘Get a Quote’ graphic at the bottom of the page. I then go to the corresponding pages and see what visitors click on next.

I can also see which of my articles are clicked on and from where. Knowing where your visitors click means you know where to put the important infomation. It also means you know what’s working and what’s not. You can change things around and see what happens.

Get the Book
If you really want to get into the nitty gritty of Google Analytics and linking to your Google Adwords, Buy the Google Analytics Book (NZ$). Each copy of “Google Analytics” includes a $25 Google AdWords gift card compliments of Google.
Google Analytics 2.0 (US$)

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

1. Download the Google Analytics Plugin
2. Upload to your Plugins folder using ftp
3. Activate the plugin
4. Go to the management page under Settings
5. Open your Analytics account
6. Paste the urhcin.js version of the code into the box on your website
7. Click the Update button

Future Posts

You can also link your reports with your Google Adwords and set Goals for your website but that’s another whole post on its own. You can download copies of your reports in either pdf or excel format. Great for monthly marketing meetings!