Category Archives: website analytics

10 Website Marketing Data You Must Track on Every WordPress Site

31.01.2023Beginners Guide, ecommerce, google analytics, marketing analytics for wordpress, tracking marketing data, tracking marketing data in wordpress, website analyticsEditorial Staff

Are you wondering which marketing data you should be tracking on your WordPress website?

After launching a website, most small business owners rely on their best guesses to make important marketing decisions. Not only does that add huge risk, but it also significantly slows down growth.

In this guide, we will share the top website marketing data that you must track on every WordPress site, so you can make data-driven decisions to grow your business.

Website marketing data you must track on WordPress site

Why Do You Need to Track Marketing Data in WordPress?

We believe it’s easy to double your traffic and sales when you know exactly how people find and use your website. Most business owners do not realize how easy it is to track important marketing metrics on your WordPress site.

For example, with a few clicks, you can find out who your visitors are, where they are coming from, and what they do on your website. You can learn which of your articles are getting more visits and which pages on your site are not getting any views.

If you run an online store, then you can see what’s your website conversion rate, which page drives the most sales, what are your top referral sources, and more.

You can use all this marketing data to make informed business decisions and grow your business with confidence.

That said, let’s take a look at the top website marketing stats that you must track on every WordPress site. You can click the links below to quickly jump to any section you’re interested in:

1. Set Up Google Analytics in WordPress

The best way to track marketing data on your WordPress website is by using Google Analytics. It is the most popular website analytics software in the world and is loved by businesses, bloggers, and marketers because it provides a treasure trove of information.

For example, you can use Google Analytics to learn:

The number of visits and pageviews on your website
Who is visiting your website (visitor location, browser, operating system, screen size, and more)
How they found your website
How users interact with your website
And a whole lot more

Google Analytics is an essential tool in our own business. However, you’ll need to add a tracking code to your website, which requires editing code. This can be tricky for beginners, and the slightest mistake can mess up your tracking.

An easier way of setting up Google Analytics is using MonsterInsights. It is the best WordPress Analytics plugin and helps you set up advanced tracking in WordPress without editing code.

See our step-by-step tutorial on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

2. Track Outbound Links Using Google Analytics

Any link that takes users away from your website is called an outbound link. If you use affiliate marketing to make money from your website, then those outbound links are also known as affiliate links.

Tracking these outbound links help you see how much traffic you are sending to other sites, and you can use this data to build stronger partnerships with those sites.

As a blogger, you can see which affiliate links are clicked more often by your visitors. This information can help you make a proper affiliate marketing strategy and boost your referral earnings.

The easiest way to track affiliate links in WordPress is by using MonsterInsights. It tracks outbound links and affiliate links on your site out of the box.

You also get easy-to-understand reports inside your WordPress dashboard, including your top affiliate and outbound links.

For detailed instructions see our guide on how to track outbound links in WordPress.

3. Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking with Google Analytics

If you run an online store, then you need to enable enhanced eCommerce tracking in Google Analytics. This would allow you to track the following customer information on your online store.

Shopping behavior of your customers
Checkout behavior and tracking the abandoned cart information
Product lists performance
Uncover top conversion sources
Sales performance

Setting up enhanced eCommerce tracking on your WordPress store can be difficult. However, MonsterInsights makes it easy for you and it literally takes a few clicks to configure with no coding needed.

It works seamlessly with the best eCommerce plugins for WordPress, like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, LifterLMS, MemberPress, and more.

The best part is that you get to see eCommerce reports in your dashboard. It shows how your online store is performing, which products are getting the most sales, where your customers are coming from, and more at a glance.

For details, see our guide on how to enable customer tracking in WooCommerce with Google Analytics.

4. Track User Engagement Data with Google Analytics

User engagement shows you what users do when they arrive on your website. It helps you identify patterns of highly engaged user behavior which leads to more conversions and sales.

For example, you may find out that users visiting a specific page are 10 times more likely to make a purchase. You can then use this insight to send more users to that page, or replicate a similar experience on other pages of your website.

Basically, you will be tracking data about how users interact with your website. For example:

Tracking your most popular content
Form submission tracking
Ecommerce tracking
Ads tracking to understand how users interact with ads on your website
Monitoring engaged users
Time users spend on your website

For detailed instructions, follow our step-by-step guide on how to track user engagement in WordPress.

5. Track Campaign Links with UTM Codes

Google Analytics is really good at tracking where your website traffic comes from. It can even categorize your traffic based on their source, including organic search, organic social, referral, email, and more.

However, when you’re running paid ad campaigns, email marketing campaigns, or social media promotions, you need detailed campaign tracking.

That’s where UTM tracking comes in.

Campaign-level tracking allows you to see exactly which email, ad, or specific call-to-action link helped you get the most traffic or sales.

To make it easy for you to generate UTM links, MonsterInsights comes with a free campaign URL builder, so you can get more detailed reports. You can enter custom campaign parameters like the source, medium, campaign name, and more to create a custom URL.

These tags include native analytics parameters which are tracked by Google Analytics and are included in your reports. You can then see exactly which link users clicked and how your campaigns are performing.

6. Track and Improve Facebook Retargeting Campaigns

Did you know that Facebook allows you to display targeted ads to people who have visited your website in the past? Yes, it’s called retargeting.

You can install a Facebook pixel and display targeted ads to anyone who visits your website. However, if you install Facebook retargeting pixel today, then you will only be able to show your ads to people who visited today and onward.

Even if you are not running a Facebook advertising campaign right now, we recommend installing the retargeting pixel, so you have a built-in audience when you’re ready to get started.

For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to install Facebook remarketing/retargeting pixel in WordPress.

If you run pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns using Google AdSense, then you can easily see how your ads are performing in the AdSense dashboard. However, these reports only tell you how users interact with your ads not what they do after that.

For that, you’ll need Google Analytics which comes with built-in integration with your AdSense account. This integration enables you to easily track your paid traffic conversions.

You can see our guide on how to properly add Google AdSense to your WordPress site.

8. Monitor Your Site with Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a set of free tools offered by Google to give publishers a look at how their website is seen by the search engine.

It provides immensely useful information like how your pages rank for different keywords (more on this later), the overall performance of your site in search engines, and any errors Google crawler found on your website.

Keeping an eye on Google Search Console can help you boost your site’s search engine visibility. To learn more, see our guide on tips for using Google Search Console to grow your traffic.

For example, here is a report showing errors that occur when a user views the site on their mobile devices. Without Google Search Console, it will be very difficult to pinpoint such issues and quickly resolve them.

For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console.

9. Track Your Keyword Rankings

Keywords are the phrases users enter in search engines to find what they’re looking for. To get more traffic from search engines, you need to know exactly which keywords are bringing you the most traffic to your website, so you can focus on what’s working.

We have a complete WordPress SEO guide that you can use to learn how to optimize your content for specific keywords.

Normally, beginners rely on manually entering keywords in Google search to see if their site is ranking. This is highly inefficient as you would miss out on thousands of keywords where your site can be easily ranked.

Google Search Console is a free tool that provides you with valuable keyword data with the average position. You can see which search terms are ranking high, search impressions, and how many average clicks you get.

If you’re using MonsterInsights, then you can view the Search Console report inside your WordPress dashboard.

However, it only allows you to see your own site’s keyword data. If you want to research your competitors, then you’ll need SEMRush. This incredibly powerful SEO tool allows you to view in-depth keyword data for any website.

For more on this topic, please take a look at our guide on how to track keyword rankings for your WordPress site.

10. Track Your Email List Growth and Performance

Most popular email marketing services come with stats and insights that you can track. These reports provide useful data like open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate, and more.

You can also see the traffic coming from your email campaigns to your website in your Google Analytics 4 reports under Acquisition » Traffic acquisition.

From here, you can see how well your email newsletter traffic converts, and what you can do to improve.

Tracking email marketing data helps you grow your email list. You can create new email forms, change form placements, and use popups to boost subscribers.

While there are definitely other marketing metrics that you can track, we believe these are the top marketing data that every business owner must track on their WordPress site.

We hope this article helped you track the right website marketing data on all your WordPress sites. You may also want to see our step-by-step guide to boost WordPress speed and performance, and our comparison of the best business phone services for small business.

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The post 10 Website Marketing Data You Must Track on Every WordPress Site first appeared on WPBeginner.

How to Install Microsoft Clarity Analytics in WordPress

17.01.2023insert headers and footers, microsoft clarity, microsoft clarity analytics, Tutorials, website analyticsEditorial Staff

Are you looking to use Microsoft Clarity analytics on your WordPress website?

Microsoft Clarity is a free analytics tool that helps you analyze how users engage with your website with click tracking, scroll tracking, and heatmaps.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily install Microsoft Clarity in WordPress, step by step.

How to Install Microsoft Clarity Analytics in WordPress

This is what we’ll cover in this tutorial:

What Is Microsoft Clarity and Why Use It?

Microsoft Clarity is a free analytics tool for websites. It helps you see the most popular pages on your website and how users click, scroll, and interact with those pages.

The most important feature of Microsoft Clarity is its data visualization. This includes click tracking, heatmap reports, session recordings, and more.

Heatmaps show a visual report of how users move their mouse, as well as where they click, select, and scroll.

Heatmap showing user interactions on a website

Similarly, session recordings help you see how users view your content, where they spend more time, and what takes them away from your WordPress website.

This information helps you create a better user experience for your users, improve performance, and boost sales conversion.

Viewing the Microsoft Clarity analytics dashboard

Note: Microsoft warns that Clarity should not be used on sites that contain sensitive data including user health care, financial services, or government-related information.

Microsoft Clarity vs Google Analytics: What’s the Difference?

Google Analytics is the best analytics solution on the market because it offers a lot of in-depth tracking features. Microsoft Clarity, on the other hand, focuses on the visualization of user interactions with heatmaps and session recordings.

Google Analytics helps you track almost anything on your website. It also has enhanced eCommerce tracking, conversion tracking, and detailed reports.

Microsoft Clarity is a newer platform, and it’s currently not an alternative to Google Analytics’ far superior features. However, you can use Microsoft Clarity alongside Google Analytics to unlock features like heatmaps and visitor session recordings because Google doesn’t offer those features yet.

Before Microsoft’s analytics feature, many website owners would use paid heatmap solutions like Hotjar or CrazyEgg alongside Google Analytics, but now you have a free alternative to those tools.

We recommend installing Google Analytics on all your websites. After that, you can follow our guide below to install Microsoft Clarity in WordPress.

They both work along quite well without affecting your website’s functionality.

It’s easy to add Microsoft Clarity to any website. You need to sign up for Microsoft Clarity and then add a tracking code to your website. We’ll take you through the process step by step.

Signing Up for Microsoft Clarity

First, head to the Microsoft Clarity website and click on the ‘Get Started’ button. You need a Microsoft, Facebook, or Google account to sign up.

After signing up, you will see the Clarity dashboard with a popup to add a new project.

Go ahead and enter a name for your project. You can use the name of your website to make it easily recognizable. Next, enter your website URL.

Setting up a new project in Microsoft Clarity

Once you’ve created your new project, you will be asked how you want to install Clarity. You should click the ‘Get tracking code’ option.

You will now see the tracking code that you need to add to your WordPress website. Simply click the ‘Copy to clipboard’ button.

Depending on the method you use to add this code to your WordPress site, you may need the complete tracking code, or just your project ID. You’ll find the project ID at the end of the tracking code, just before </script>. In the screenshot above, it is ‘ejbjp9k5ge’.

We recommend leaving this tab open or copying the code to a safe place. You will need it in the next step of this tutorial.

Adding Microsoft Clarity Code to WordPress

Now you need to add the Microsoft Clarity tracking code to your WordPress website in a way that makes it present on all pages. Luckily, there are a number of easy ways to make this happen without manually editing any WordPress files.

You can choose your preferred method from the following three.

Method 1: Adding Microsoft Clarity Code Using the Microsoft Clarity Plugin

The first thing you need to do is install the Microsoft Clarity plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit the Settings » Clarity page in WordPress admin. Here you need to paste the project ID. That’s the last item in your Clarity tracking code and will look something like ‘ejbjp9k5ge’.

Make sure you click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom to store your settings. Your WordPress site is now connected to Microsoft Clarity.

Method 2: Adding Microsoft Clarity Code Using WPCode

The safest and easiest way to add code to your website is WPCode, the best WordPress code snippets plugin. This plugin lets you add any script in your website’s header or footer right from your WordPress dashboard (no FTP or cPanel needed).

Once you have installed and activated the WPCode Free Plugin, you need to visit the Code Snippets » Header & Footer page. Once there, you should paste the entire Microsoft Clarity tracking code into the ‘Header’ field.

Paste the Microsoft Clarity Tracking Code Into WPCode's Header Field

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

The plugin will now automatically add the Microsoft Clarity analytics code to all pages of your WordPress site, so you can track website visitor activity on your website.

Method 3: Adding Microsoft Clarity Code Using All in One SEO

All in One SEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin that allows you to easily optimize your WordPress website for search engines and social media platforms. We show you how to get the most out of it in our guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress correctly.

If you have All in One SEO installed on your website, then you can use it to add the Microsoft Clarity tracking code.

Simply head over to All in One SEO » General Settings » Webmaster Tools and click on the ‘Microsoft Clarity’ icon. A field will appear where you can paste your Clarity project ID. That’s the last item in your Clarity tracking code and will look something like ‘ejbjp9k5ge’.

Pasting the Microsoft Clarity Project ID into AIOSEO

Make sure you click the ‘Save Changes’ button afterward, and your WordPress site will be connected to Microsoft Clarity.

Pro Tip: If you’re using a WordPress caching plugin, then you need to clear your WordPress cache after you add the project ID or tracking code. This is important otherwise Microsoft will not be able to verify your site for a few hours.

Using Microsoft Clarity

Once you have installed the tracking code and cleared your WordPress cache, Microsoft will then start recording visitor session data.

However, it will likely take up to 2 hours before you can see any results in your Clarity account.

Using the Microsoft Clarity Dashboard

Simply log in to your Clarity account after a few hours, and you should be able to see the activity summary in your dashboard.

You can see useful insights like the percentage of sessions that have ‘dead clicks’. These are clicks that don’t go anywhere. For instance, users might be clicking on an image thinking that it’s a button or a link.

Another useful statistic is rage clicks when users rapidly click or tap in the same area. Paying close attention to these metrics can help you make your site more user-friendly.

The dashboard also shows you the number of ‘quick backs’. These occur when a user moves off a page and then very quickly comes back to it.

It also tracks excessive scrolling, when users scroll through a page more than expected. And like Google Analytics, Microsoft makes it easy to see the most popular pages on your site.

Using Microsoft Clarity Recordings

The ‘Recordings’ tab shows you recordings of different user sessions. You get the details of the user’s device, operating system, and country.

Clarity also tells you the number of pages they visited, the duration and time of their session, and the number of clicks they made.

Clarity showing the recordings of user sessions

The recordings let you watch an animation of mouse movements and clicks. In the screenshot above, you can see a user moved their mouse to the November archives link and clicked it.

Using Microsoft Clarity Heatmaps

The ‘Heatmaps’ tab shows you a heatmap of your website. These help you see which sections are popular on your site based on the number of people clicking.

The heatmap will also show you how far users scrolled down the page, and which areas on the page received the most clicks.

Final Thoughts on Microsoft Clarity Analytics Tool

Microsoft Clarity is a new analytics tool with some neat features. While it’s no alternative to the powerful Google Analytics platform, it definitely offers some interesting features like free heatmap and session recording.

Often new website owners want to see heatmaps and session recordings, but they don’t have the budget to purchase premium solutions like HotJar or CrazyEgg. Well, now you can use Microsoft Clarity.

Using the heatmaps and session recordings, you should be able to optimize your website or online store experience to improve user experience and boost sales.

We hope this article helped you learn how to install Microsoft Clarity Analytics in WordPress. You may also want to see our comparison of the best WordPress page builders to create custom layouts without any code, and our pick of the best email marketing services to grow your business.