Why You Need a Stats Dashboard in WordPress

Normally you can install Google Analytics and view your reports by logging into your Google analytics account. This sounds great, but most people forget to check their blog stats on a regular basis.

The two biggest reason for that are:

1. You have to login to a separate website (Google Analytics) to check the stats.
2. You have to dig around Google Analytics to actually find what you’re looking for.

While Google Analytics is a powerful tool, it often requires some digging to get to the good parts of the reports you want to view. Most beginners never make it this far.

Adding a stats dashboard to your WordPress website solves this problem. You will be able to quickly view the stats that matter without leaving your WordPress admin area, and it will require far easier.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily add a stats dashboard on your WordPress site.

Adding a Stats Dashboard in WordPress

First thing you need to do is install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Insights » Settings page to enter your license key. You can find the license key under your account on the MonsterInsights website.

Next, you need to connect your website to your Google Analytics account. You can do this by visiting the Insights » Settings page and clicking on the ‘Authenticate with your Google account’ button.

This will redirect you to Google accounts where you will be asked to sign in or select a Google account if you are already signed in.

You need to click on ‘Next’ to continue.

After that, you will be asked to allow MonsterInsights to access your Google Analytics account. This step is necessary, so MonsterInsights can bring the report back to your WordPress dashboard.

Go ahead and click on the ‘Allow’ button to continue.

The final step is to select the profile you want to track. You need to select your website here and then click on the ‘Complete authentication’ button to continue.

You will now be redirected back to your WordPress site.

That’s all you have successfully installed and setup Google Analytics on your WordPress site. If you haven’t installed Google Analytics on this website before, then it will take sometime before Google Analytics starts showing your stats.

Viewing Your WordPress Stats Dashboard

Now that you have set up Google Analytics using MonsterInsights, you can view your WordPress stats by visiting Insights » Reports page.

On top of the stats dashboard, you will see a graph of your WordPress page views and visitor sessions for the last 30 days. This gives you a quick overview of incoming traffic to your blog.

Below that, you will see a comparison of your website stats against previous 30 days. It will show numbers of sessions, page views counter, session duration, and bounce rate.

After that you will see charts showing new vs returning visitors and devices used to access your website. This is followed by top countries people visiting your website from and top referral websites sending you the most traffic.

MonsterInsights also acts as a pageview counter and shows your most popular WordPress posts and pages. This helps you find your top performing content, so you can plan your content strategy accordingly.

Viewing More WordPress Stats with MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights also shows custom reports depending on your settings. You can switch to publishers, ecommerce, search console, and dimensions.

The publishers tab shows reports made for content-rich websites like blogs, news, or magazine websites. It will show you the following stats:

• Top landing pages
• Top exit pages
• Top outbound links
• Top affiliate links
• Top download links
• Age, gender, and interests (visible only if you have them enabled in Google Analytics)

Tracking Ecommerce Stats in WordPress with MonsterInsights

If you run an online store using WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads, then you’ll love MonsterInsights eCommerce tracking features.

First, you will need to visit Insights » Addons page to install and activate the MonsterInsights eCommerce addon.

Next, you need to visit Insights » Settings and click on the tracking tab.

On the tracking tab, you need to scroll down and select the eCommerce settings and then check the box next to ‘Use Enhanced eCommerce’ option.

Don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.

Now you can view your ecommerce stats in WordPress by visiting Insights » Reports page and clicking on the ecommerce tab.

Ecommerce reports will show you the break down of the following stats:

• Conversion rate, transactions, revenue, and average order value
• Top products
• Top conversion sources
• Total add to cart and total remove from cart
• Time to purchase and session to purchase stats

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily add a stats dashboard in WordPress. You may also want to see our ultimate WordPress SEO guide to improve your search rankings and get more traffic for your website.

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