Ever wonder how many people visit your website every day? The more visitors you have, the higher the chance you have that they’ll buy your products, subscribe to your email list, donate, or just interact with your website in the ways you want them to.
If you don’t have any data (or just not enough data) about the number of people visiting your site, then it’s hard to make the right decisions to grow your business. Instead, you’ll be guessing which content topics your readers like, which channel you should use for marketing, or which products to promote.
An easy way to avoid this is to track your WordPress visitors using Google Analytics together with a powerful WordPress Google Analytics plugin.
In this article, we’ll show you how to set up WordPress visitor tracking quickly and easily, step by step.
Why Track Visitors on Your WordPress Site?
Before we dive into the tutorial, it’s important to understand the benefits you get from tracking the traffic on your site.
For starters, you can see how your site is performing in terms of attracting traffic. If you know how many users view your site each day, you can develop your strategies to increase your conversions, capture leads, and boost sales.
Besides that, you’ll be able to understand your audience better. By uncovering where people are coming from, which social platform or referral source they found you on, and how they interact with your website, you can create effective content and marketing messages for different segments of visitors.
Of course, there are many other reasons to track visitors in WordPress, but those are a few of the big ones! Now, let’s take a look at how to set up powerful WordPress analytics.
How to Set Up WordPress Visitor Tracking
To start tracking your WordPress visitors, follow these steps and then you’ll be able to view reports right inside your WordPress dashboard.
Step 1: Create a Google Analytics Account
The first step for configuring WordPress visitor tracking is to create a Google Analytics account.
The process is very simple, just visit the Google Analytics website and click the Start for free button.
Next, select your Google account on which you want to set up Google Analytics. You can enter an email address or a phone number. And if don’t have an account, then you can create one in just a few clicks. Click Next when you’re done.
On the next screen, select the Start Measuring button.
You’ll then have to enter a name for your Google Analytics account. Also, make sure you check all the options under Account Data Sharing Settings, then click Next.
The next step is Property setup. Enter a name for your property and choose your time zone and currency.
Finally, fill out some details about your business and click Create.
Lastly, you’ll be shown different terms of services. Check the boxes to accept the terms and click I Accept in the end.
Now, Google Analytics will ask you how you want to start collecting data. However, you don’t have to do this part – ExactMetrics will take care of it for you!
Step 2: Install and Activate ExactMetrics
Now that your Google Analytics account is set up, the next thing to do is install and activate the ExactMetrics WordPress plugin. It’s the best premium WordPress Analytics plugin.
Using the plugin, you can easily connect Google Analytics to your website without editing code. And it makes tracking your visitors very easy by offering advanced features, such as tracking eCommerce data with one click, tracking form conversions, tracking link clicks, and much more.
To get started, simply sign up for an account, download the setup files, and upload them on your WordPress website. Once the plugin is active, verify your license key and you’re all set to use ExactMetrics.
For a full tutorial, follow our guide on how to install ExactMetrics on WordPress.
Step 3: Connect Google Analytics with Your Website
After installing ExactMetrics, it’s time to connect your Google Analytics with your WordPress website.
This where ExactMetrics makes the process super simple, thanks to its step-by-step setup wizard. You just have to follow the steps to add Analytics on your website without having to hire a developer or an expert.
For a complete tutorial, here’s a guide on how to properly set up Google Analytics in WordPress.
Step 4: View ExactMetrics Reports
Once you’ve successfully added Google Analytics to your site, you can now view reports for WordPress visitor tracking inside your dashboard using ExactMetrics.
Remember that Google takes a few hours (usually between 24 to 48 hours) to gather data about your site and populate your reports.
Let’s take a look at the different reports you’ll find in ExactMetrics.
Overview Report
You can start by going to ExactMetrics » Reports from your dashboard. The first report you’ll see will be the Overview. Here you can see useful information about the number of visitors on your website.
You can look at the number of sessions and pageviews, along with their graphs in the report. And you can select different date ranges to view data.
Besides that, ExactMetrics also shows how long your visitors stay on your website with an average session duration and how many people visited overall with Total Users.
And if you scroll down, you can find more data about your WordPress visitors.
For instance, you can view the breakdown of new and returning visitors. The plugin also shows which device (mobile, desktop, tablet) your visitors used to access your website.
Below that is the Top 10 Countries and Top 10 Referrals reports. Both these reports show where your audience is coming from.
Using the top countries report, you can create targeted messages based on your users’ locations. And with referral sources, you can create partnerships and offer exclusive deals or content for visitors from a particular website.
Publishers Report
The next report you’ll get in ExactMetrics is Publishers, which shows how people use your website. For instance, you’ll see your top landing pages that got the most traffic.
And if you have download links, affiliate links, and outbound links on your website, you’ll be able to track them in the Publishers report.
Also in the Publishers tab, you’ll find the Age and Gender reports. These reports provide insights that you can use to come up with new content ideas, create a personalized experience for users from different demographics, and more.
Search Console Report
The ExactMetrics Search Console report show the top 50 Google search terms your website is ranking for. This shows you what keywords users enter in the search engine to find your website.
From an SEO (search engine optimization) point of view, the report is really important. That’s because it shows you which keywords to optimize to increase the traffic to your site. Plus, you can find new keyword opportunities by researching similar search terms.
eCommerce Report
Now, if you have an eCommerce store and want to track WordPress visitors, then the ExactMetrics eCommerce report will come in handy.
ExactMetrics easily integrates with different eCommerce platforms (in one click!) like WooCommerce, MemberPress, and Easy Digital Downloads, and it brings you your important product sales data inside your dashboard.
You can view your site’s conversion rate, transactions, revenue, average order value, and top products.
And if you scroll down, you’ll find your Top Conversion Sources. These are websites from where you customers land on your online store and purchase products.
For a full look at the eCommerce report, check out How to Set Up Google Analytics eCommerce Tracking (Simple Way),
Forms Report
The next report to check out is the Forms report in ExactMetrics. If you have different forms on your site and want to know how they’re performing, then this report can help you out.
You can find out the number of impressions and conversions for each form. And if you see any form that’s not doing so well, then you can change its design or move it to try and optimize it.
Dimensions Report
Do you want to track additional information about your WordPress visitors that’s not possible by default in Google Analytics?
If yes, then you’ll want to set up custom dimensions. And with ExactMetrics, it’s easy to track data like most popular authors, categories, tags, post types, SEO score, focus keywords, and more.
You can check out our beginner’s guide to custom dimensions in Google Analytics for more information.
Real-Time Report
The next report you can view for WordPress visitor tracking is the Real-Time report. It shows you how many people are on your website right now.
You can get a snapshot of the real-time performance of your website using the report. This is especially helpful if you’ve just launched a new campaign or sent out an announcement and want to see its impact in real-time.
Media Report
Do you have videos embedded on your site? If so, the ExactMetrics Media Report can help you understand whether your videos are being watched, how engaged with them your visitors are, where they stop watching, and more.
And that’s it!
You can now easily track how many people visit your WordPress site so you can make data-driven decisions and grow your business.
We hope you liked our WordPress visitor tracking guide. We bet you’d also like to check out Awesome WordPress Tutorials & Resources for Beginners.
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