19 Oct Google Analytics WD Plugin Review

In today’s world data is king. If your website doesn’t have analytic tracking installed you could be missing out on a lot of opportunities. And even so, just having analytics installed isn’t enough. You need someone that understands the data, can interpret it, and then act on it.

There are quite a few analytic companies out there that can provide quality results, however, my favorite is Google Analytics.  It’s one of the most popular options out there and for a good reason. I mean it’s Google, come on. It is fast, reliable, and immersive. One could get lost looking at everything Google Analytics has to offer. Now, you can’t just sign up for Google Analytics and expect everything to work. You have to add a piece of code onto your site or some themes even integrate your User-ID for easy implementation.

However, if you want to make the process beyond easy all you have to do is install the WordPress Google Analytics plugin by WebDorado.

Price:

The plugin is FREE! Can’t really beat that price. However, most of the options are unavailable unless you upgrade to Google Analytics WD Pro.

The free version includes:

• Provides all “Analytics” reports:
  • Audience,
  • Real Time,
  • Demographics,
  • Interests,
  • Geo,
  • Behavior,
  • Technology,
  • Mobile,
  • Site content,
  • Site Speed,
  • Events,
  • Goals.
• Displays traffic information of any website associated with your Google Analytics account.
• Allows adding goals to Google Analytics directly from your WordPress site.
• Adds Google Analytics comprehensive section to WordPress dashboard.
• Overview statistics:
  • Real Time,
  • Audience,
  • Visitors,
  • Location,
  • Browser.
• Responsive design.
• Comparison by Metrics and Date Range in reports.
• Reports can be displayed as Line, Pie or Column charts.
• Export any report into a CSV or PDF file.
• Allows sending scheduled emails for any report.
• Provides statistics for each page and post both in backend and frontend.
• Adds Google Analytics tracking code to the domain, where the plugin is installed.
• Provides advanced settings to manage user permissions and evaluate site speed.
• Lets you configure and manage Google Analytics Filters.

The Pro Version:

• Enables tracking Custom Dimensions and view respective reports. Can be configured to track the following dimensions:
  • Logged in,
  • Post type,
  • Author,
  • Category,
  • Tags,
  • Published Month,
  • Published Year.
• Allows you to set Custom Reports with any possible configurations of metric and dimension.
• Provides 6 Ecommerce tracking reports based on:
  • Time to Purchase,
  • Transaction ID,
  • Sales Performance,
  • Product SKU,
  • Product Category,
  • Product Name.
• Lets you link and track your Google AdSense and Google AdWords accounts.
• Allows to create Alerts and Pushover notifications to monitor any changes in your website traffic.
• Provides options to set tracking exclusions based on WordPress roles and users.

Here are the different price points:

Quick Setup

Setting up the plugin is a breeze. First, install it from the store. You can access this page by going to your WordPress dashboard and clicking plugins. Then “new plugin”:

Once installed you will want to activate the plugin. After activated, you will want to connect your Google Analytics account with the plugin. Make sure you have an account already set up with Google or create one here.

After your Google Account is set up you can either create a web property on Google or create one using the plugin. Either way you will want to connect your Google Analytics account by clicking “Authenticate” on the overview tab:

Then once you have selected your google account and authorized access you need to copy and paste the code it gives you:

Once you have the plugin installed it brilliantly displays your analytics from any of the web properties you have on your google account. From the dashboard you have the ability to check different reports, view the real life users, and see which browser they are using.

Here is one of another site we own:

Reliability and Ease of Use

Straight out of the box, the plugin looked amazing. It seemed to work very smoothly and made the whole process very easy. The Google Analytics WD installation was really easy and only took a few minutes. You have to be careful, though, because at first, I wasn’t aware it actually generated a whole new web property. This plugin literally does everything for you. Since we already had a web property set up we didn’t need a new one set up for us.

Your can access multiple web properties through the dashboard, but you’ll have to upgrade to Pro to see metrics, such as, demographics, location, and technology. It does, however, show you real-time analytics and past sessions. One of the cool things I noticed on the Free Version was the ability to mess with Goal management.

Goals are something we just recently started using and provide great metrics for gauging progress and success. Setting a goal conversion rate allows you to track everything from bounce rate, avg session duration, and more.

Upgrade

After testing the plugin, we feel upgrading is really the way to go. The Pro Version seriously unlocks everything you could ever need. All of the reports are at your disposal and can be accessed from inside WordPress.

It also unlocks the ability to see analytics for each post, without having to leave WordPress! Utilizing this data will save time and allow the user to make an informed decision about editing the post. Going back and forth from Google to WordPress can be a serious pain. Using the metric that is right on the page is handy and resourceful.

Also, if you run an eCommerce store it will show tracking reports for individual products and sales performance.

Conclusion

This is a great plugin for beginners. It sets everything up for you and provides a great dashboard for viewing everything. It’s unfortunate most of the features are unavailable unless you upgrade to Pro, but well worth it). Overall, we thought WebDorado did a great job on this one. We would highly recommend it. For more Google Analytic options check out this post.