Do you want to find the best Google Analytics plugin for your WordPress site?
Connecting Google Analytics to WordPress isn’t easy. The process is a bit technical. That’s where Google Analytics plugins are so helpful.
With the right plugin, you can quickly integrate your site with your Google Analytics account and then get all the insights right inside your WordPress dashboard.
In this guide, we’ll reveal our handpicked list of the best Google Analytics plugins for WordPress.
1. MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights is the best and most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It has over 3 million active installs and for good reason.
It offers a user-friendly way to connect your WordPress website with Google Analytics.
You don’t need to mess around with code or technical stuff. Just install the plugin, connect it to your Google Analytics account, and you’re good to go. One thing you need to keep in mind is when you manually add Google’s tracking code to your WordPress site, any time you try out new WordPress themes or switch a theme, you can lose this tracking code and will have to make the connection all over again.
That won’t happen with MonsterInsights. There’s an easy setup wizard to help you connect your site and configure the recommended settings:
Once connected, MonsterInsights brings Google Analytics data right into your WordPress dashboard.
You can see a front-end dashboard with important graphs and information about your website’s performance without leaving your WordPress admin area. This includes things like how many people are visiting your site, where they’re coming from, which pages they’re viewing, and more.
You can see dedicated Google Analytics reports for traffic, publishers, search console, eCommerce reports, forms data, and more.
With real-time stats, you can see how many people are currently on your website, where they’re located, and what they’re doing. This is great for monitoring live events or promotions.
It also helps you track specific actions on your website, such as clicks on buttons, downloads, and form submissions. This helps you understand what your visitors are doing and what’s working on your site.
If you have an online store, MonsterInsights can help you track your sales, conversions, and products. It’s especially useful if you’re using WooCommerce for your online shop.
You can also get weekly email reports so you don’t have to visit your website or Google Analytics to see how it’s performing. There are plenty of add-ons too plus you can set up custom dimensions tracking to view the performance of specific campaigns, landing pages, UTMs, popups, call to action buttons, and more.
With such detailed data and insights into your website, you can optimize your site’s performance and user experience.
MonsterInsights is designed to be lightweight and won’t slow down your website. It loads Google Analytics code in an optimized way, so it doesn’t affect your site’s speed.
Get started with MonsterInsights »
2. ExactMetrics
ExactMetrics gives you a straightforward way to connect your WordPress website to Google Analytics without requiring any coding skills. Whether you’re interested in basic traffic metrics or advanced event tracking, ExactMetrics provides valuable insights to help you make data-driven decisions and optimize your online presence.
Once connected, it adds a dedicated Google Analytics dashboard to your WordPress admin, making it easy to access your analytics without leaving your website. You can view information such as the number of website visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, and more.
You can track specific user interactions and events on your website, such as clicks on buttons, video views, downloads, and form submissions. This helps you understand how users engage with your content and accomplish their goals.
Like MonsterInsights, ExactMetrics also supports enhanced eCommerce tracking. So if you run an online store using WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads, ExactMetrics can provide detailed eCommerce tracking. This includes tracking sales, revenue, product performance, average order value, and transaction data, helping you optimize your online shop.
This plugin is pretty powerful and comes with various advanced tracking options, including outbound link tracking, affiliate link tracking, and file download tracking. This allows you to gain insights into how users interact with external links and downloadable files.
There’s a free and pro version available.
Get started with ExactMetrics »
3. JetPack
JetPack is a popular WordPress plugin developed by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. It offers a suite of tools and features to enhance the functionality and security of WordPress websites. One of the features that Jetpack provides is the ability to integrate with Google Analytics tracking.
You can connect your site to your Google Analytics account directly from the Jetpack settings in your WordPress dashboard. Then you’ll get basic website statistics within your WordPress dashboard. This includes information on the number of visitors, pageviews, conversion rate, and popular content.
While Jetpack’s Google Analytics integration is user-friendly, it may not offer the same level of customization and advanced tracking options as some dedicated Google Analytics plugins or manual implementation of the tracking code.
That said, Jetpack offers a variety of other features, such as site security, performance optimization, and social sharing. When you use Jetpack for Google Analytics, you get the benefit of having all these features integrated into one plugin.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Jetpack may collect data from your website for its own analytics purposes. Make sure you review Jetpack’s privacy policy and terms of service to understand how your data is handled.
4. Matomo
Matomo (formerly known as Piwik) is an open-source web analytics platform that allows website owners to track and analyze user behavior on their websites.
It serves as an alternative to Google Analytics and provides several advantages, including data ownership, privacy control, and customization. You can create custom reports, dashboards, and tracking goals tailored to your specific business needs.
What you need to know is that Matomo is a self-hosted analytics platform, which means you install it on your own web server. This gives you complete control over your data and ensures that you own and manage all the analytics data generated by your website.
A big plus here is that Matomo strongly emphasizes on user privacy. It allows you to anonymize IP addresses, respect “Do Not Track” requests, and comply with data protection regulations like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). If your site or business needs to prioritize data privacy, then Matomo is a great option.
With Matomo, you get real-time analytics, eCommerce tracking features, visitor segmentation, demographics, A/B testing, and more.
5. Heap
Heap is a web and mobile app analytics platform that helps you track and analyze user interactions.
You can track specific user interactions on your website or mobile app, such as clicks, form submissions, pageviews, and custom events. You can also define what events you want to track without needing to modify your website’s code.
Unlike traditional analytics tools, Heap captures all user interactions automatically, so you don’t need to set up event tracking manually. This “auto-capture” feature simplifies the setup process and reduces the risk of missing important data.
One feature that really stands out is the funnel analysis tools that help you understand the steps users take to complete specific actions on your website or app. This helps identify where users drop off in the conversion process.
Heap offers integrations with other popular analytics tools, marketing platforms, and data warehouses, allowing you to combine data from different sources for a more comprehensive view of your user journey.
6. MixPanel
MixPanel is a comprehensive product analytics platform to get insights into how users engage with digital products. It comes with event tracking, funnel analysis, retention analysis, and user segmentation features.
You can create custom reports, dashboards, and alerts tailored to your specific business goals and KPIs. You can even visualize data in various ways to gain insights quickly.
This platform easily integrates with other tools and platforms, including popular marketing automation software, CRM systems, and data warehouses. This helps centralize and analyze data from different sources.
Mixpanel provides features for user consent management and data privacy compliance, helping businesses meet regulatory requirements like GDPR, CCPA, and EU compliance.
7. Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is a website optimization and analytics tool that provides visual insights into how visitors interact with your website. It’s primarily focused on helping website owners and marketers understand user behavior through heatmaps, scrollmaps, and other visual tools.
The heatmaps help you identify which areas of your website are getting the most attention and where users might be dropping off. Crazy Egg offers various types of heat maps, including click maps, move maps, and scroll maps. They give you visual representations of user interactions on your web pages, showing where users click, move their cursors, and how far they scroll down the page.
Next, there are also scrollmaps that add insights into how far users scroll down your web pages. It even shows you user session recordings where you can watch video replays of individual user interactions on your website.
You also get overlay reports that display the number of clicks on individual page elements, such as buttons, links, and images. This helps you identify which elements are most engaging and which may need improvement.
Another thing we’d like to highlight is the mobile-specific features and insights. This helps you understand how mobile users interact with your responsive or mobile-optimized site.
8. Woopra
Woopra is a customer analytics and tracking platform to get real-time data and insights into customers’ behaviors and interactions. It covers various touchpoints, including websites, mobile apps, and email campaigns.
This tool isn’t just for WordPress users and can be used on other website platforms as well. It specializes in real-time analytics, allowing you to track and analyze customer behavior as it happens.
Overall, Woopra offers a more holistic view of the customer journey, enabling businesses to understand their customers better and make data-driven decisions for improving marketing, sales, and customer experiences.
That said, Woopra can be complex to set up and configure, especially for users who are new to advanced analytics tools. It may need some technical expertise to get the most out of the platform.
Also, Woopra’s pricing can be relatively high putting it out of reach for small businesses and individuals.
9. WP Statistics
WP Statistics is a free WordPress plugin that gives you detailed statistics and analytics about your WordPress websites.
It tracks various site stats like visitor data, including the number of visitors, page views, and unique visitors. It also records information such as the user’s browser, operating system, and IP address.
Want in-depth geographical data on your users? This plugin tracks country, city, and even their IP addresses. This can help you understand the global reach of your website.
You can also see referral sources of your website traffic such as search engines, social media platforms, and other websites.
WP Statistics also allows you to export data and generate reports to use offline or with clients. You’ll also get emails of your stats reports.
This plugin has a free version with basic analytics features and a premium version with adcanved features and support.
Get started with WP Statistics »
10. StatCounter
StatCounter is a free WordPress plugin to see real-time visitor stats of your site. This gives you basic analytics. If you want more advanced features, you need a pro plan that gives you access to detailed analytics and data retention.
You can view how your visitors experience your website, where they’re getting stuck, and why they’re getting frustrated.
The plugin also shows you real-time live feeds of your visitors. You can take a tour of your visitor’s location and system stats. If you want to track important visitors, you can set alerts for their activity.
StatCounter comes with a Google Ads Integration. This shows you the Google Ads details that correspond to each individual visitor session in Statcounter. You can view keywords, campaign, ad group, location of interest and more. This will help you identify irrelevant and fraudulent clicks so you can use your ad budget more wisely.
There’s a 30-day trial to test the platform before investing in it.
Get started with StatCounter »
That’s our list of the best Google Analytics plugins for WordPress. Now, you just need one plugin for your site, so we’ll give you our #1 pick next.
Which is the Best Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress
Our #1 pick is MonsterInsights as the best Google Analytics plugins for WordPress. It comes with a user-friendly interface and an easy setup process. It doesn’t require any coding at all. So connecting Google Analytics to your WordPress site or WooCommerce store is straightforward, making it beginner-friendly.
It’s a powerful plugin with real-time reports, custom events, and eCommerce tracking.
MonsterInsights also offers customer support and regular updates to ensure the plugin remains up-to-date with the latest Google Analytics features and WordPress changes.
You can choose to use the free version with basic analytics and reports. There are also premium plans that give you access to all the advanced stats you’ll need to grow your business.
Before we wrap up, we’ll answer the most common questions our users often ask us.
FAQs on WordPress Google Analytics Plugins
1. Is there a free Google Analytics plugin for WordPress?
Yes, MonsterInsights lets you connect your WordPress site to Google Analytics for free. Then you can access basic reports right inside your WordPress dashboard.
2. What is Google Analytics, and why is it important for my website?
Google Analytics is a web analytics service provided by Google that allows website owners to track and analyze user behavior on their websites. It provides insights into website traffic, user engagement, and conversion metrics. This helps you make data-driven decisions to improve your online presence and marketing strategies.
3. Do I need technical expertise to set up Google Analytics?
If you set up Google Analytics on your own, you need to add a tracking code to your website’s files. You can avoid this by using a WordPress plugin like MonsterInsights that removes the technical process and makes it as easy as clicking a few buttons.
4. How do I add Google Analytics to WordPress with plugins?
- Step 1: Download and Install MonsterInsights on your WordPress site.
- Step 2: Sign into your Google Account and set up a new property
- Step 3: Connect your site to Google Analytics using MonsterInsights
5. What is Google Analytics 4 for WordPress?
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) was the latest version of Google Analytics. The previous version was called Universal Analytics. GA4 offers more advanced analysis features, including predictive metrics, machine learning-driven insights, and a more flexible reporting interface.
6. Is Google Analytics free?
- 16 Best WordPress SEO Plugins and Tools
- 11 Best WordPress Backup Plugins to Keep Your Site Safe
- 7 Best Form Builder Plugins for WordPress
These resources reveal the best plugins and tools to boost SEO, backup your site, and create forms to increase conversions and leads on your site.
Leave a Reply