Creating a website is not as of a big deal as it used to be. Today almost every business has one. As much as building a website is no longer much of a hassle, driving traffic and customers to your site can be. There are several digital marketing techniques that can help such as search engine optimization, blogging, influential marketing, paid advertisement, etc.

There are also several software options that can help generate analytics reports for your site. These reports include how many people visited your site, what country are they are from, what links did they click on, page view times, and more.

These reports are very important in shaping digital marketing strategies or advertisement strategies.  There are multiple digital marketing companies out there that use these reports to create marketing campaigns for businesses. If you are looking for SEO services, you can outsource to a digital marketing and advertisement company who will do that for you. However, if you would like to do all this tracking yourself, here’s a guide to help you get started.

Why You Should Track Visitors to Your WordPress Site

For you to understand how to track visitors to your WordPress site, it helps to understand why visitors are important to you and how they can help your business.

• It will help you establish a brand name and image
• Higher visibility of your products and increased sales
• It helps you build a relationship with your audience
• Content sharing from your website can result in increasing your audience reach
• It helps get insight into your customers’ pain points, likes, and preferences that will help shape more effective marketing campaigns
• Business is expanded in terms of operations, engagements, product lines, etc.

Now that you have an understanding of how tracking your visitors will help you in your business leads and campaigns, let’s look at how to start.

Google Analytics Account

One way to track visitors on a WordPress site is to install Google Analytics and create an account. Then all you have to do is submit your website’s URL, choose the industry category, and your time zone.

This platform will give you information on users, new users, the number of sessions on your site per user, page views, bounce rates, duration of the average session, and much more.  It also helps to track returning customers. However, Google Analytics can be a bit tricky as it requires you to use a tracking code on your site.

MonsterInsights Plug-in

MonsterInsights is a Google Analytics plugin that you can install to help you with tracking more details. It is easier to use than to Google Analytics because it doesn’t require the use of tracking codes.

This plugin has special features that give you all the information that Google Analytics does, plus some exclusive reports on lead generation, form conversions, and site traffic.

Connect your Site to Google Analytics and MonsterInsights

Google Analytics and MonsterInsights generate reports that give you all the details that you need to know about your site visitors.  Here are some of the reports they provide:

• Overview Report of a WordPress site – This report will show you the total number of sessions and page views within a certain date range. It shows bounce rates and average session duration. All this information will help you understand what parts of your site you might need to improve.
• Custom Dimension Report – This report will give you insight on authors, types of posts and content, categories, tags, and your SEO scores.
• Forms Report – This report contains information related to your website’s traffic and forms. It will show you how many people are filling forms on your website and the conversion rates of your visitors.
• Publishers Report – This report will give you insight into your landing pages, exit pages, download links, affiliate links, and outbound links. It also gives you detailed information on your visitor’s demographics, interests, likes, and dislikes.
• Ecommerce Report – This report will give you details on visitors coming to your website, and specific details concerning online transactions. It gives insight on conversion rates, number of transactions, revenue generation, top products, and average product value.
• Search Console Report – In this report, you will see your website’s ranking for the top 50 Google search terms. This report will help you with search engine optimization techniques and help you understand what things you need to concentrate on to improve your ranking on search engines.

Conclusion

There are several other software options and applications will help you track website visitors. However, these analytics are only beneficial if the person analyzing these reports understands the value of them and how to shape marketing strategies based on the data. If you do not have the in-house resources, you can find outside help by searching for digital marketers. In the era of social distancing and the COVID-19 virus when most of the businesses have switched to online platforms one thing is for sure, you need to be on top of your game to stay afloat.  Knowing how to get the most out of your site can help.

Author bio – Sheikh Adil is a keynote speaker on social media strategy, LinkedIn marketing & social media marketing trainer, MediaHicon digital marketing author, and SEO consultant for global organizations.