If you want to grow your website and reach more audiences, you’ll need to pay attention to the data. In practice, it means monitoring various metrics from how many visitors you’re getting, how they are reaching your website, where they’re coming from, and much more. All these metrics are tagged under the term data analytics.
Prerequisites
- Working knowledge of WordPress and plugin installation
- Understanding of working with Google Analytics
Understanding the Importance of Analytics for WordPress Sites
Visitor’s Point of Origin
- This feature keeps you informed about who your visitors are, their location, the browser used by them, screen resolution, javascript support, language, etc. You can improve your WordPress site by curating content and campaigns based on your visitors’ interests.
Peak Visiting Hours
- Linking Google Analytics to WordPress will help you find the peak active hours on your website. With this data, you can better schedule the publishing of new posts, deals, and campaigns. This, in turn, will ensure your content gets the most engagement after going live.
Visitor Activity
- When someone visits your site, Google Analytics informs you about what pages they are visiting, how long they are staying on each of those pages, which pages have high bounce rates, etc. This data can help you improve pages with low engagement and high bounce rates.
Visitor Interaction
- You must have clarity over which design elements and content attract more visitors. With Google Analytics, you can do A/B testing to pinpoint which CTAs and landing pages encourage them to take determined action.
Website Traffic Sources
- Visitors can reach your website from Google search, a paid Google ad, via a social media network, from another website, etc. Thus, with statistics on traffic sources, you can concentrate on sources that play an essential role in bringing traffic to your site.
Steps to Connect Google Analytics GA4 with WordPress
- You can either use plugins to add Google Analytics to your website or manually add a code to your theme. Here, we will show you how to do both.
With Plugins
- The WordPress plugin library has several Google Analytics plugin options such as Google Analytics Dashboard for WP, MonsterInsights, WooCommerce for Google Analytics, etc. The setup will vary slightly depending on the plugin you choose.
Step 1: Sign up for Google Analytics
- You’ll need a Google account because that’s the only way you can use Google Analytics. Create an account if you don’t have one.
- Next, head to Google Analytics sign-up page and click on Sign up. As you can track multiple sites under a single Google Analytics account, create a property for the site(s) you want to follow.
Step 2: Install, activate, and connect the plugin (MonsterInsights)
- Install MonsterInsights WordPress plugin on your WP website and activate it. You’ll have to now connect Google Analytics to MonsterInsight by following the setup wizard.
Step 3: Start tracking
- Once you’ve connected your WordPress site with Google Analytics, it’ll start showing all the essential metrics on the Google Analytics Dashboard WordPress. You can view bounce rate, top posts/page, unique customers, number of sessions, page views, and average session duration.
With Code
For Google Analytics to track visitor activity on your site, the tracking code should be present on every page of your site. Here’s how you can achieve that manually without using a plugin.
Option A: header.php
One of the principal ways to add a Google Analytics tracking code to your site is to insert it into your header. It will ensure that the tag loads on every page.
Go to Appearance > Theme editor. Next, copy and paste the tracking code from Google Analytics into header.php right after the opening <head> tag. Also, don’t forget to wrap the code in <script>…</script> brackets so the browsers can recognize it.
Option B: functions.php
Another way of adding Google Analytics to WordPress is to use the functions.php file. You can do it by simply editing your child theme’s functions.php file and add the code. Add the tracking code right before closing the </head> tab in the functions.php file.
Building a Google Analytics GA4 Dashboard WordPress
You need knowledge of two things before building a Google Analytics Dashboard WordPress: key metrics and types of dashboards.
Key Metrics to Track
Here are the metrics you can select to track with the Google Analytics Dashboard WordPress:
- Audience
- Acquisition
- Conversion
- Monetization
- Real-Time Stats
- Behavior
Google Analytics GA4 Dashboard WordPress Templates
- Page Tracking Dashboard
- Organic vs. Paid Traffic Dashboard
- Audience Dashboar
- Website Content Dashboard
- Social Media Dashboard
Learn More About:
Conclusion
- This blog covers the basics of Google Analytics and WordPress before touching upon the importance of analytics in a WordPress site.
- It then covers the steps you can use to connect Google Analytics to WordPress along with the key metrics and WordPress Dashboard templates that you can leverage for your use case.
- Everyone must use a Google Analytics Dashboard GA4 WordPress tool to gather insights about their audience’s behavior and interests. Without a tool like Google Analytics to improve your marketing decision, you are essentially flying blind. Analytics helps you navigate substantial data sets to find precise information about your visitors’ behavior, where they come from, how they interact with your website, and whether your current marketing strategies and SEO efforts are working.
Share your experience of understanding Google Analytics Dashboard GA4 WordPress in the comments section below!
Osheen is a seasoned technical writer with over a decade of experience in the data industry. She specializes in writing about B2B, technology, finance, and SaaS domains. Her passion for simplifying intricate technical concepts has established her as a respected expert in the field, making her an invaluable resource for those looking to deepen their understanding of data science.
