How to Easily Set Up a Google Analytics Stats Dashboard on WordPress
While a WordPress Website shows website stats when you log into your admin panel, the numbers are limited. The MonsterInsights plugin adds a stats dashboard to your WordPress control panel, enabling you to view advanced traffic and other stats about your website from Google Analytics without having to visit the GA website specifically. This plugin is user-friendly, even if you’re relatively new to WordPress and you will easily install Google Analytics and track your KPIs with the best of ’em.
Before you can set up a stats dashboard, you must add the plugin to your WordPress installation. Once logged into your dashboard, choose “Add New” from the Plugins menu. Type “MonsterInsights” into the search field, and “Google Analytics Dashboard Plugin for WordPress by MonsterInsights” will come up. Click “Install Now.” Once the plugin has installed, click “Activate.”
You’ll now see an Insights menu in your WordPress dashboard and can access the plugin’s settings. The first thing you must do is to connect Google Analytics to your WordPress account, which you can do by clicking the connect button, which will prompt you to log in or select a Google account. From there, you must allow the plugin access to Analytics.
Users have two options to view the newly-installed statistics dashboard. First, you can activate the dashboard widget that will appear as soon as you log into your WordPress control panel. This provides an overview of stats such as sessions, page views, session duration, bounce rate, top posts, and devices used by visitors to your site. You can change the view from the last 30 days to the last week if you prefer. There is a fullscreen mode if you’d like to see more information. You’ll also be able to edit what information you see in this widget.
The second option is to view the MonsterInsights‘ custom dashboards from within your GA dashboard in WordPress. Go to Insights > Reports to view your Overview, which enables you to see similar information as the widget and to navigate to more in-depth stats for your website. The additional information includes several reports:
- Publishers Report
- eCommerce Report
- Search Console Report
- Custom Dimensions Report
- Forms Tracking Report
These advanced reports are not available by default from GA, which makes this plugin even more valuable to users. So, grab MonsterInsights today and easily install Google Analytics on your website.
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