Congratulations on your investment in MonsterInsights and your decision to start making data-driven decisions to grow your business! 🙂
Remember, top-performing organizations use analytics 5x more than bottom performers.
Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to measure and track your stats so you can grow your business.
This easy-to-follow guide and checklist will get you set up with MonsterInsights’ advanced tracking.
Most items on the checklist can be completed by navigating to the linked doc and following the instructions with just a few clicks with MonsterInsights. Setting up any one of these items manually would take an advanced developer dozens of hours of coding time and implementation with Google Analytics and JavaScript knowledge.
Depending upon your business, website, and MonsterInsights plan, not every link below will necessarily be relevant. (But if you do need to upgrade your plan, you can do so at any time from within your account by just paying the difference.)
The guide below is our getting started guide, but remember: for more advanced analytics strategies and training our blog is bursting at the seams with great how-to-guides. Just perform a quick search for your question on the sidebar.
Prerequisites and Setup
How to quickly get your Google Analytics property for your website setup.
- Login to your Google Analytics Account (if you already have one): https://analytics.google.com/
- If you don’t have a Google Analytics property for your website setup yet, then create one: how to add a property in google analytics.
Getting Started With MonsterInsights
How to easily get your Google Analytics account connected to MonsterInsights, so every page on your WordPress website is set up with advanced Google Analytics tracking in just a few clicks.
- Install MonsterInsights: installing a plugin.
- Connect MonsterInsights to Google Analytics: how to connect MonsterInsights to Google Analytics.
- Enable Demographics and interest Reports: how to enable remarketing demographics and interest reports.
Now that you’re tracking your site activity, what’s next?
- Learn about the essentials of Google Analytics and MonsterInsights reports.
- Set up custom click events and learn how to view reports.
- Learn how to view your backlinks or referrals.
- Learn about key PPC metrics and KPIs to keep an eye on.
Getting Started with MonsterInsights eCommerce
If you’re using WooCommerce, MemberPress, LifterLMS, or Easy Digital Downloads for your online store, you can setup Google Analytics tracking and it will provide you with invaluable data. You can use this to see exactly where your customers are falling off in the funnel and improve your conversion process. And find out exactly where your visitors are coming from and how your sales are affected. We’ll show you how to set up advanced eCommerce tracking with Google Analytics for your WooCommerce, MemberPress, LifterLMS, or Easy Digital Downloads site (in just a few clicks). If you aren’t a Pro user, you can upgrade your account in just one click.
- Activate The MonsterInsights eCommerce Addon: how to get started with the eCommerce addon.
- Enable enhanced eCommerce Tracking in Google Analytics: enable eCommerce-tracking.
Advanced Marketing Setups: Conversion Tracking and Remarketing Pixels
Have you noticed that after you visit a website, you start seeing their ads on Facebook? This is called retargeting or remarketing. On average, customers see a brand at least 5-7 time before they’re willing to make a purchase. If you’ve got an eCommerce store, you’re going to want to set up remarketing pixels for your sites so you can remind your customers about your product and get them back to your site.
- How to install the Facebook Remarketing Pixel: how to install the Facebook remarketing retargeting pixel in WordPress.
- How to Setup Google Analytics for Adwords Conversion Tracking: how to use Google Analytics for AdWords conversion tracking.
Getting Started with Forms Tracking
Do you use the forms on your site to get leads? Forms tracking allows you to understand the conversion rate on your sign-up, opt-in, and contact form on your site. Without forms tracking, you only know how many submissions you have. With forms tracking, you can see exactly the percentage of users that filled out the form. How to set up and track forms conversions for your WordPress site easily.
- Enable Forms Tracking: getting started with the forms addon.
- If you don’t have good forms plugin yet, we recommend our own WPForms. 🙂
Custom Dimensions
Easily setup custom dimensions in Google Analytics for your WordPress site. We have the following custom dimensions available:
Author custom dimension tracking: for multi-author blogs that want to track the success of individual authors.
Logged-in Tracking: This custom dimension allows you to track whether your website visitors are logged in to your site or not.
User Id Tracking: You can track each individual logged-in user’s activity by setting User ID as a custom dimension. This is ideal for eCommerce and membership sites.
Custom Post Type Tracking: If you have several custom post types in your WordPress site, you can track the performance of each post type with custom dimensions.
Category custom dimension: Tracking the performance of different categories of your site is another great strategy to identify what works best.
Published At custom dimension: You can track the performance of your posts based on when it was published on your site.
Tags Tracking: Tags give you more detailed insights into what specific topics work best on your site.
SEO Score custom dimension: If you’re using the Yoast plugin for SEO, you can analyze the SEO score of your posts and pages in Google Analytics.
Focus Keyword custom dimension: If you’re using the Yoast plugin for SEO, you can analyze the Focus Keywords of your posts and pages in Google Analytics.
- Introduction to Custom Dimensions: the beginner’s guide to custom dimensions in Google Analytics.
- How to set up custom dimensions
- Remember: If you’re getting an error when viewing the custom dimensions report, be sure you’ve Completed steps 3 + 4 in the above document.
Search Console
Search Console allows you to see how your page is ranking for traffic and what traffic keywords you’re ranking for in Google Search. MonsterInsights can show you where you’re ranking for traffic and where you’re getting your leads from. We’ll show you how to set up Google Search Console and connect it with Google Analytics. When they’re connected properly connected plus customers and above will see their stats right inside their MonsterInsights reports.
- Setup Google Search Console: how to verify a site on Google Search Console with Google Analytics.
- Connect Google Search Console to Google Analytics how to connect Google Search Console to Google Analytics.
- Remember: Make sure your URL settings are the same in Search Console and Google Analytics else you’ll get an error: How to fix: API returned a 403 response error message user does not have sufficient permissions for this profile.
Enable AMP
AMP is a library that provides a simple way to create web pages that are compelling, smooth, and load near instantaneously for visitors. AMP pages are just faster versions of your pages that you can link to and are controlled by you. The AMP project is an effort to speed up and improve the user experience for visitors on mobile devices and slower internet connections.
If you’re on WordPress, setting up AMP with a plugin is quick and easy. This can help improve your Google Analytics search results by being more mobile friendly with AMP. Then, make sure your AMP pages are tracking effectively with the MonsterInsights AMP Addon.
- Install the AMP Addon by MonsterInsights: how to get started with the Google AMP addon.
- Remember: the Google AMP Plugin by Automattic is required for the MonsterInsights Addon to work: you can download it here: download the Google AMP plugin by Automattic.
For Membership Sites, Forums, and more
Advanced tracking for membership sites, forums, and more. See the behavior of individual users on your membership site. Track logged-in users vs non logged in users with custom dimensions.
- Setup User-ID Tracking: how to set up user tracking.
- Setup the Logged-in and User-ID Custom Dimension: how to set up custom dimensions.
Getting Started with EU Compliance
MonsterInsights provides a 1-click-addon to provide with common EU business requirements.
- GDPR and MonsterInsights – Everything You Need to Know: GDPR and MonsterInsights everything you need to know.
- Getting Started with the EU Compliance Addon: getting started with the EU Compliance Addon.
- Troubleshooting a drop in stats with EU Compliance: drop in traffic numbers EU compliance.
That’s it. How did you do? Even if you’ve completed just a few of the items on the above checklist you now have some extremely advanced analytics tracking set up on your WordPress site. Remember: companies using analytics have 126% profit improvement over their competitors.
For the latest in advanced analytics training for your website that gets you results, please click here to see our blog. If you have any questions in your setup be sure to navigate to our documentation and do a quick search on that page can get you to your answer quickly.