Introducing MonsterInsights 6.0 – A New Way Forward

After months of careful design, development, and rounds of public betas, I’m extremely proud to announce that MonsterInsights 6.0 is here!

Over the last 9 months, we did a complete revamp of the MonsterInsights Google Analytics plugin which is the most downloaded and the most actively used Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.

To say that it was a challenging task would be an understatement.

But we couldn’t have done it without the support of our amazing users who answered our call in October and helped us through the beta testing phase. Thank you so very much, I really mean it.

You might have found my choice of title a bit interesting, but MonsterInsights 6.0 is really “A New Way Forward”.

With a complete rewrite of the plugin code, a brand new UX, a fresh new website design, and a much improved pricing model, today marks the first big step towards our larger goal: Help small business owners make data-driven decisions.

Let’s take a look at all what’s new in MonsterInsights 6.0.

New Design + Improved User Experience

When we acquired the plugin 9 months ago from Yoast, we had a single focus: make Google Analytics for WordPress easy and straightforward for the average website owner, but at the same time make it robust and powerful for savvy marketers.

This all starts with the Google authentication process which is often the biggest hold up for beginners. The new design goes past the pain points and make the process of integrating Google Analytics with your WordPress site a completely smooth experience.

After the authentication, you can easily fine-tune your tracking options and unlock the full power of Google Analytics for your business.

New Features & Addons

With great design also comes great flexibility to add new features. Today, we’re introducing 3 new addons for MonsterInsights 6.0.

MonsterInsights Ads Tracking

The ads addon allows you to connect your Google Adsense account with Google Analytics for improved tracking. Down the road, we will be adding support for other ad networks.

Custom Dimensions Addon

This powerful addon allows you to track custom dimensions on your website. For example:

• You can add author tracking to see which author’s posts generate the most traffic.
• You can add Post Type tracking to see which one of your WordPress post types perform better.
• You can add Category tracking to see which sections of your sites are the most popular.
• along with 5 other dimensions.

MonsterInsights Performance Addon

Our performance addon adds the ability to do site speed and sample rate adjustments for Google Analytics, with the goal in the future of being able to provide complete site load analysis.

Improved Events Tracking

Previously the event tracking was limited because it was done using PHP. We made significant improvements to the PHP event tracking for the sake of backward compatibility.

On top of that, we also introduced a new JS based event tracking feature which is what we recommend everyone to switch to.

This will allow us to track all outbound links on a page, not just the ones placed in content areas. In other words, you can track links from sidebar widgets, menus, and basically any location on the page.

These improvements will be tremendously helpful for affiliate link tracking, file tracking, and all other events tracking.

MonsterInsights Ecommerce Addon

We updated the existing Ecommerce addon and added a new user interface, so you can easily enable / disable Ecommerce tracking for your WooCommerce stores and Easy Digital Downloads store.

We also laid down the foundation that will help us in providing both broader (more Ecommerce integrations) and deeper (enhanced eCommerce & reporting) integrations down the road.

Important: Ecommerce Addon now requires you to have a Pro license for MonsterInsights.

To make all these changes, we had to make Ecommerce a Pro level addon which means that you MUST have the license for our Pro plugin to continue using the Ecommerce features.

What’s Coming Next?

Few weeks ago, we had our executive meeting where we finalized the Roadmaps for all of our products, and I can say it’s going to be very exciting for MonsterInsights.

In the coming weeks and months, we will be launching:

• Google AMP Addon
• Facebook Instant Articles Addon
• Analytics Dashboard Widget Feature
• and 5 other secret addons…

As we add more features, smaller ones will be released as part of the core plugin but larger ones will be released as addons to keep the plugin lean and fast.

Backward Compatibility

MonsterInsights 6.0 is a complete rewrite of the previous version to bring it up to date with the new Google Analytics standards as well as better coding standards.

However we simply cannot drop backward compatibility on the world’s largest Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.

With the best of our abilities and the help of our beta testers, we have extensively tested all backward compatibility scenarios to ensure this upgrade process is smooth for everyone.

If you’re a developer and have third-party plugins, addons, or extensions for MonsterInsights, then you may want to check out our documentation on backward compatibility.

When can I use MonsterInsights 6.0?

If you’re using the MonsterInsights Pro plugin or Ecommerce addon with a valid license key, then you should have already gotten an upgrade notice in your WordPress admin dashboard.

You can also access the new MonsterInsights 6.0 plugin from your MonsterInsights account.

If you’re using our Lite plugin, then you will have to wait for another two weeks before seeing the update.

If you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch using our contact form.

Thanks again for all your support. We are excited to bringing all these amazing features and more new ones very soon.

Syed and the MonsterInsights Team