In this MonsterInsights review, I’m going to tell you about the top-performing and most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.
The plugin has over two million active installations and over 34 million downloads, making it the 13 the WordPress plugin in terms of popularity.
But what is MonsterInsights?
This plugin walks you through the process of adding, customizing, and managing Google Analytics. It offers the possibility of having your Google Analytics data tracked directly to your WordPress dashboard, thus making the process of tracking your site easier and faster.
This MonsterInsights review will show you the benefits of installing this plugin on your website. It will also explain how real-time data can provide you with actionable insights to grow your site.
Why use MonsterInsights?
How many times have you wished you had more information about your visitors?
You can definitely get valuable insight with Google Analytics which is a great tool that provides important data about your visitors.
However, it can be intimidating for users who are inexperienced with reading these metrics. On top of that, it’s hard to know where to start and how to properly use this valuable data.
MonsterInsights helps by presenting this important analytics data at a glance. This simplifies the process by providing only the information that is useful to you as the website owner and removing everything else.
It has different tabs that provide the right data for every question you might have.
But why do you need an analysis tool? A good analytics tool will help you understand the following audience factors:
- The formats and topics your audience likes: This will help you create more relevant content.
- How the audience finds your website: This will help you create more targeted marketing strategies.
- Audience Conversion Tracking: To improve the reach of your audience and convert more visitors into customers.
How do I install and configure Monsterinsights?
Before installing the MonsterInsights plugin, you will first need to create a Google Analytics account .
Once you are done, you can download or install the MonsterInsights plugin from the WordPress plugin repository.
Once installed, the plugin creates an “Insights” menu item on your WordPress administrator. To configure the plugin, you must go to the settings section and click on ” Authenticate with your Google account “.
After that, you will need to log into your Google account and select the “Property” that you want to associate with your website. If you still do not have a “Property” for your site, you will need to create it before you can continue with the process.
If you have passed all the steps, you should see the following screen in your dashboard:
The pros and cons of Monsterinsights
Benefits
- Easy installation and configuration. Setting up Google Analytics is tedious. It’s a process that can take days or weeks to wrestle with all of the different options. With MonsterInsights, you can activate all the features of Google Analytics in minutes and with just a few clicks.
- Personalization options. Simplified reports are invaluable in decision-making processes. All tracking features can be customized according to your needs: different metrics, date range, etc.
- Simple user interface. To get the analytics and reports you need, you don’t have to leave your website’s admin dashboard. It’s all there using the different tabs in the Monsterinsights menu.
- No third-party account. Unlike other popular plugins like Jetpack where you need to have a WordPress.com account, MonsterInsights doesn’t ask you to connect it to any other account than Google.
- Ability to import and export reports. If you need to store your website analytics data, you can do this easily by using the “export” buttons available to you.
Disadvantages
- Limited free version. Much to my regret, this is the most negative point of this Monsterinsights review. Most of the functionality of this plugin is limited to the Pro version which can be frustrating for someone using the free plugin.
- Expensive. Monsterinsights is quite expensive. The cheapest option (for 1 site) costs $ 199.
The main features of Monsterinsights
In this MonsterInsights review, I’ll be going over both versions of the plugin: Free and Pro . Please check this section carefully as this product, in particular, has many important features exclusively on the paid version.
Free version
- Quick and easy installation and configuration. Setting up Google Analytics on your website can be tedious and time-consuming, especially for newbies. MonsterInsights helps you do it in under five minutes, whatever your technical skills.
- Table of “sessions”. Check out all of the sessions that took place on your website in the past month. Compare both the total and the average count with the data for the previous month.
- “Pageviews” graphic. Inspect all the times your pages have been viewed by a visitor. Compare both the total and the average count with the data for the previous month.
- New vs old visitors. Check what percentage of users were “new visitors” versus those who were already on your site.
- Top 10 countries. Segment your users based on the country from which they visited the website.
- Device failure. Segment your users based on the device from which they visited the website.
- References. Inspect the websites your users use to access your site.
- Top articles / pages. Discover the most popular articles and pages on your site. Find out how many times a certain page has been visited in the past month.
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Pro version
In addition to the above features, the MonsterInsights Pro version offers the following features. Check out the following sections of this Monsterinsights review to see if the number of features is worth the price:
- Editors report. Inspect top landing pages, top exit pages, top outbound links, top affiliate links, your user demographics, and top download links.
- Electronic Commerce Report. In this report, you will be able to see the conversion rate, transactions, revenue, average order value, top products, and top conversion sources.
- Research Console Report. See top Google search terms, clicks, impressions, average position for each term, and click-through rate.
- Dimensions report. Select only the data and time range that you want to track in your reports, so you can focus on the relevant information.
- Forms report. Find out how your forms are performing and which form is driving the most conversions. EU compliance add-on. If you live in the EU, this is probably one of the most important points of the Monsterinsights review. With this addon, you can easily implement Google AMP Consent Box, Chrome browser deactivation extension, and other important plugins like Cookie Notice and CookieBot.
- History of the date range. Select the date range that you want to see at all times. You are no longer just limited to the last 30 days.
- Engagement tracking. This feature allows you to follow or ignore logged-in users. Additionally, MonsterInsights is smart enough to ignore certain user roles such as administrator and editor.
and
- File downloads. Track your file downloads. Find out who downloads your files and from which pages.
- Improved link tracking. If you have more than one link pointing to the same page, this feature tells you which one performs better, so you can focus your efforts on that one.
- Affiliate links. Get important metrics on your affiliate links. Track whenever visitors click on your affiliate links to optimize your campaigns.
- Ads addon. By using the “Ads” add-on, you can track each time your banners are clicked to optimize their positioning and increase your overall revenue.
- Additional performance. If you run a successful website, you may hit Google Analytics processing limits. This addon gives you the ability to make site sample rate and sample rate adjustments.
- Google AMP add-on. AMP versions of your pages increase the loading speed of your mobile pages. Unfortunately, sometimes this is the cost of producing bad analyzes. With this add-on, you can properly track the AMP versions of your pages and fix those misalignments.
- Instant FB Items. FB Instant Articles follow a similar philosophy to AMP Pages and, like them, have crawl issues that cause them to display inaccurate data. This add-on fixes these issues so that you can fully rely on this information.
- Follow-up of authors. If you have multiple authors, this feature will come in handy. You will get metrics on the performance of your contributors: Who is the most popular? How many page views are they getting?
- Monitoring of logged-in users. Find out how your connected users behave: what pages are they visiting? At what time? What links?
- Track categories / tags. By using the “Custom Dimensions” add-on, you can find out which categories and tags are the most popular and have the most page views. You thus create most of the articles targeting these taxonomies.
- Track SEO scores. Thanks to the “Custom Dimensions” addon, you can track the SEO score of the different pages of your site over time.
Monsterinsight Pricing and Pricing
As I have already presented to you, MonsterInsights is available in the free version and the paid version. The free version offers basic features such as:
- Google Analytics integration
- Google Analytics data + Real-time data in the WordPress dashboard
To experience the true potential of MonsterInsights, you will need one of their paid plans.
MonsterInsights costs $ 399 for the Agency, $ 199 for Pro, and $ 99 for the Plus versions.
The pricing table below compares the 3 Monsterinsights plans:
My final opinion on Monsterinsight
In this MonsterInsights review, we saw some of the most amazing features of this plugin.
We sincerely believe that this is currently the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress on the market if you have enough budget to purchase the Pro version as the free version is a bit too limited and might not meet all of your needs.
Is it really worth the price?
It depends. If you are a business with massive traffic, it absolutely makes sense to buy this plugin because you will get valuable information about your visitors.
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