Sometimes you need to take control, and use some on-page stats tools to understand visitor behavior. Not to say that other, off site tools like Google Analytics aren’t useful, but most bloggers I know are in their Google Analytics account, or even their hosting account stats program, far less than they are in their publishing (WordPress) administration panel. Of course Google provides valuable data, but how often do you login to Google Analytics? I went on a quest to find complimentary tools, allow me to share them here.
3 Useful Stats Plugins for WordPress
The more information you can collect on webtraffic the better. Marketers need to know how visitors are finding their site, and what they do when they get there. This is important for Ecommerce site owners, and bloggers alike. Recently I loaded up some WordPress stats plugins on various sites I own, and thought I’d share my findings thus far.
Counterize II
This WordPress stats plugin tracks the following information right within your admin panel:
Visits Based On:
- Day of Month
- Day of (current) Month
- Day of Week (nice)
- Month
- Hour of Day (nice)
Other Stats Tracked:
- Most Visited Pages
- Most Seen Referrers (great to understand off-page results)
- Most Used Browsers
- Most Used Browser Versions
- Most Used Operating Systems
- Most Searched Keywords
- Most Searched Keywords Today
Get Counterize II here.
WassUp
This is a stats plugin with a twist. It actually allows you to Geo track (requires Google Maps API key) your visitors in real-time.
Top features identified with Wassup:
- Has 3 main areas in the interface-
- Visitor Details- Charts a summary of recent visitors, and lists the most recent page visited, including search term, browser, and Geo location.
- Spy Visitors - Shows current online visitors with map feed marking visitors location (screenshot below). Map pushpins are clickable to reveal more information about the visitor.
- Current Visitors Online- Simple view of what pages are currently visited.
- The first two views allow you to filter out spiders, and spam.
- Visitor details allows you to filter based on “Referrer from Search Engine,” and “Referrer from Ext link” which is very useful for a tighter understanding of where traffic is coming from.
Download WassUp here.
CyStats
While not giving the level of detail per visitor as WassUp, CyStats gives graphical and other information of all the relevant areas such as:
- Popular posts - Most visited pages today, and all time
- Referrer stats – Who is sending traffic
- Clients – OS, and browser type/version
- Robots – Search engines, tools/scripts, etc.
- Pages – Most visited today and all time
- Time – Visits and hits per hour, day, week, and month
While there isn’t the level of control for what your viewing as WassUp, what makes this plugin stand out, is it includes blog oriented stats, such as most active comment authors, most used tags, categories, and recent commented posts.
You can download CyStats here.
FYI: If you want to make more of Google Analytics, here is a great post I found for enhancing and tricking out Google Analytics.
What Say You? Was this post useful? Feedback on these or other plugins? Chime in using the comment boxes below.
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Hi, my name is Travis Campbell, I operate this site. One way I can extend what I've learned marketing online over the years is by writing about it here... and helping you along the way.
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