Independent Analytics Review: Tracking Website Performance in WordPress
Are you looking for a better way to manage your WordPress analytics? This Independent Analytics review might have the solution you’ve been looking for.
Google Analytics is the main solution of most WordPress sites, but often this is too complex and unwieldy of a solution. Plus, in some cases, it can even negatively impact your WordPress speed and performance.
Enter Independent Analytics. This tool offers a simpler and streamlined alternative that’s solely focused on the goals of WordPress site owners.
In our Independent Analytics review, we’ll take a hands-on look at this tool and show you how you can use it to make WordPress analytics work for you.
Independent Analytics Review: A High-Level Overview
Independent Analytics is an easy-to-use WordPress analytics plugin that makes it dead simple to track your site’s views and traffic.
It’s unique in that it’s deeply integrated with WordPress. Most traditional analytics tools are URL-based, so the data they provide comes from an outside look at your site.
On the other hand, Independent Analytics is integrated within WordPress itself, so it produces detailed data based on page types, publication dates, different authors, and more.
You can also disable tracking for specific user roles, share access with others, and even view performance stats within the page and post editor.
Beyond it’s in-depth WordPress integration, here are some of the main features that set it apart:
- You get page-level analytics data that’s catered to your WordPress site specifically.
- The plugin is 100% GDPR compliant since you store all analytics data on your servers.
- You can track marketing campaign data back to its source.
- You can view in-depth geographic and mobile data to better understand your audience.
- There’s no need for a complex setup, just install the plugin and you’re done.
An In-Depth Look At Using Independent Analytics
Now that you have a better understanding of what Independent Analytics does, let’s take a look at the type of traffic data this plugin generates, along with the unique features that set it apart.
Setting up the plugin couldn’t be easier. Simply install the plugin and you’re ready to go. No additional configuration is needed.
Easy-to-Use Analytics Dashboard
The analytics dashboard is very user-friendly and easy to use. It provides the most helpful site analytics data at a glance.
You’ll be able to quickly see things like:
- Which blog posts are the most popular
- Which writers get the most traffic
- Important metrics like session duration, bounce rate, and views per session
- The overall number of site visitors, views, and sessions
- Your site traffic performance over time
Keep in mind, that you have full control over the types of data you want to display and can filter the data however you’d like.
If you’re using the premium version of the plugin, then you’ll also see real-time analytics data. This lets you see the instant success of your campaigns. You can see how many people are currently on your site, the most recent visitors, and which pages are currently trending.
100% GDPR Compliance
Unlike other analytics solutions, all of your analytics data and tracking information is stored locally and never sent anywhere else for processing. Since this data is collected and stored on your server, there are no cookies used, and it’s 100% GDPR compliant right out of the gate.
This means your users won’t have to click accept on the annoying popup cookie boxes and can enjoy using your website. This is an easy way to improve your user experience, without doing any extra work.
You don’t have to do anything extra, you’re automatically GDPR compliant simply due to the nature of how this plugin works.
Plus, since your data is stored on your server, you can easily export or transfer your data to new domains without losing any valuable analytics data.
Referrers Report
Do you want to know more about how your site is being found?
Independent Analytics offers a detailed referrers report that shows you exactly how much traffic you’re generating from search engines, social media, and all other websites.
To find exactly what you’re looking for there are a variety of filters you can apply too.
Geographic and Mobile Data
Understanding where your visitors live and what devices they’re using can help you make more strategic decisions about your site. For example, finding a large proportion of your audience lives in France means you may want to translate your content into French or offer additional currency options during checkout.
The same goes for seeing what devices your visitors are using. You may find that 80% of your traffic comes from mobile devices, which means you’ll want to optimize your site for a solid mobile experience.
With Independent Analytics you get access to in-depth geographic data broken down by region and city, along with advanced filtering rules. Plus, detailed device data that shows the device, operating system, and browser your visitors use.
Create Custom Reports
Every site is different and you’ll have different business goals and KPIs you’re trying to hit. Independent Analytics lets you customize and save your analytics reports. That way, the moment you open the dashboard you can see the exact data you want to see.
You can customize with your own filters, dates, sorting, and more. Plus, you can create and save an unlimited number of reports.
Campaign URL Tracking
If you’re running marketing campaigns like writing guest blogs or using paid advertising, then you’ll want a way to see if it’s effective.
With Campaigns, you’ll be able to track the exact link someone clicked to visit your site. You’ll get a detailed breakdown of the campaign, medium, source, number of visitors, and number of views.
WooCommerce Analytics
If you’re a WooCommerce store owner then you know it provides a ton of analytics data about your product sales. However, it doesn’t show analytics information related to what led to the sale.
Independent Analytics provides you with data that correlates each sale to the traffic source and marketing campaign. This is extremely valuable data and can help you optimize your campaigns and store for more sales.
You’ll be able to find the highest converting referral sources, track campaigns from start to finish, and get your sales stats at a glance.
Automated Reporting for Clients
If you’re managing sites for clients, then you can take advantage of the automated reporting emails. These emails include an overview of the site and traffic performance, daily view breakdown, top pages, referrers, countries, and the most successful campaigns.
You can customize the email color scheme, delivery time, and email address, and have the reports sent out automatically.
Independent Analytics Support and Documentation
Independent Analytics has a very thorough and helpful support team. Since the team is small, you truly feel like they care about your success and thoughts on the future direction of the plugin. You can always submit or upvote new feature requests you’d like to see or check out the product roadmap for the latest and upcoming features.
Beyond the chat widget, or simply emailing support to help work through any issues, there’s also an in-depth knowledgebase you can use to troubleshoot your issues.
It contains hundreds of helpful articles to walk you through any issue you’re currently experiencing, from performance questions to metrics, tracking, data exporting, and more.
Independent Analytics Pricing
Independent Analytics is a simple and easy-to-use analytics solution for WordPress site owners who don’t want to hassle over analytics data and want useful data right at their fingertips.
It offers a pretty robust free plugin. You get access to the intuitive analytics dashboard, traffic source breakdown, and geographic and device data. However, if you want real-time analytics, campaign performance, WooCommerce analytics, and automated email reports, then you’ll need to opt for the premium version of the plugin.
The pricing is very straightforward and based on the number of sites you need the plugin for.
Here’s a more detailed pricing breakdown:
| Number of Sites | Price |
|---|---|
| 1 | $54/year |
| 3 | $82/year |
| 5 | $109/year |
| 10 | $164/year |
| Unlimited | $274/year |
Since Independent Analytics is a relatively new plugin they’re currently running a 45% discount on all plans. Plus, when you lock in this price now it’ll stay the same for all future renewals. If you’ve been thinking about opting for the pro version of this plugin, I’d encourage you to act fast while the deal is still live.
Real User Reviews and Feedback
After spending time looking at other reviews across different platforms, there’s nothing but positive things to say. You won’t find many other reviews across common third-party platforms like G2 or ProductHunt.
But, it has an impressive 5-star rating on the WordPress plugin repository with 54 five-star reviews!
You’ll find that a lot of website owners started using Independent Analytics because it’s so easy to use, provides helpful data, and gets rid of the GDPR headache from other tools.
Final Thoughts on Independent Analytics
Overall, I’m pretty impressed by Independent Analytics. It gives you access to all the data you need to make better decisions about growing your WordPress site, getting more traffic, and improving your user experience.
Plus, it does all of this in a very intuitive dashboard that looks beautiful. Even with being a user-friendly tool it has advanced filtering features and can be customized to suit your exact needs.
Since it’s deeply integrated with WordPress you not only get page-level analytics that are valuable for content-centric WordPress sites, but it’s GDPR-compliant right out of the box.
If you’re just getting started with your website, then the free version of the plugin is worth trying out. If you’re a bit further along and need real-time analytics, campaign reporting, WooCommerce support, and email reports, then it’s super easy to upgrade to an affordable premium plan.
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