Would you like to get all the stats about your website traffic, and you’re wondering which WordPress analytics plugin is the best?
Both Google Analytics and Jetpack’s WordPress.com Stats let you track your visitors and give you stats on your site traffic.
However, there are some big differences between the two.
Let’s look at a head-to-head comparison between Jetpack’s WordPress.com Stats vs. Google Analytics to see which one is better for your WordPress site.
Google Analytics in WordPress
Google Analytics is the industry-standard solution for tracking your visitors’ interactions with your website. It gives you incredibly detailed information on your visitors, and is the most comprehensive analytics tool in the market.
Google Analytics gives you all the detailed data you need in order to truly understand your audience, so you can improve your customer experience and boost revenue.
Pros
- It’s comprehensive: You’ll find everything you need to know about your visitors whether you’re a publisher, small business, eCommerce site owner, or any website owner. You’ll find features like eCommerce tracking, ads tracking, events tracking, and much more.
- It provides powerful reports: It gives you a better understanding of your marketing impacts by providing powerful stats.
- It’s free: Google Analytics is a freemium service and offers solutions for websites of all sizes.
Cons
- It can be tricky to set up manually: To set up Google Analytics on your site manually, you’ll need to add a bit of code to every page. However, using a plugin like MonsterInsights makes it easy to set up Google Analytics in WordPress.
- It can be overwhelming: As it offers incredibly detailed stats about your traffic, it can be overwhelming for beginners.
Jetpack WordPress.com Stats in WordPress
Jetpack WordPress.com Stats, also known as WordPress.com Stats, gives you quick stats about your website traffic at a glance in your WordPress dashboard. Jetpack Stats comes bundled with the Jetpack plugin by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com.
The Jetpack plugin’s free version includes Site Stats, downtime monitoring, automated social media posting, an activity log, and a few other features. If you pay for a bundle, you can get daily backups, scheduled social media posting, anti-spam, and more.
Jetpack Pros
- Quick stats at a glance: Jetpack Stats makes it easy to access your site’s traffic stats. You can see a basic report in your WordPress dashboard.
- Not intimidating for beginners: If you just want basic stats about your traffic at a glance, Jetpack Stats gives you just a few reports like Top Posts & Pages, Referrers, and Clicks.
- It’s free: The most basic Jetpack package, which includes Stats, is free to use on your WordPress site.
Jetpack Cons
- Only provides basic stats: Jetpack isn’t anywhere near as comprehensive as Google Analytics. It gives you only a very basic overview of your traffic numbers, instead of in-depth insights into their behavior.
- Available only with Jetpack: The stats feature is bundled with the Jetpack plugin. So, it can’t be used separately. It might not be the right solution for you if you don’t need other Jetpack’s other features on your site.
- Requires a WordPress.com account: You’ll need to authenticate your site with WordPress.com (by setting up an account) to access Jetpack Stats.
Accuracy of Data: Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats
If you’ve ever used both analytics methods, you may have noticed there’s a big difference between WordPress.com Stats and Google Analytics. So, which one is more accurate?
Google is a multi-million dollar company that has a lot of resources to put into developing their analytics, which are an important focus for their company. On the other hand, Jetpack is by Automattic, whose main focus is WordPress.com. Stats is just one module of Jetpack, so it’s more of a side project for them.
Without a doubt, Google Analytics is the most reliable tracking tool.
For more on the differences between Jetpack and Google Analytics numbers, read Why Are Google Analytics Stats Different From Jetpack’s Stats?
Choosing Between Google Analytics and Jetpack
If you’re a casual blogger who doesn’t need more than general traffic stats, Jetpack Stats could be a good choice for you, especially if you want to use other Jetpack modules.
But, if you need more in-depth data about your visitors and their behavior, you need Google Analytics.
The only downsides to Google Analytics are that it can feel overwhelming, and it can be a hassle to install on your site if you’re not a developer, especially if you want to enable advanced tracking features and get more customer insights.
What if there was a WordPress plugin that could make complex Google Analytics features easy for WordPress users? What if you could get Google Analytics stats that matter to your business right in your WordPress dashboard without having to log in to your Analytics account?
MonsterInsights, the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress, offers just that.
MonsterInsights allows you to leverage the full potential of all the powerful Google Analytics features without having you to be tech savvy. It takes the pain out of Analytics setup and makes it easier for WordPress users without touching any code.
Plus, it allows you to see your traffic stats at a glance in your WordPress dashboard – just like Jetpack Stats, only without all the downsides.
Let’s take a look at some of the other major differences between Jetpack and MonsterInsights.
Jetpack Stats vs. Google Analytics with MonsterInsights
1. Basic Overview vs. Enhanced Features
Jetpack Stats gives you just a basic overview of your site’s traffic, whereas MonsterInsights connects directly to many of the powerful Google Analytics features. Google Analytics data, as we discovered at the beginning of this article, is much more accurate.
2. Many Different Features vs. Analytics-Specific Features
WordPress Stats is combined with the Jetpack plugin as a module, along with many other features. That means that when you activate Jetpack Stats on your site, you also activate a bunch of other stuff that you might not need.
On the other hand, MonsterInsights focuses solely on analytics. The core plugin is lightweight, and comes with all the essential features you’ll need for your site.
It pulls the most important stats from Google Analytics and displays it on your WordPress dashboard. More advanced features are also available as addons.
3. eCommerce Tracking
If you’re an eCommerce shop owner, Jetpack doesn’t provide you insights into shopping behavior of your customers. However, MonsterInsights Ecommerce Tracking gives you all the data you need on your WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads or MemberPress store.
With just a few clicks, you can integrate Google Analytics Ecommerce tracking with your WordPress stores.
You’ll be able to track the eCommerce sales data of your online shop and analyze the revenue your website generates in Google Analytics. Tracking your eCommerce sales data also helps you make data-driven decisions to generate more sales and revenue.
For more details, you can read how to enable Google Analytics Enhanced eCommerce tracking.
4. Form Conversion Tracking
Optimizing your forms for conversion is an essential step to drive more signups. With MonsterInsights forms tracking, you can easily track your form views and conversions without having to edit code.
Then, you can access your form submissions data right in you WordPress dashboard. Jetpack doesn’t have this capability.
5. Custom Dimensions & Events
With Jetpack, what you see is what you get. With MonsterInsights, you can extend your WordPress dashboard analytics in a couple different ways.
First of all, you can create custom dimensions to track extra bits of data that are relevant to your site, beyond basic analytics. You can track:
- Logged in
- User ID
- Post Type
- Author
- Category
- Published at
- Tags
- SEO Score
- Focus Keyword
To learn how to set this up, read How to Set Up Custom Dimensions.
You can also use MonsterInsights to track events, like button clicks. If you have a call-to-action button and you’d like to know how many of your visitors are clicking on it, just set up a custom event to see that number reported in your Outbound Links report.
For the full tutorial on setting up custom events, read How to Set Up Google Analytics Event Tracking in WordPress.
6. Third-Party Account
To access Jetpack stats, you need to create a WordPress.com account and authenticate (connect) your site with it. For those who don’t want to create a WordPress.com account, and share all your data to Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, it’s impossible to use Jetpack Stats.
On the other hand, Google is sending you a lot of your traffic via search, so they already know about your visitors.
MonsterInsights simply connects your website with Google Analytics, so you don’t need to create another account.
We hope this guide helped you to understand the differences between Jetpack WordPress Stats and Google Analytics.
To get started with MonsterInsights, check out our guide on how to properly set up Google Analytics in WordPress.
Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for more tutorials.