Are you wondering which analytics tools is best for your WordPress site? Want to compare Google Analytics vs. Mixpanel to find out which one is better?
Both of these are powerful analytics tools that help you better understand your audience, measure your campaigns’ performance, and get insights you need to grow your business.
But which tool should you select?
In this article, we’ll compare Google Analytics vs. Mixpanel. We’ll also introduce you to a third analytics tool you can use to make your data work better for you on your WordPress site: MonsterInsights.
Analytics Tools Overview
Google Analytics
MonsterInsights
Mixpanel
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics tool. It tracks your visitors and provides you with insights about how they interact with your website, such as which pages they view and how long they spend on your site.
Aside from that, Google Analytics is excellent for tracking your traffic sources. It shows which channel people use to find your website. And if you combine it with Search Console, you can even see the keywords users use in search engines.
While Google Analytics is a powerful tool, it’s tricky to set up for beginners. That’s because you’ll have to enter a tracking code on your website. If you’re not familiar with editing code, then any mistake can break your website or your tracking won’t work properly.
Plus, some tracking features don’t work out of the box, like eCommerce setup. You’ll have to either hire a developer or Google Analytics pro to set it up.
A much simpler method of using Google Analytics (on a WordPress site) is with MonsterInsights, the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. We’ll cover that in the next section. First, let’s look at the features offered by Google Analytics.
Google Analytics Features
Here are some powerful features you can use in Google Analytics:
- Detailed reporting to understand your visitors
- See page view metrics, traffic source metrics, and much more
- Set up advanced filters to isolate the traffic you want to look at
- Segment visitors based on city, country, location, and much more
- Create custom reports to show whatever data is most important to you
Google Analytics Reporting
When it comes to reporting, Google Analytics divides its reports into different categories. The Realtime report shows the number of people that are currently active on your site. And in the User reports, you can see your users, demographics, devices, interests, and much more.
Other reports include Acquisition, which lets you see which traffic sources sent traffic to your site, such as organic, referral, PPC, social, and more.
Now, if you want to see how your content is performing or which pages people visit the most, then you’ll have to look at the Engagement Reports. For eCommerce and revenue data, you can check out the Monetization reports (if you have eCommerce tracking set up properly).
Below that are your user reports that you can use to see some user Demographics and the Tech that those people are using to visit your site.
Google Analytics Integration
As for integration, Google Analytics works seamlessly with different Google services such as Google Ads, Google AdSense, Google Search Console, and Looker Studio.
And if you have the paid version of Google Analytics (Analytics 360), then you get more integrations with services like Salesforce and Search Ads 360.
Now if you’re a WordPress user, you’ll want to hear about the ways the MonsterInsights plugin integrates with Google Analytics to make it simple to set up and use. (Not a WordPress user? Jump to the Mixpanel section). Let’s take a look!
MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It makes using Google Analytics much easier and straightforward! With MonsterInsights, you don’t have to hire a developer to set up Analytics on your WordPress site.
Its step-by-step wizard will help you set up analytics without editing code. Plus, you get advanced tracking right out of the box, and there’s no need to set up event tracking manually. For instance, you can track outbound links, affiliate link clicks, and much more.
Plus, MonsterInsights brings your important Google Analytics reports right inside your WordPress dashboard. Each report is easy to understand, and you won’t have to navigate through the complex maze of Google Analytics to find the data you need for decision making.
MonsterInsights also offers different addons that allow you to track additional data about your visitors and get insights. For example, with the Forms addon, the plugin automatically tracks all your forms on WordPress and shows you data about how they’re performing. And with the eCommerce addon, you can instantly set up eCommerce tracking with just a couple clicks.
MonsterInsights Features
Here’s a closer look at some of the features offered by MonsterInsights:
- Simple and clean dashboard reports
- Google Analytics tracking across devices and campaigns
- Set up eCommerce tracking in just a few clicks
- Track form conversions automatically
- Make your site GDPR and CCPA compliant
- Enable scroll depth tracking with a single click
- Track file downloads across your site
- Exclude certain user roles from tracking, such as admins
- Automatically track outbound links, affiliate links, and telephone links
- Website speed report and realitme dashboard report
- Video tracking, PPC ad tracking, focus keyword tracking, and more
- Get weekly email summaries of your site’s performance
- Export any report as PDF and share it with others
- Find out how fast your website loads
MonsterInsights Reporting
MonsterInsights makes it effortless to find the data you need to grow your business. It offers different reports that are easy to understand, and you can see in an instant how people interact with your site.
Let’s look at a few of the MonsterInsights reports. For a full tour, check out Your Ultimate Guide to MonsterInsights Dashboard Reports.
1. Overview
When you first install the plugin, the first report you’ll see will be the Overview report. Here you get all the important stats to see how your site performs, such as the number of sessions, pageviews, average session duration, and total users.
You can also see new vs. returning visitors, device breakdown, top countries, top referrals, and top posts/pages.
2. Publishers
If you want to see how people interact with your content, then head over to the Publishers report. Remember that you’ll need MonsterInsights Plus or a higher plan to view the report.
In the Publishers report, you get to identify your top landing pages and the total visits they get.
Other reports under the Publishers tab include top outbound links, top affiliate links, top download links, demographics, and interest reports. Using the information from these reports, you can better understand your audience and be able to target them more closely.
3. Google Search Console
If you want to see which keywords your users enter in Google to find your website, you can check out the Search Console report (available at the Plus license level and up).
Once you’ve done that, you’ll find your top 50 search terms on Google, their clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and average position right inside your WordPress dashboard.
4. eCommerce Tracking
MonsterInsights also helps you track your online store’s performance through eCommerce tracking. And in the eCommerce report, you can see important stats like conversion rate, number of transactions, revenue, and average order value.
Below those numbers, you can also see your most popular products. This way, you can see which type of products convert the best to promote them more, and maybe find similar items to add to your store.
Aside from that, you can view conversion sources, total add to carts, total removed from cart, the percentage of new customers and the percentage of abandoned carts under the eCommerce tab in MonsterInsights.
5. Forms Tracking
Like we mentioned earlier, MonsterInsights helps you track all kinds of forms on your WordPress site with its forms addon. Then, you can see their performance right in your WordPress dashboard.
Get insights about which forms are performing the best by taking a look at how many impressions and conversions they’re getting. Then use the data to tweak poor-performing forms or replicate your best forms across your website.
MonsterInsights Integrations
As for integrations, MonsterInsights works seamlessly with some of the best WordPress plugins and Google services.
You can automatically track eCommerce performance for your WooCommerce store, Easy Digital Downloads, LifterLMS, MemberPress, and GiveWP. And it works with ThristyAffiliates, AffiliateWP, and Pretty Links to track affiliate links.
Other integrations include CookieBot and other cookie plugins, WPForms, and all other types of WordPress form plugins.
Mixpanel
Mixpanel is an analytics tool for companies of all different types around the world. It offers powerful features that help you better understand your visitors and improve customer experience.
Mixpanel works using event-based tracking to track the specific actions users perform. This offers a lot of insights about how people use your website or app. It’s focused on how each user flows through and interacts with your site.
While Mixpanel is a nice alternative to Google Analytics, it’s not necessarily easier to implement and use. If analytics isn’t something you’ve worked with much before, you may have to spend several hours learning how to use and set up tracking for your website with Mixpanel. This can be a hurdle for anyone who wants to focus on growing their business instead of learning how to use the analytics tool.
Mixpanel Features
In terms of features, Mixpanel offers loads of them such as:
- Create interactive reports through visualizations
- Slice and dice your data to uncover insights
- Easily set up funnels and add filters
- Build custom dashboards and share them with others
- Get alerts for changes in metrics
- Create segments to group users
- Connect Mixpanel to different data storages
- Secure customer data and compliance with privacy laws
Mixpanel Reporting
Mixpanel offers different types of reports that you can use to see how people use your products and consume content. Under the Insights report you can analyze your visitor’s actions, while the Flows report shows the path they took on your site.
With the Funnels report, you can pinpoint where they drop off. And if you want to see whether users come back to your site over time, then you can view the Retention report.
Other Mixpanel reports include Signal, which helps to identify actions that drive conversions.
And if you A/B test different variants of your content or product, you can view the results under Experiments. Aside from that, Mixpanel lets you create awesome dashboards for your business. You can add multiple reports and change their visualization as per your need.
Mixpanel Integrations
Mixpanel offers more than 50 integrations with popular SaaS software such as data warehouses, A/B testing tools, messaging services, CRMs, and more.
For instance, you can connect Mixpanel with Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure. And if you want to send push notifications, then you can integrate Mixpanel with One Signal.
That said, adding Mixpanel to your WordPress site can be tricky. The tool doesn’t offer any official plugin for WordPress, and you’ll have to use third-party plugins to connect it with your site.
Another way of implementing Mixpanel on WordPress is through JavaScript API integration. But this requires editing code, and you’ll have to hire a developer to set it up.
Google Analytics vs. Mixpanel: Which Analytics Tool Should You Select?
Now that we’ve gone through all 3 analytics tools, you might be wondering which one to choose? The choice depends on your business needs.
If you want to track website performance and see how people interact with your content, which pages they view, where they click, and where they come from, then Google Analytics is a good choice.
And if you combine it with MonsterInsights, then you can enhance your Google Analytics experience. Not only does the plugin makes it simple to use Analytics, but it also helps you get detailed insights by setting up advanced tracking.
But if you’re looking for analytics that can be super personalized and focus on user journeys, Mixpanel might be the right choice for you.
And that’s it!
We hope you liked our article on Google Analytics vs. Mixpanel vs. MonsterInsights. If you want, you can also check out our post on MonsterInsights vs. Google Analytics – what’s the real difference.
Not using MonsterInsights yet? What are you waiting for?
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