MonsterInsights Review 2024: Best Google Analytics Plugin?

Wondering if MonsterInsights is right for you? Google Analytics plugin for you?

MonsterInsights is the most popular Google Analytics 4 plugin with over 3 million active users and +2000 reviews on WordPress.org. It makes setting up Google Analytics and managing your website metrics in your WordPress dashboard easy.

With so much excitement about it Google Analytics WordPress pluginLet’s see if it’s worth the hype.

In this article, we explain various aspects of the plugin such as: B. Installation, ease of use, customization and features. You can use the information to check whether it is right for you.

As mentioned, MonsterInsights is the best WordPress plugin for Google Analytics 4. It allows you to transform complex GA-4 data into simple, easy-to-understand data that you can quickly interpret.

You can customize Google Analytics 4 data to focus on what matters most to you and analyze it directly in your WordPress dashboard. This means you don’t have to switch platforms to analyze your data, streamlining your workflow and eliminating confusion.

You can set up MonsterInsights to track real-time analytics, SEO rankings, affiliate links, form submissions, video engagement, and more. Because MonsterInisights creates custom analytics reports, it can help you improve very specific aspects of your website.

For example, you can use the information to determine which videos, affiliate links, and forms are performing well. This can help you create content, forms, and other lead magnets that actually work.

With MonsterInsights there are no random reports, long setup processes, or complicated charts.

What is MonsterInsights Lite?

Now MonsterInsights offers both a premium and free version of the plugin. The permanently free version of the plugin allows you to test it to ensure you have full confidence in the product before purchasing.

It can help you quickly get basic but specific data about your website. Some of the information you can get MonsterInsights Lite contains:

• meetings
• Page views
• New and returning visitors
• Top performing pages and posts
• Top referring domains
• And more…

This makes MonsterInsights Lite great for small businesses, freelancers, and more.

To set up the free version of MonsterInsights, simply go to your WordPress plugin repository and install it like any other plugin.

If you encounter any problems, here is a step-by-step guide on how to install a plugin.

In this MonsterInsights review, we’ll focus on that Pro version. This will help us thoroughly break down this Google Analytics plugin so you have all the information at your fingertips.

To ensure that you can easily follow this review, we have divided it into several sections. You can click on the links below to jump to the section of the review you want to read.

Note: Before installing and setting up MonsterInsights, make sure you have a Google Analytics 4 account. But don’t worry; It’s super easy to create an account. To get started, you’ll need your Gmail account. Just go to the Google Analytics login page and select “Get started now”.

If you don’t have one yet, here’s an article on setting up Google Analytics 4 to get you started.

Now let’s get to this MonsterInsights review.

Installation and setup

One thing we love about MonsterInsights is how easy it is to install and set up.

First, visit the plugin’s official website and log in. MonsterInsights offers 3 plans, so you can quickly find a package that fits your budget.

You also get a 14-day, no-questions-asked money-back guarantee, giving you an additional safety net. Additionally, you can securely purchase a plan using a variety of credit cards or PayPal, giving you plenty of options to get started.

Once you have selected and purchased a plan, go to Download tab in your MonsterInsights account. Then download the plugin ZIP file and copy the license key to activate MonsterInsights Pro in WordPress.

Now go to your WordPress dashboard and continue Plugins » Add new plugin. Upload your MonsterInsights ZIP file here and activate it like any other plugin.

You will then be automatically redirected to the Monsterinsights assistant. If you are not automatically redirected to the setup wizard, continue with Insights » Setup Checklist and select “Start Wizard”.

Now this wizard will help you complete the setup process and customization of the plugin easily. This ensures that you have all the features personalized and ready before using the plugin.

On the first screen, tell MonsterInsights whether your website is a business website, a blog, or an eCommerce store. This makes it easier for the plugin to set up features according to your specific needs.

After that just paste that License key You previously copied to activate MonsterInsights Pro. Then strike Connect MonsterInsights to link your WordPress dashboard with Google Analytics.

In the next pop-up window, select the Gmail account you used to log in to Google Analytics. Finally select Allow to grant MonsterInsights permissions.

In the next few screens of the setup wizard, you will now use toggle buttons and checkboxes to enable the various MonsterInsight features.

Let’s discuss these customization options and more below.

Adjustment

As mentioned, the setup wizard also allows you to customize MonsterInsights from your WordPress dashboard.

On the first customization page in the setup wizard, enable the option Event tracking And Advanced link attribution with toggle keys. Below you will see all the standard file types that MonsterInsights tracks. In this section you can easily add other file types you want to track.

On the next screen you can also enable the following using toggle keys.

• 20+ advanced tracking features including conversion tracking, author tracking, custom dimensions, scrolling, and more
• Add recommended plugins to my website
• Privacy Compliance Add-on
• Advanced reports
• Ecommerce tracking
• Media tracking

Now once you’ve completed the setup wizard, the final screen will display everything you just set up and let you know if any feature is broken.

But with MonsterInsights, you can edit or further personalize these features and more after the initial wizard customization process.

Another interesting thing we discovered while reviewing Monsterinsights is how convenient these customization options are.

Let’s start with the customization options, which you can find on the Insights » Setup Checklist page.

Below the setup wizard, you’ll be presented with various tabs that will help you quickly personalize MonsterInsights and make it your customization center.

You can quickly enable these features by selecting the button next to the tab or clicking Learn More to be redirected to the page where you can enable them.

For example, on this page you can enable:

• Connect WordPress to Google Search Console
• Track form conversions
• Add site notes
• Activate the Performance addon
• Set up custom dimensions

If you want to do even more customization with Monsterinsights, go to Insights » Settings in WordPress.

Here you will find various analysis tabs listed according to their measurement.

For example, on the Engagement tab, you can use the toggle keys to activate Demographics And Interest reports for remarketing and advertising.

Then below you can do the following Anonymize IP address with a shift key. This ensures user privacy and compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

After that, you can also use the toggle keys to enable more specific settings Link attributionincluding “anchor tracking” and “tag links in RSS”.

You then have the option to enable scroll depth tracking, add a domain for cross-domain tracking, and set up file tracking by adding the file type abbreviations.

If you run an affiliate site, go to the Publisher tab.

Here you can customize the affiliate links path to suit your branding and style. This can help you camouflage affiliate links so they look less spammy, which increases your conversion rate.

To supplement this, you can switch to Conversions Tab where you can add custom dimensions. Here, use the dropdown menu to choose between Tags, Subscribed, Category, Author, User ID, and Post Type to add to your custom dimension.

Now, as part of your tracking process, you can ask MonsterInsights to send you a weekly report. All you have to do is go to the Advanced tab and Enable email summaries with a shift key.

Below that, enter the email address you would like to receive the summary to and you’re done.

Still, on the same page, you can enable permissions for your team to ensure that only authorized people can perform certain tasks.

First, use the drop-down menus to select who can see the reports and save settings. Then use another drop-down menu to define who should be excluded from Analytics tracking, e.g. B. Your WordPress administrators and editors.

This ensures you get more accurate results without having to track your team’s website interactions.

Now if you run a white label company or agency, you can share more personalized PDF reports from MonsterInsights. Still find this on the same page Export PDF reports section and select “Use custom header image”.

You can add your company logo to brand all your detailed reports before sharing.

Ease of use

As mentioned, one of the strengths of MonsterInsights is that you can view your Google Analytics reports in WordPress. This makes it easy to use and allows even beginners to analyze their site data.

You can quickly find your WordPress site analytics by navigating to Insights » Reports.

Here you will see different tabs that track different metrics.

You get tabs like Overview, Traffic, Search Console, E-Commerce, Forms, Real-Time, and more. Simply select one of these tabs to get a breakdown of the data in that category. Additionally, tabs like Traffic, Publisher, and Commerce have drop-down menus to open even more specific data.

Below the analysis tabs is a chart that visually shows you your data. You can switch between sessions and page views.

You can set the date range for the data using a drop-down menu that includes Today, Yesterday, Last Week, Last Month, Last 7 Days, and Last 30 Days. Additionally, you can set a custom date range to find the exact tracking window you’re looking for.

If you want to quickly download or share the data, use the Export PDF Report button. This also allows you to save your data locally as PDF files as an additional security measure.

Below the graphic is the Site notice Section.

Here you can add the date and category in addition to the site notes you created. You can also add a star next to your notes to mark them as Important. This can be especially important if you run a large website or many websites with many tracking variables.

In addition to the graph, MonsterInsights also allows you to view the actual metrics.

Below the graph you can see the number of sessions and page views. However, on the same tab you will find this Average session duration in minutes and the Bounce rate in percent. Below each of these numbers is the percentage change compared to the previous metrics.

For example, if you set your data range to Last 30 Days, Percentage will show you whether your metrics have increased or decreased as a percentage compared to the previous range over the last 30 days.

Next, MonsterInsights provides a graph representing new and returning visitors to help you visualize this data.

In addition, you will receive a Device failure Chart showing which users used a desktop, tablet, or mobile device. The percentages of these numbers can also be found next to the charts.

Additionally, MonsterInsights allows you to quickly view the 10 countries sending you traffic, the top 10 referral domains, and the top 10 posts and pages. This gives you a quick overview of your website’s performance without having to sift through rows of data.

In most cases, the data you receive from MonsterInsights is enough to conduct proper website analysis. However, if you want to view the raw data in Google Analytics, you just need to select the button below these lists.

For example, if you want to see the metrics of all your site’s referrals, select “View All Referral Sources” and MonsterInsights will redirect you to GA-4 under that specific report.

Features

While we’ve talked about quite a few features in the Ease of Use, Customization, and Installation sections, let’s take a closer look at them.

1. Track form conversions

Forms are a must for every WordPress website. They can help you establish a simple two-way communication channel between you and your users.

Forms allow you to collect feedback through contact forms, surveys, and more. They can also help you grow your mailing list as they are excellent lead magnets.

Because of their importance, tracking forms is important and MonsterInsights is the perfect solution.

MonsterInsights can help you gain insights into all types of forms created by most popular form builders. You can track forms created with WPFormsimpressive shapes, gravity shapes and more.

This Google Analytics plugin for WordPress makes accessing your form analytics easy by going to Insights » Reports » Forms. Here you can check the form ID, impressions, conversion rate and more.

You can use this information to improve the user experience by identifying forms that your users have difficulty completing. You can also identify the best-performing forms and create more with similar layouts, lengths, and fields.

2. E-commerce tracking

One of MonsterInsights’ strengths is its connection to a variety of tools and WordPress plugins. At the top of this list are eCommerce WordPress tools.

You can connect MonsterInsights with WooCoomerce to track both physical and digital products. It integrates with Easy digital downloads to help you track digital products. Additionally, you can also connect this analytics plugin with MemberPress and LifterLMS to track course purchases.

Because eCommerce is such a large niche, MonsterInsights divides the Ecommerce Tracking tab into Overview, Funnel, and Coupons reports.

You can use the coupons metrics to see how well your promotions are performing and funnels to measure conversions. You can use the overview options to get an overview of the performance of your entire online store.

Additionally, MonsterInsights helps you track the total number of “Add to Cart” actions and the total number of “Removed from Cart” actions. This will help you determine how many users have abandoned the cart, so you can find ways to improve conversions.

3. Custom dimensions

One of the main reasons you should consider using MonsterInsights is the ease of setting up custom dimensions. As mentioned, custom dimensions can be difficult to set up with the Google Analytics 4 dashboard. You need to learn more about GA4 events, rows, columns and more.

With Monsterinsights, all you have to do is select the custom dimensions you want to track from a drop-down menu and you’re done. The plugin adds the additional GA-4 filters for you.

MonsterInsights can help you track hyper-specific custom dimensions and find out things like:

• Which author creates the best content?
• Which content type is most popular?
• When is the best time to publish your content?
• Track the activity of logged in users
• Categories and tags that generate the most traffic

4. Scroll depth

Even though custom dimensions allow you to see which posts drive the most traffic, you can still find out how interested your users are in a particular post.

One way to do this is to use scroll depth analysis. This metric allows you to understand how deeply your users scrolled into the content (as a percentage). MonsterInsights displays categories and the average scroll percentage of each category. You also get an overall scroll percentage for your entire website.

This information can help you improve the user experience by telling you the best content length and layout for your posts. It can also improve conversions by helping you decide where best to add your call-to-action (CTA) buttons.

The better your scroll rate percentage, the better your bounce rate, which is an important SEO signal. Additionally, scroll percentage is an SEO signal in itself, and improving this metric can improve your visibility in search results.

Here are other features you can expect from MonsterInsights.

• File download tracking: MonsterInsights can track downloads automatically. You can see how often visitors download files from your website, such as: E-books, PDFs and more. You can customize which file types to track, gaining insight into your audience’s preferences. These insights can help you create engaging content, increase user engagement, and grow your email list.
• Video and media tracking: If you have videos on your website, you can use MonsterInsights to track how many people watch them and for how long. You can track videos from YouTube, Vimeo, or directly from the WordPress media library without any coding. This will help you identify which videos are the most engaging and which may need improvement. You can also see how far into the videos people get, which can help you understand if your videos are too long or aren’t grabbing people’s attention.
• Affiliate link tracking: If you promote other people’s products on your website, you can use MonsterInsights to track how many people click on your affiliate links. This allows you to see which products are most interesting to your visitors and which affiliate programs produce the best results. You can then focus on promoting the products that are most likely to generate sales.
• Real-time analytics: Provides instant insights into your website activity. This feature allows you to see how many users are currently on your website, track the performance of ongoing marketing campaigns, and determine the best times to publish new content. This real-time data is crucial for making quick decisions and optimizing your content strategy.
• Outbound link tracking: This helps you monitor the links that take visitors away from your website, such as: E.g. affiliate links, social media links or external resources. By tracking these outbound clicks, you can see which external links are most popular with your audience. This can help you find opportunities to create similar content or new partnerships. This is particularly useful for affiliate marketers who want to optimize their link strategies for better performance.
• Advanced link attribution helps you see exactly which links are being clicked on landing pages. This is helpful if you have multiple links to the same location or want to understand which content is most engaging.

Although MonsterInsights is the best WordPress plugin for Google Analytics, it still has some additional features that make it easier to use and improve your user experience.

1. View popular content

The MonsterInsights plugin includes a popular posts widget. This feature allows you to showcase your top-performing articles and products anywhere on your website. You can add this widget in the sidebar, at the end of a post, or within the content to make it more user-friendly for your audience.

This feature helps visitors discover engaging content, increase page views, and reduce bounce rates. You also have customization options that allow you to change the appearance of the widget. Additionally, you can choose how to determine popular posts, making it easy to keep your audience engaged.

2. Create compelling headlines

The built-in MonsterInsights Headline Analyzer helps you write compelling, SEO-friendly titles that generate more traffic and social media shares. It evaluates your headlines based on word balance, sentiment, and character count and offers suggestions to make them more effective.

Optimizing your headlines can help you get more clicks and improve the performance of your content.

3. Website speed

MonsterInsights offers a Site Speed ​​report that measures your website load times for both mobile and desktop. It provides an overall performance rating and actionable recommendations to improve your website speed. Faster loading times improve user experience and boost search engine rankings, allowing you to retain visitors and reduce bounce rates.

4. Campaign alerts and email notifications

Stay up to date with MonsterInsights campaign alerts and email alerts. These features keep you informed about your website’s performance, helping you track key metrics and quickly respond to any issues. This proactive approach ensures that you can maintain and improve the effectiveness of your website over time.

Support and documentation

Firstly, the MonsterInsights homepage Describes beautifully what the plugin does, with screenshots, an FAQ section, and easy-to-read content snippets. This ensures you quickly understand MonsterInsights before scrolling through the documentation or contacting support.

Now, if you want to access the MonsterInsights plugin documentation from the homepage, scroll to the footer section. There you will find the link. This will take you to an extensive list of MonsterInsight documentation, reference material, and tutorials.

The documentation page is divided into categories, arranged in tiles, with a clear indication of how many articles can be found in each category. You get categories like Getting Started, Frequently Asked Questions, Add-ons, Account Manager, and more.

If you select one of these tiles, for example “Getting Started”, you will be taken to a page where all the articles in that category are arranged in list form. The resources listed are organized so that you can quickly find what you are looking for.

To further improve the usability of the documentation page, MonsterInsights displays the categories and most popular posts in the category on the left. You also get a search bar to help you find content faster.

Additionally, the articles themselves are easy to read, short and to the point. These resources come with screenshots to give you a visual understanding of the steps to follow.

Now there are mainly two ways to contact MonsterInsights.

The first method is aimed at non-customers who want to ask general questions or make pre-sale inquiries. You must fill out a short questionnaire Contact form with your details, the MonsterInsights plugin version you are asking for and your WordPress version.

You also select an option from the “How can we help you today?” field. Drop-down list so your request can be routed to the correct department for faster support. Finally, paste the message into the text box provided before submitting the form.

If you are a customer, submit the support ticket to get help faster.

You can only access the ticket system if you are logged into your MonsterInsights account at Support. Here you will find the form already filled out with the information you used to sign up for the plugin, making the process very easy.

So all you have to do is select an option from the “How can we help you today?” list. Drop down menu and fill out the message box. You can also use the AI ​​chatbot to conveniently search for more information.

Now you can also access MonsterInsights support and documentation while logged into your WordPress dashboard. Just go to Insights » Setup Checklist and scroll to the last part of the page. Here you get, among other things, a list of articles you can visit and a pop-up widget to open the documentation.

Remember that the MonsterInsights support team will contact you within 24 hours on weekdays and is available from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (UTC -5).

Prices

As mentioned, MonsterInsights offers a free version that you can try before purchasing the pro version. The free version allows you to connect to Google Analytics 4, customize your reports in WordPress, and more without any coding experience.

Now MonsterInsights offers 3 Pro plans:

• Plus plan: This package starts at $99.60/year and serves 1 site. You can see the metrics for unlimited pageviews and users. You get standard reports like real-time analytics, publisher reports, site speed, search keyword reports, and more. It includes standard analytics tracking like scroll tracking, media tracking, and more. You can also access growth tools like the headline analyzer and popular post widgets with over 20 templates.
• Pro plan: This plan starts at $199.60/year and serves 5 locations. You get everything in the Plus plan and advanced reports like eCommerce reports, form conversion reports, coupon reports, and more. You can integrate the plugin with WooComerce, Easy Digital Downloads and more. Additionally, you get additional growth tools like User Journey.
• Agency plan: This plan starts at $399.60/year and serves 25 locations. You get everything you get in the Pro and Plus plans, plus additional features to help you serve your customers. These features include automatic notifications of material analytics changes on the websites you operate. You can also keep track of all the metric events that take place on different sites using the Automatic Site Notes feature. Additionally, you get site management tools like Client License Management, Advanced Access Control, and WordPress Multisite Support.

Advantages and disadvantages

FAQs: MonsterInsights Review

Final Verdict: MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights fulfills its goal of making analysis easy for beginners. It gives you the powerful insights of Google Analytics without being overwhelming. You can set it up without coding and customize the metrics to focus on your website needs. It also allows you to try out different types of metrics without a lengthy setup process.

Therefore, MonsterInsights is by far the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.

Congratulations! You now have a better understanding of MonsterInsights. If you are looking for alternatives, here is an article about ExactMetrics vs. MonsterInsights.

Additionally, here are other articles you may want to read.

The first article walks you through setting up form tracking in Google Analytics. The next post lists the 7 best Google Analytics alternatives. In the last post you will learn how to set up conversion tracking in WordPress.

With this in mind, we are confident in giving MonsterInsights 5 out of 5 stars. Here is the breakdown of our review results:

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