ExactMetrics

No matter what kind of website or blog you’re running, you NEED a good analytics solution.

If you’re anything like me, then Google Analytics is the first solution that springs to mind, but the GA4 update has definitely made things more difficult for many users.

Want to use analytics without the headache? Then an analytics plugin may be the solution. I’ve found that the right plugin can pretty much set up the Google Analytics tracking code for you, and then display detailed reports and statistics directly in the WordPress dashboard.

In this ExactMetrics review, I’m going to test a plugin that promises to do exactly that. I’ll be installing ExactMetrics on a test website and checking out all the major features, before seeing whether the support is up to scratch and how much ExactMetrics costs.

So, is ExactMetrics the right Google Analytics plugin for you? Let’s find out, in this hands-on ExactMetrics review.

ExactMetrics Review: Why Use It in WordPress?

Let’s start with the basics: formerly Google Analytics Dashboard for WP, ExactMetrics shows beautiful Google Analytics reports directly in the WordPress dashboard.

This lets you track important metrics like pageviews, session duration, bounce rate, and conversions, and see your site’s performance at a glance. You can then do more of what’s working, and less of what isn’t.

Beyond that, ExactMetrics offers advanced demographic reports, enhanced link tracking, affiliate link tracking, and real-time reports. There’s even a EU Compliance addon that lets you collect data while complying with GDPR and other important privacy regulations.

Just getting started or have a limited budget? Then you can download ExactMetrics lite from the official WordPress repository.

This free plugin adds the GA tracking code to your site, so you don’t need to hire a WordPress developer. You can then track your affiliate links, outbound links, file downloads, and more.

For some website owners, this may be enough. However, if you want more advanced reports including eCommerce tracking, then you may need to consider upgrading to the premium ExactMetrics plugin. In this ExactMetrics review, I’ll be focusing on the premium upgrade but I’ll mention the free plugin along the way, too.

ExactMetrics Review: Is It The Right Google Analytics Plugin For You?

Every WordPress blog or website needs a good analytics solution. In fact, it’s pretty much the first thing I set up after creating a new site, so I don’t feel like I’m flying blind.

With the right tool, you can see exactly where your visitors are coming from, and the actions they take on your site. You can then use this insight to grow your audience and online business.

With that said, in this ExactMetrics review I’ll see if it’s the right Google Analytics plugin for you.

1. Easy to Use

Want to grow your online business? Of course you do, so you need to know how people are finding your site and engaging with your content. Google Analytics is one of the best analytics tools, but adding it to your site can be challenging. Even after setting up countless blogs and websites, I’m always surprised by just how complex it is to set up GA.

That’s where ExactMetrics comes in.

You can install and activate ExactMetrics just like any other WordPress plugin. With that done, I went ahead and connected WordPress to my Google Analytics account, using the setup wizard.

After just a few clicks, ExactMetrics went ahead and installed the Google Analytics code on every page across my entire WordPress website, and I was ready to start tracking my site’s performance. It was so much easier, compared to setting up the GA4 code manually!

2. Convenient Dashboard Reports

Google Analytics collects lots of information about your website traffic, link clicks and button clicks, conversion rates, and more.

With ExactMetrics, I could see all this information directly in my WordPress dashboard.

This allowed me to make informed decisions based on data that was easily available, every time I logged into my WordPress account.

ExactMetrics even has a dashboard widget so I could see my most important stats the moment I logged in.

Another option is the ExactMetrics Page Insights addon.

This shows key analytics directly in the admin bar, so they’re always within easy reach.

3. Enhanced Link Tracking

There are many different types of links that you may want to track. However, tracking can sometimes be difficult to set up – sometimes, I even needed to write custom code for each URL, which isn’t ideal.

That’s why I was happy to see that ExactMetrics automatically tracks outbound links so I could see exactly what sites I’m sending users to.

With some simple set up, I could also track my affiliate links. This let me see exactly how people are engaging with each link, how each person arrived at my site, and the pages that are generating the most clicks.

4. Detailed Visitor Statistics

ExactMetrics can help you understand your audience by collecting information about their country, interests, device preference, browser, age, and more.

You can also see how these people are finding your website, the keywords they’re searching for, and the actions they take once they arrive on your site.

ExactMetrics even showed this data in real time, so I can see what was happening on my site right now.

5. File Download Tracking

Do you sell digital downloads?

Many websites make money by selling downloadable files such as ebooks and albums. I’ve even used downloadable files as lead magnets, by asking visitors to enter their email address before downloading the file.

No matter how you use downloadable files, it’s important to monitor how visitors are engaging with that content. ExactMetrics records every click and download, so you can see what kind of content gets the most engagement.

You can then create more of this content, and hopefully get even downloads and engagement in the future.

6. Enhanced Link Attribution

ExactMetrics comes with enhanced link attribution so you can identify the exact link or button that’s generating the clicks.

For example, you might add a Buy Now button to your website’s header and sidebar. By enabling enhanced link attribution, you can see exactly which version of this call to action is getting the most clicks.

7. Telephone and Email Link Tracking

ExactMetrics automatically detects telephone (tel:) and email (mailto:) links so you can track conversions from inbound communication channels.

In this way, you can pinpoint the pages, contact forms, or call to actions that are getting vistors to contact you directly.

8. Form Tracking

Like many website owners, forms help me stay connected with my audience, build an email list, boost eCommerce conversions, and grow my business.

With the ExactMetrics Forms submissions addon, I could track how many people are submitting each form. I could also see the number of impressions and the conversion rate for each form.

In this way, I could identify low-converting forms that I needed to optimize, and high-converting forms that I needed to study, to try and understand exactly why they’re performing so well.

If you use forms, then this is an important topic so I’d recommend checking out our guide on how to set up WordPress form tracking for more information.

9. Scroll Tracking

ExactMetrics can record when visitors scroll 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% down a page, so you can see how people are engaging with your content.

In my opinion, this is another way to identify which pages are getting a good response, and which pages need improvement. In fact, I experimented with moving elements around my page, based on how visitors were scrolling my most important pages. For example, I changed where a call to action appeared on a few different landing pages.

For more on this topic, please see WPBeginner’s guide on how to add scroll depth tracking.

10. Compliant With Important Privacy Laws

In 2018, the European Union (EU) introduced a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law that affects many websites and online businesses.

According to GDPR, you must get explicit consent before collecting or processing any personal information of an EU resident or citizen. Essentially, visitors must give you permission to collect their data.

However, there’s a big problem: Google Analytics is not GDPR compliant by default.

If you break GDPR then you may face a fine, or even jail time. With that said, it’s important to make your WordPress website GDPR compliant.

The good news is that you can make ExactMetrics compliant with GDPR, CCPA (US), PECR (UK), and PIPEDA (Canada) using the Compliance addon. Simply install this addon and it will automatically configure your Google Analytics settings to comply with these important privacy laws.

This includes anonymizing IP addresses, disabling author and UserID tracking, disabling demographic reports, and more. In my opinion, this is a must-have feature for any website owner who’s concerned about GDPR (and honestly, that should be EVERY website owner!)

11. Site Speed Report

Your site’s performance has a big impact on the user experience. In fact, according to our web design statistics, pages that load within 2 seconds have an average 9% bounce rate. If your page takes 6 seconds to load, then that bounce rate jumps up to 46%. Those are worrying statistics for any website owner!

Thankfully, if you buy ExactMetrics Plus or higher, then you can see your site’s speed directly in the WordPress dashboard.

This report also suggests some changes you can make to boost your website’s performance. In my experience, these small tweaks can have a big impact on your bounce rates.

12. Google Search Console Report

Google Search Console is a free tool that can help you monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google’s search results.

To help you out, ExactMetrics can show your Google Search Console data directly in the WordPress dashboard. In fact, ExactMetrics will show your top 50 Google search terms, plus the number of clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and average position for each keyword.

13. Keep Control Over Your Data

Do you share your WordPress dashboard with other people, such a guest bloggers or co-workers? In that case, I’d recommend carefully controlling who has access to your Google Analytics data.

With ExactMetrics, you can grant or deny access based on the person’s user role.

For example, I stopped certain users from accessing my ExactMetrics reports, and experimented with giving different users permission to connect and authenticate GA.

By contrast, you may want to share your ExactMetrics data with people who don’t have access to your website.

It’s never a good idea to give someone access to your WordPress dashboard just so they can look at your Google Analytics data. Rather than put your WordPress security at risk, you can simply export your ExactMetrics data as a PDF report. I simply clicked a button and ExactMetrics created this report in seconds.

14. Email Summaries

Unfortunately, Google Analytics 4 doesn’t offer automated email reports. This can become a big problem, especially if you manage a long list of WordPress websites or run a multisite network.

The good news is that ExactMetrics fixes this missing feature, by sending automated weekly email summaries.

Even better, you can send this email to any address you want.

I can imagine this being a life-saving feature if you run a WordPress development agency, and want to keep your clients up to date on their site’s performance.

15. Google AMP Tracking

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a technology that can make your site load faster on mobile devices. If you’ve enabled AMP, then you’ll want to know how many people are using it, and the pages that drive the most traffic from AMP.

By default, if you want to track AMP visitors then you’ll need to use a different code snippet in addition to the standard Google Analytics tracking code. That’s already pretty annoying, but even worse Google Analytics might count a person multiple times if they visit your site through both AMP and the desktop. That means you’re getting bad data!

The good news is that ExactMetrics makes it easy to properly set up Google Analytics tracking for Google AMP. It also ensures proper attribution when users switch between the AMP and non-AMP parts of your WordPress website.

If you’re using AMP, then this is one feature you definitely need!

16. SEO Tracking

Are you using AIOSEO?

AIOSEO is a WordPress SEO plugin that lets you optimize your WordPress website for search engines and social media platforms. We use AIOSEO for all our WPBeginner articles, so it’s great to see that you can track your AIOSEO TruSEO score with ExactMetrics, and monitor how it affects your traffic. In my testing, these two plugins worked together seamlessly.

You can also segment traffic by focus keyword, and identify the words and phrases that are driving the most people to your site.

17. Online Ad Tracking

Do you run online ads?

Once again, you can’t improve what you don’t measure! By tracking your advertisements you can get an insight into each campaign’s performance, and then use that insight to improve your future campaigns.

With ExactMetrics, you can track Google, Microsoft, and Meta PPC ad conversions. Even better, the ExactMetrics PPC Ads Tracking addon makes it easy to get started. In my experience, most of the time I could simply paste the service’s tags or ID into ExactMetrics, and it would start tracking my online ads.

18. UserID Tracking

Do you allow user registration on your WordPress website? In that case, you’ll want to track how these users are interacting with your site.

ExactMetrics can track each person who logs into your site, via their UserID. In this way, you can see how people are engaging with your content, including users on your membership site.

If you run an online store, then you can even see what product pages logged-in customers are visiting. This allows you to identify your top-performing products, and learn more about the customer journey.

Basically, if you accept user registration, then this is an essential feature.

19. Post Tracking

Do you run a multi-author blog or accept guest posts?

By default, Google Analytics doesn’t track authors, so you may struggle to pinpoint your most popular writers. The good news is that ExactMetrics can record this information, via its ExactMetrics Dimensions addon.

After configuring this addon, you can see which authors are getting the most views, conversions, clicks, and more. As an added bonus, the addon also tracks which categories and tags are getting the most engagement.

Similarly, you can track the performance of your posts based on when you published each item. You can then use this insight to schedule your content to get the best results.

20. Display Your Most Popular Posts

As a website owner, you’ll naturally want to hep visitors find your best content. One solution, is to display your most popular WordPress blog posts.

There’s several plugins and tools that can do this, but ExactMetrics has a Popular Posts widget that you can add to any page, post, or widget-ready area. Thanks to this widget, I highlighted my best posts without having to set up a dedicated plugin.

21. Track Custom Events

Out-of-the-box, GA4 is a pretty comprehensive solution, but every site has different needs. For that reason, you may need to use custom events to track extra information that Google Analytics doesn’t collect by default.

However, in my experience creating custom events is far more complicated than it needs to be, especially if you’re just getting started with Google Analytics.

Typically, you’ll need to configure these events manually, or complete a complex setup in Google Tag Manager. That’s not exactly user-friendly, and website owners often give up on creating custom events for that exact reason.

Thankfully, ExactMetrics makes this whole thing much less complex. With ExactMetrics, I had no problems setting up and tracking custom events, without having to manually configure them in Google Analytics.

While the process did require a bit of coding, I only needed to add a small amount of extra text to the HTML link I wanted to track.

22. Easy eCommerce Tracking

Google Analytics Enhanced eCommerce Tracking records how shoppers are behaving on your online store. This lets you see what impact your sales, promotions, and other events have on your revenue.

Armed with this insight, you can do more of what’s driving sales and getting you the desired results. However, manually configuring Google’s eCommerce tracking can be complicated – trust me, I’ve tried!

The good news is that ExactMetrics has a dedicated eCommerce addon. This let me enable Google Analytics Enhanced eCommerce tracking with a single click.

With that done, you can start tracking eCommerce data in WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, MemberPress, and other popular platforms.

You can also monitor the user journey and see the exact pages that customers visit before making a purchase. This can help you fine-tune the customer journey and create a high converting sales funnel.

23. Track Video Events

Videos can make your site more engaging and increase your traffic. In fact, according to our blogging statistics, posts with videos get 83% more traffic compared to posts without video. Those are some pretty impressive numbers!

To get the best results, you need to monitor how people are engaging with your videos. ExactMetrics has a Media addon that can track how many times a video gets played, average watch time, average percentage watched, and completion rate.

ExactMetrics is also compatible with Vimeo, YouTube, and HTML 5 analytics events, so it’s perfect if you use these video hosting sites.

24. Community and Professional Support

Throughout writing this ExactMetrics review, I was impressed by just how easy it makes Google Analytics. I managed to install the tracking code with just a few clicks and then tracked all my important metrics in the WordPress dashboard.

However, understanding and using analytics properly is essential for growing your website. With that said, I made a point to dive into all the plugin’s advanced features and addons.

This is where ExactMetrics’ detailed online documentation really helped. I referred to it a lot while writing this ExactMetrics review and it always had the information I needed. I also liked their Getting Started guide, as it was a big help when I first installed the plugin.

ExactMetrics also has a blog where they share advice and best practices about a range of topics, such as how to do keyword research and how to find broken links. This provides some useful extra information and background reading, compared to the online documentation.

If you prefer one-on-one help, then all the ExactMetrics plans come with professional support. Simply log into your account and submit a ticket, and the ExactMetrics team will aim to respond within 24 hours, Monday-Friday.

ExactMetrics Review: Pricing and Plans

If you’re just getting started or have a limited budget, then you can download the free version of ExactMetrics from the official WordPress repository. This plugin makes it easy to install Google Analytics in WordPress, so you can start tracking important metrics.

It’s a good starting point for all kinds of blogs and websites. You may also want to download the free plugin if you’re unsure whether ExactMetrics is right for you. Spend some time playing around with the lite plugin, and then decide whether you want to upgrade at a later date.

To be honest, since analytics are so important I’d always recommend investing in the premium ExactMetrics plugin.

You can choose between 3 different plans:

• Plus. For $99.50 per year, you can use ExactMetrics on a single site. With Plus, you can access all the standard analytics features and reports, along with the EU Compliance addon. I think this makes Plus a great option for small business websites or blog owners who want to start tracking and analyzing their traffic.
• Pro. Priced at $199.50 annually, this plan adds the eCommerce, coupon, and form conversion reports. It also integrates with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads. With that said, ExactMetrics Pro is my top pick for online store owners.
• Agency. For $399.50 per year, you can use ExactMetrics on up to 25 websites. It also supports WordPress multisite and comes with advanced access control settings. With that in mind, Agency is the perfect plan for anyone who manages multiple WordPress websites. For example, if I ran a WordPress development agency then I would buy this license so I could use ExactMetrics across all my client sites – nice and simple!

ExactMetrics Review: Is it Worth It?

After looking at the features, pricing, and support options, I’m confident that ExactMetrics is a great Google Analytics plugin.

It allowed me to integrate my Google Analytics property in a few clicks and then track important metrics in real time. This was much easier, compared to adding the code to my site manually.

If you run a single website, then ExactMetrics is a great place to start. It also comes with the EU Compliance addon, so you can use Google Analytics without breaking important privacy laws. GDPR is such an important topic, that this is pretty much a must-have feature for anyone running a website, blog, or online store.

Meanwhile, ExactMetrics Pro adds eCommerce tracking to MemberPress, LifterLMS, Easy Digital Downloads, and more. That said, Pro is my top pick if you sell digital products, physical products, or services online.

Finally, if you run or manage multiple websites then I recommend the ExactMetrics Agency package. With this plan, you can install ExactMetrics on up to 25 websites, and then track unlimited users and pageviews. Simply buy an Agency license and you can use ExactMetrics across all your client sites.

ExactMetrics Review: FAQs

What is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress?

In my opinion, analytics are absolutely essential when it comes to growing your website. After all, you can’t improve what you don’t measure!

With that said, it’s important to choose the best analytics plugin for you. I believe that ExactMetrics is the perfect Google Analytics plugin for freelancers or agencies who have lots of different clients. This is because ExactMetrics’ subscription plan can support up to 100 websites, so it’s very scalable and offers great value for money when used across multiple sites.

However, ExactMetrics is far from the only Google Analytics plugin out there. Some other options I’d recommend checking out are MonsterInsights, OnePageGA, and Site Kit by Google.

Or, you can read WPBeginner’s comparison of the best analytics solutions for WordPress users for more information.

Is ExactMetrics free?

Yes! You can download ExactMetrics lite from the official WordPress repository and add the Google Analytics code to your site within minutes.

How much does ExactMetrics cost?

For $99.50 per year, you can use ExactMetrics on a single website. Alternatively, you can buy a Pro plan for $199.50 annually, or an Agency plan for $399.50 per year. 

Remember, you can also download ExactMetrics lite from WordPress.org, if you’re looking for a free plugin.

How do I install ExactMetrics?

You simply need to install and activate the ExactMetrics plugin, then connect WordPress to your Google Analytics account. To keep things easy, ExactMetrics has a setup wizard that’ll guide you through the process. 

I hope this ExactMetrics review helped you decide whether it’s the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. You can also check out our guide on how to set up Google Analytics goals, or see our expert pick of the must have WordPress plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.