Dear Andrew,

I’m a total newbie and working on my first website (WordPress site).

I plan to sell just 1 product so won’t use a shopping cart.

What would be the best software/service to see how many visitors I get to my website and pages?

Thanks,
Debbie

Dear Debbie,

Thanks for your e-mail.

This one is very easy – best FREE website analytics software on the Planet is Google Analytics:

http://www.google.com/analytics/

All you need is a free Google account to start using Google Analytics on your WordPress site. I haven’t tested expensive enterprise solutions but I really think GA is all you need so don’t spend your time looking for an alternative. GA is very easy to set-up (you just copy & paste a piece of code) and overall interface of the program is very intuitive and user friendly.

Don’t forget to turn on E-commerce tracking feature and implement code on your site – this is CRUCIAL! Without e-commerce feature fully integrated in your website, you won’t see where your sales are coming from. Remember – it’s not only about unique visitors or page views – you’ll make money only from people who BUY stuff from you! That’s why you want to know exactly who they’re, how they found your website so that you can put more effort into those traffic channels bringing in more revenue.

E-commerce tracking feature will require some additional code/script to be placed on your checkout pages. Most payment processors will have custom made scripts ready for you to use (ask for help or check their FAQ/Manual section).

If you’ll be using PayPal as a payment processor, this process can be pretty tricky – I’ll try to cover this in future posts.

Thanks,
Andrew

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