In a conversation the other day, I asked a digital media consultant if had expertise using Google Analytics. He said yes and I admitted that I found it a bit complex. When I wondered how he learned to effectively use it, he said, “lots and lots of instructional Youtube videos.”
You’ve undoubtedly been advised that Google Analytics is a must for your nonprofit website. I’ve given that advice myself. It’s free and has a wealth of data. Of course, it makes sense to have it as one of your measurement tools.
I’ll continue to expand my knowledge of using Google Analytics but I’m more and more seeing it as a tool for advanced users looking for a more sophisticated tool set. But the truth is that I’ve never been a big user of Google Analytics because I haven’t needed it.
Jetpack is THE must have plugin
Having gotten my start using WordPress.com, I really like the set of tools that come with the Jetpack plugin.
Originally developed for users on WordPress.com, Jetpack was later made available to self-hosted WordPress.org website if you also had a WordPress.com site. And now a self-hosted site can use this plugin-and for free!
If I could only use one plugin, it’d be Jetpack and I consider it a must for my clients.
The stats tool makes it a must
I love how it gives me a snapshot of how my websites are performing every time I login to the dashboard. I can see instantly how active my site is today, yesterday and for each day over the past couple weeks. Also shown are the top posts and search terms.The stats tool that comes with Jetpack alone makes it a must-have.
You can quickly dive deeper and in addition to a more complete list of top posts & pages and search terms, there’s a list of referrers and what links have been clicked. Each of these four stats can quickly and easily show the totals for the last week, 30 days, quarter, year or all-time.
That gives me all the stats that I find most useful to keeping my finger on the pulse of my website and making strategic decisions.
For day to day use or for any non-profit that doesn’t have a full-time digital media specialist, the stats tool in Jetpack is almost certainly all you need. It doesn’t ovewhelm you with information, is easy to read and understand. In short, you don’t need to watch lots and lots of instructional Youtube videos to feel confident using it.
Google Analytics looks complex as soon as you login. Nor is it intuitive or easy to learn. If it shows what clicks are popular, I haven’t found where yet.
Should you have it yes! It does provide statistics you might find useful. If for no other reason if you organization hires a digital media consultant or staff, the wealth of data will be invaluable to them to evaluate how successful a campaign is or whether you are meeting the goals and objectives of your communications strategy. It’s frustrating to those folks (myself included) when there’s no historical data to measure against.
What I’m saying is make sure you also have the Jetpack stats tool!
Jetpack features many more tools
But Jetpack is much more than a stats tool. It’s a suite of tools that are constantly improving and being expanded. It reduces the need to have the many plugins as was required in the not so distant past. Best of all, it’s coming from the makers of WordPress so you can be confident that the latest version of Jetpack is 100% compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
Some of the other Jetpack tools that I really like are:
- auto-publicize posts to social media
- e-mail subscriptions to your posts
- shortcode embeds
- a mobile theme
- monitor downtime
And there’s much more! Plus a few tools that can purchased.
Get Jetpack!
If your WordPress website is more than a year old, you probably don’t have Jetpack. Get this plugin now!
