If you need statistics or analytical add-on for a WordPress powered websites, then you can try the in-built one that comes with Jetpack. It’s called WordPress.com Stats when you list all the modules of Jetpack.
Once activated, you can view some great details about your blog or website. It doesn’t require that much configuration or placement of any code. Actually, the only available configurations are related to the visibility of the stats and the visits to ignore if they’re from a certain type of site-member. The default selected options look good enough, but you’d want to visit the stats configuration page at least once to prevent your or administrator visits from being counted.
Accessing the Stats
To access or visit the stats page from your admin area, you can click on Jetpack and then on Site Stats to open up the main page. A number of statistics are displayed in different columns and rows. You can drag them to change their order.
The page URL is usually: http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=stats
Statistics That Are Displayed
Main Stats
The main page shows your page-views at a glance. You can see your daily visits on the top. You can switch between the tabs Weeks and Months to access your statistics grouped by those time periods. You’ll also be able to see the best views, views that you’ve received today, and all time views and comments respectively.
While most of the statistics that you see on this page are displayed for the current day and the day before, you can click on a particular day’s bar chart to expand the details of that day.
Referrers
Referrers are search engines or other websites that send in visitors.
Top Posts & Pages
Your most popular pages of the current day and the day before are shown with their individual views.
Search Engine Terms
You’ll find the keywords that people used to land on your webpage. You will find that most keywords are grouped as Other search terms because Google encrypts search keywords and they fall under this category.
Clicks
You’ll see the external clicks that your visitors made from your website. These are the links that you placed in posts or pages, that are being clicked.
Subscriptions
It displays the total subscriptions or followers that your blog has. They are generated from the subscription module of Jetpack.
Summaries
If you click the Summaries link on the top right of the statistics page, you’ll be displayed a glance of how your site has been doing over the years. This is an important tool as it allows you to identify the busiest month or the busiest day of the month. You can also compare each and every month to last years’ to see how they fair.
There are also columns which display weekly, monthly and yearly totals along with averages for the week, month and year. You can see how much has changed. This is a detailed page for some quick analysis of your statistics.
WordPress.com Stats
There are also advanced statistics that you can view only in the stats page of your particular site at WordPress.com. You can access the page from the main stats page by clicking the Show Me button next to the text Did you know you can view enhanced stats on WordPress.com?
Clicking on the button will redirect you to a WordPress.com page.
In the page you will be able to see:
- Views: The total views.
- Visitors: Total unique visitors.
- Likes:com likes that you received.
- Comments: Comments in your posts.
- Post & Pages: Displays the hits count for each page.
- Referrers: Where your visitors are coming from.
- Clicks: Where your visitors are going to.
- Country: The location of your visitors displayed as a map and as a list.
- Authors: The post views of individual authors, if there is more than one.
- Comments: How many comments are members and guests making. You can also group comments by posts and pages.
- Followers & Publicize: Email, WordPress.com and Publicize follower stats.
All these stats can be grouped by days, weeks, months or years. You can click on the statistics of individual days to expand their view. Otherwise the stats are displayed for the current day.
You may be interested in: How to Limit User Statistics in Jetpack Site Stats
Final Words
Overall, the details displayed by Jetpack Statistics are of great use. It allows you to view the information right from your WordPress admin dashboard. The information displayed is segregated by posts/pages, and by time periods. Those are quite useful.
If you want advanced stats then you can always use Google Analytics. But for some quick information, WordPress.com stats Jetpack module is what you want to activate.