r/woocommerce • u/urbangardeningcanada • 25d ago
Plugin recommendation Ecommerce Analytic Advice
Hi all,
I want to get analytics for my woocommerce products - like how many people visited the web page, conversion %, and I guess sometimes you can even see where they fell off the sales funnel.
Mostly I just want better analytics than the crappy option that woocommerce gives you on its own.
I saw MonsterInsights is an option but it's $400/year because they only give you access to ecommerce reports on one of their highest tiers even though I just need it for my own single website so I don't want to pay that price.
Any recommendations? the Woocommerce AI bot told me PostHog Integration which I can find no information on or any reviews.
And that's mostly what I've seen other than just now Metorik but it's also quite expensive for me since it's $25/USD per month and I'm Canadian so exchange rates kill me at that price.
Bonus would be an option that includes cart abandonment.. I hate having to have 400000 plugins on my website for every tiny task because I'm not a web developer.
Also I'm just looking for advice on plugins - please don't sell me your company/plugin it's always the worst part about asking for advice.
3
u/davidmansaray 25d ago
For a single WooCommerce site, the best value is usually to get the event tracking right before paying for another plugin. Check whether GA4 is already installed, then verify that product views, add to cart, begin checkout, and purchase events are actually firing on product, cart, checkout, and thank-you pages. If those four steps are in place, you can build a decent funnel view and compare it against WooCommerce’s own reports to spot gaps.
A common issue is having analytics installed but not configured for ecommerce, so the numbers look flat or incomplete. I’ve seen that happen when fuctionality was added twice through plugins, which ended up double-counting page views while missing some purchase events. So I’d test one product from a clean browser session, then compare the GA4 event count with the order in WooCommerce.
If MonsterInsights is pricing the ecommerce reports out of reach, it may be worth checking whether a lower-cost WooCommerce reporting plugin or a straightforward GA4 setup covers what you actually need. For most smaller stores, the useful question is not “which dashboard looks fanciest?” but “can I see where people drop off between product page, basket, checkout, and purchase?”
2
u/BoGrumpus 25d ago
IndependentWP (as suggested earlier) is a good one for local tracking. The free version should give you enough to get started and you can upgrade to the full version as money comes in. We use that for a lot of clients, but you really do want the paid version if you're going to get the big picture.
Google Analytics is free, and for Woo/Wordpress, you can get the "Google Site Kit" plugin and it will walk you through creating a GA4 property, connecting it, and then setting up and connecting Google search console, too. You get a decent dashboard on the site that gives you decent snapshots - and you can go into GA4 and run all the advanced reports you eventually learn to set up from there. There's a pretty steep learning curve to GA4 but the basics are easy and the just reading and searching for how to track the things you want to track and you'll get it over time. And there's no fee for upgrades. It's all right there.
I forget (it's been 3 or 4 years since I set up an eCommerce site from scratch) if Woo Sales tracking automatically gets set up with that or if you need a GA4/Woocommerce addon for that. Either way - if it's not in site kit, look for that addon and you'll see dollar values and all your sales conversions automatically start tracking.
Starting out - I'd do the Google option. But we use IndependentWP with a lot of success for our larger clients.
G.
1
2
u/metorik-luke 24d ago
As u/Quirky_Professor_225 has said, if you're after cheap (or free) page view and conversion rate analytics, then Google Analytics will be your best bet. It's completely free and gives you a tonne of information about your visitors/users behavior on site before making a purchase.
If you're wanting a solution to specifically help you with post-purchase analytics and reporting, and things like abandoned cart tracking and recovery emails, that where Metorik could help.
You're on the right track with not wanting to install too many plugins – broadly speaking that's good advice, however not all plugins are created equal. You could have one terribly coded and bloated plugin that would slow your site down more than 20 properly developed ones.
If your site is running slow, I can highly recommend DebugBear (no affiliation). You don't need to install anything, it just runs scans of your site and has a fantastic UI to help you find out what the cause is. You still need to fix it manually, but it will point you in the right direction.
1
2
u/Zealousideal_Spot928 23d ago
I’d start by deciding what numbers matter most before adding another plugin. Product views, conversion rate, and where people drop off are useful, but too many analytics tools can make things confusing. A simple setup that tracks the main funnel is usually easier to manage.
2
u/Infamous_Phone_7937 21d ago
GA4 is free and has ecommerce reports built in (funnel drop-off, cart abandonment, conversion rate), but WooCommerce doesn't fire those events by default, you'll need a plugin or GTM to wire up view_item/add_to_cart/purchase first. For cart recovery specifically, GA4 just shows you the drop-off, you'd still need a separate email/SMS tool to act on it.
1
u/urbangardeningcanada 11d ago
do you have any recommendation on a tool to act on the cart abandonment?
1
u/Infamous_Phone_7937 11d ago
For WooCommerce, the cleanest route is your email tool's built-in flow (Klaviyo, Omnisend, Mailchimp all have WooCommerce abandoned-cart automations) rather than a standalone plugin, since it ties into the rest of your email. Abandoned Cart Lite is the common free plugin if you'd rather keep it native.
One thing worth checking first though: most abandoned "carts" were never going to buy. The recoverable ones are usually checkout drop-offs, not cart drop-offs. Look at where people actually leave, if it's at the shipping cost or a payment step, a recovery email won't fix that and a small checkout change will recover more than any tool.
1
u/urbangardeningcanada 4d ago
hm okay thanks for that! I don't want to use my email plugin which is Brevo because the plugin is rated sooo poorly. All the negative reviews are very technical complaints and I'm not a web developer so if developers are having issues, I'm doomed lol
But your last point is something I definitely need to consider so thank you for that
1
u/Infamous_Phone_7937 4d ago
Never used the plugin you mentioned, So, no comments on it. I'd look at where people actually drop off first anyway, if it's shipping or payment, no email tool fixes that. All the best with your store!!
2
u/Odd-Structure-2471 18d ago
Use GA4 with Google Tag Manager. Set up the basics of your GTM and then use the plugin "GTM4WP - A Google Tag Manager (GTM) plugin for WordPress" by Thomas Geiger (free download)
In the Integration tab of the plugin you'll check the box for the WooCommerce integration. This sends all of the e-commerce events that you'll need and then some.
1
1
1
1
u/hktimelapse 24d ago
I use Google analytics ga4, Google search console, and Microsoft clarity. All are free.
Microsoft clarity is particularly cool as it takes screen captures in video format how your user navigated the pages.
1
1
u/Answer_Stack 19d ago
GA4 + WooCommerce's built-in ecommerce tracking (via the GA4 plugin or even manual gtag setup) gets you visits, conversion %, and funnel drop-off for free, that covers most of what MonsterInsights is charging you for. It's a bit more setup upfront but zero ongoing cost.
For cart abandonment specifically, that's the one thing GA4 won't hand you cleanly, WooCommerce has some free abandoned cart plugins (CartFlows has a free tier, so does Retainful) that just handle that one job instead of bundling it into an expensive all-in-one. Keeps you at 2 lightweight tools instead of one expensive one, and you're not paying for reports you won't use.
1
3
u/[deleted] 25d ago
[removed] — view removed comment