It is official, the thing that every SEO and marketer thought would never happen is finally happening. On July 1, 2023 Universal Analytics will be no more and Google Analytics 4 will take its place.
Some are frantically trying to brush up on their GA4 skills, watching tutorials and taking online courses. Others are looking for alternatives that they can use in place of UA.
We already know that historic data from UA will NOT transfer over to GA4, which is why some are taking the opportunity to see what other options are out there.
For Wix users, this is less of a concern as integrated within every site lies a hidden gem. Let’s call it a best-kept secret. Ready for the reveal? Presenting — Wix Analytics.
I’m going to highlight 13 of the coolest features of Wix Analytics that you might not know about (and even if you do a little reminder is always helpful)
1. It’s always there
An often forgotten pain point with Google Analytics is that if the script is not embedded on your site, it won't gather any data. This is one reason I also like Google Search Console (which has historic data), especially for small businesses without an endless suite of marketing tools.
Think about it, how many times has a website gone through migration, or a design update, and faster than the blink of an eye, the GA code is gone — Leaving gaps in your data. I have worked on client sites where we had to merge multiple properties in order to get a complete view of the data.
Wix Analytics, starts from the first day your site goes live — day 1. . No need to install additional scripts or confirm that each page has them, it's automated. The second you launch your Wix site, insights from your traffic will start to be gathered.
2. The number of reports
Wix Analytics has TONs of pre-made reports (45+). They are broken down by the following topics:
Sales
Sales over Time
Sales by Item
Item Sales over Time
Sales by Billing Location
Sales by Order Type
Average Order Value over Time
Clients with Overdue Payments
Traffic
Subscriptions
Blog
Marketing & SEO
Behavior
Members App
People
Accounting
One of my favorite sets of reports relates to blog posts. There is a preset classification to gain deeper insights into your blog posts and which are extremely useful when it comes to targeting long-tail keywords.
Each one can be viewed in different presentation formats such as bar charts or tables. You can also customize your date settings and compare any two periods.
And don't worry about having to google “how to xyz” to figure out what you need, the integrated help documents make it extremely easy to learn how to use each and every report - making it easier and more efficient to gain the insights you are looking for.
3. It’s integrated into your dashboard
For all users, beginners to advanced, an integrated analytics dashboard makes life easier. It is easy to find and easy to use.
4. Roles and permissions
You can add marketers, developers, SEOs, or team members quickly and easily through roles and permissions. You can give them access only to certain aspects of your site that are appropriate for their role.
5. Accurate data
One of the benefits of a closed CMS like Wix is accurate data. For both user data (and site speed data) there is nothing more accurate than directly from the source. The user journey, session times, bounce rates, and even data on Core Web Vitals are all there —reliable and growing in number constantly.
6. Bot data
Bot data can be found in Google Search Console and it can also be found in server log files. But with Wix Analytics, bot data has its very own report, so you can see which pages bots are visiting, how often and on what dates. Knowing when bots are visiting which pages can help you to understand the structure of your site better and diagnose crawl issues if some pages arent getting crawled. Crawling and indexing are two essential steps search engine bots make to serve your content to users and the fact that their activity is part of a normal analytics report is a huge benefit.
7. Site speed
The integrated speed dashboard isn't exactly part of traffic and Analytics, but at the same time, it is. Using real field data, (not only lab data) gives you information on how your users are actually experiencing your site. On the other hand, when you use a tool like Page Speed Insights it’s third-party and must pass a threshold before it gives you real field data.
8. Clean and easy-to-use UI
The UI is clean and easy to use. Google Analytics doesn’t have the most modern and sleek design. Plus waiting for it to load can take ages. Within Wix Analytics you can see tables, charts, maps, graphs and everything in between to understand, interpret and gain insights from your data. And if you are more of an Excel kind of person (like yours truly) then go ahead and export it to CSV or Excel format.
9. Alerts
Setting up alerts is amazingly useful in Wix Analytic. You have 4 default alerts out of the box:
Daily Site sessions
Weekly Site sessions
Daily Total sales
Weekly Total sales
Plus you can set up new alerts based on any metrics and any frequency you want, all with the click of a button.
10. Track sales
If you have an eCommerce store then understanding your most popular items, avg. order value, payments and location of your customers are critical. Built into Wix Analytics are all of these metrics and more. Understanding them helps you to grow your online store and increase your revenue easier than ever before.
11. Monitor traffic from your phone
Available for both IOS and Android devices the Wix Owner app allows you to view live stats, track campaigns, compare time periods and more, from your phone. This is a very useful feature when you're on the go or simply don't have access to your computer. It allows you to be able to stay up to date about your website analytics.
12. Analytics insights
The Wix Analytics Insights page is a gold mine of quick actionable insights. These insights change based on your actually traffic and the user interaction with pages of your site.
You can quickly see insights such as:
The pages where users stay the longest
Specific spikes in traffic
The last page before users leave your site
Which pages do users navigate to the most
If large data sets and graphs can seem intimidating (and even if they don’t) then the insights page is definitely something you will find interesting and full of fresh ever-changing ideas.
13. Behavior overview
For those of you who want a deeper dive into the data from the analytics insights page, then the behavior overview is where you will feel at home. This is where you can view real behavioral data of your users to find what's working and what isn’t.
Here is just a sample of some of the data you can see:
Average Pages Per Session
Average Session Duration
Bounce Rate
Store conversion funnel
Abandoned carts
Understanding the behavior of your users is one of the most important parts of optimizing your website, content and overall user experience to work for you the best it can.
One of the behavior reports that is a personal favorite is the Site Search Report.
Useful to all larger websites, especially eCommerce sites, an internal search function delivers extensive information to you as the site owner.
Here you can see what people are actually searching on your site, to make smarter decisions about your inventory, site structure, paid campaigns and SEO strategy. There is even a breakdown of searches that returned no results
To Wrap Up...
So just because the era of Universal Analytics is ending, it doesn’t mean that we are about to be left in the dark with web analytics. These 10 cool features are just some of my favorite and yet they barely scratch the surface of what Wix Analytics is capable of. . Paired with a good free heatmap tool like Microsoft Clarity it can really put you in a position to succeed.