If you have a WordPress site, JetPack by WordPress is an easy way to get visitor and viewer statistics. No website is complete without a count on its viewers. The statistics produced from viewer data enables you to analyze your blog for the effectiveness of your blogging activities.
Another popular statistic tool is Google Analytics. If you are new and have very little programming knowledge, this may get a little complicated to install. It involves cutting and pasting an HTML code from Google to just the right place on your theme editor under header. Another way is to install it from your hosting control panel file manager. Support from your hosting can help you with its installation. It is not impossible for the novice. YouTube video tutorials can also help.
But, you do not need to do all of that. Just download the JetPack plugin by WordPress.com from your WordPress Dashboard. An icon will be there to take you to wordpress.com. Create a login and password with a free membership and WordPress will give you an API key. It is nothing more than a few letters and numbers to cut and paste to your plugin. Then, you are almost ready to go. You don’t need to do anything else. You just need to wait a few hours for WordPress to configure your site.
Google Analytics involves signing in to Google. With Jetpack, it is just a click of your mouse on your Dashboard. Google has a line graph. Jetpack has a bar graph. Google’s time is the US. WordPress is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). If what you want are web visitor viewer statistics, the numbers are the same.
The Jetpack site stats page features a big box that has a 30 day bar graph of the views to your site. By putting your cursor to each individual bar, a box will appear that tells you the date, the number of views on that date, and the number of articles published. On the bar graph, just below the bars, it gives you the number of views on that day, the highest ever views on one day, and the total of all time. A “summary” link on top of the bar graph puts you to a page with a calendar summary of the views by day, week, month and year.
There are four smaller boxes below the bar graph box. One of the boxes features the number of views broken down to each individual page on that day. Another box shows the web page on which your web visitors clicked with a link from your site. Another box features the number of viewers who used the search engines to go to your site and their URL. The last box shows the search engine words used to find your site. As in the bar graph, a “summary” link in each box takes you to a summary of the views of each individual page by day, week month and year.
Clicking a WordPress link on top of your JetPack page will bring you to WordPress.com. A tab there gives you enhanced statistics for your site. It will tell you how many web visitors as well as the views. The same visitor can have more than one view. JetPack calls them views and visitors in their statistics. Google Analytics calls them visitors and unique visitors. Another feature by enhanced Jetpack stats is, telling you what country your visitors are from.
Jetpack has other features other than visitor viewer traffic. Some, you have to pay for, others are free. Jetpack is free. This includes comments, publishing to social media, contact forms and many others. WordPress.com also has your most recent blogs from your blog directory.
It follows the “fair use” rule by having only the title and the first two sentences. There are many other blogs there from WordPress users. Then, it links to your site directly to that particular blog. It has other blogs from other WordPress users. Links on wordpress.com include a link to wordpress.org. There, you can learn more about WordPress.
Jetpack is easy to use and convenient. It is quick, simple and easy to install. It gives you the statistics Google Analytics gives directly from your Dashboard. I recommend it highly to new as well as experienced WordPress website owners.