New Feature Release: Google Analytics Tracking Integration

By 11th March 2014 January 22nd, 2016 WordPress News and Updates

Site Statistics

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get rid of most of your bloated WordPress plugins?

Today we make it easier to do just that. We’re introducing another useful feature into iControlWP: Google Analytics Tracking Integration

What makes iControlWP Google Analytics Integration different?

The biggest difference: it’s useful.

The connection to Google Analytics to draw in statistical data and display some pretty charts is nice, but you can just as easily (and frankly it’s far more beneficial) go directly to your Google Analytics Dashboard.

90% of Analytics users need to simply just add the Tracking ID to their sites. And until now, to do this reliably, we all must bloat our sites by installing a dedicated Google Analytics plugin.

This is a sledge-hammer-to-a-nut approach to problem solving, because the amount of data processing that these plugins do is excessive in comparison to the needs of most sites.

With iControlWP you can now achieve simple Google Analytics Tracking directly from within the dashboard.

It’s easy. All you need is your Tracking ID and you’re good to go.

Why is iControlWP Google Analytics tracking faster?

There are a couple of reasons for this.

  1. Using this feature means you can delete your other Google Analytics plugins, thus speeding up your WordPress site by reducing plugin bloat.
  2. We’ve taken the 80/20 rule approach to Google Analytics tracking – most of us just need simple tracking and we don’t need all the bells and whistles.  This makes our Google Analytics tracking code much faster altogether than any other of the big Analytics plugins.

Basically, with iControlWP, our approach results in 1 less plugin installed, and hundreds of lines of less code to execute.

Win!

When should you not use Google Analytics from iControlWP?

As just mentioned, we’ve taken the 80/20 rule approach here to ensure we’re simple, and we’re fast in our implementation.

If you need more complex Google Analytics tweaks and adjustments (of which there are many), you should stick with your current implementation for those particular sites.  No need to switch that out.

But, if you just need the tracking ID in there, then ours is one of the most optimized approaches available today.

How can I enable Google Analytics tracking?

Simple – In the same place you’d go to turn on our simple statistics, you can turn on Google Analytics tracking.

iControlWP: Enable Google Analytics Tracking

iControlWP: Enable Google Analytics Tracking

The Google Analytics Tracking feature is included for all existing and future subscribers to iControlWP.  There is no extra subscription level or tier necessary.

If you have any suggestions or feedback for this new feature, or any other feature, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below, or in our support centre.

Join the discussion 9 Comments

  • Ken Hood Jr says:

    One less plugin and easy set-up (just went through and enabled it on a bunch of sites). Sounds good to me!

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  • Craig Grella says:

    What effects might using icontrolwp analytics have on performance of our site if we already have google analytics running in theme options on themes like canvas, or in other themes that place the tracking code in heads or footers of our site, not necessarily in plugins?

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    • Paul G. says:

      Hi Craig,

      The important thing is that you don’t duplicate the tracking code – I’m sure Google is smart enough to handle it if you do that accidentally, but I couldn’t say for sure.

      I can’t see that there would be much in the way of performance advantages either way if you use the theme or iControlWP. My guess is that your theme’s implementation is just as simplified as ours (though we do have the added option for excluding logged-in users).

      The advantage to our approach, and using a plugin to handle Analytics code in general, is its independence from whatever theme you decide to use in the future. It’ll always be there and you wont have to add it later.

      And, if you use iControlWP to handle it, you’ll have it managed from a central place. Incidentally we’ll be adding Google Authentication soon so you can select Analytics IDs and profiles more easily.

      Hope that helps!
      Paul.

      View Comment
  • alexkess says:

    You guys are kicking a lot of goals with the recent updates! Well done!

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  • Macpieter says:

    Pretty busy you guys…
    I’ll give it a try.
    Thx a lot.

    Pieter

    View Comment

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