Monthly ArchivesAugust 2022

Have you ever wondered about your audience? Wanted to know where visitors to your website lived? How old they were? Google Analytics (sometimes referred to as just “GA”) can help you better gauge visitors and make informed, data-driven decisions regarding your website.

Keep reading to learn how to add Google Analytics to WordPress.

What Is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics uses a web beacon to gather and collate data about visitors to your site. This free-of-charge service by Google enables you with the tools you need to sift through that data and understand how your customers behave while they visit your website. Google Analytics also offers insights into how you can provide a better customer journey and customer experience.

What Can Be Tracked in Google Analytics?

You may be asking yourself, “If I connect Google Analytics to WordPress, what can be tracked?” Here are just a few of the things that can be tracked.

Geographical Data

Google Analytics can allow you to see where your customers are. You can view by city, by country, by continent, and by subcontinent.

Source of Traffic

If you’ve ever wondered, “How did my customers find me?” Google Analytics will help you. Here are a few types of traffic you can find in Google Analytics.

• Direct Traffic — These are visitors who manually typed in your address (or, more likely, clicked on a bookmark).
• Search Traffic — These are visitors who searched for something using Google and clicked on your site in the search results.
• Referral Traffic — These are visitors who arrived at your website by following a link to your website from some other website.

Technology

Are your customers viewing your site by using their cell phones or their desktop computers? Are they using Safari or are they using Chrome? Google Analytics answers these questions.

Event Tracking

Once you’ve added Google Analytics to your WordPress site, you will be able to track events. We have an article that more fully explains event tracking but here’s a quick run-down of just a few types of web events that can be tracked:

• Page events using the mouse (e.g., where a visitor clicked on your site).
• Keyboard events (e.g., what a visitor typed into frames and forms on your site).
• Frame events (e.g., when a visitor scrolls through a frame).
• Form interactions (e.g., when a user adds payment information or proceeds to checkout).

Page Views

How many pages did each visitor view? What was the average number of views across all visitors?

Session Duration

Closely related to Page Views is Session Duration. How long was each visitor viewing your site?

Exit Pages

What page was a viewer last viewing when they left your site?

Conversions

Google Analytics helps you track conversions. Conversions are when visitors to your site perform an action you value, such as subscribing to your mailing list or confirming a purchase. This is about converting random site visitors into loyal customers and clients, and turning clients and customers into dedicated fans.

Acquisitions

This is related to sources of traffic. Google Analytics helps you turn insights into results. In particular, by linking the Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts for your website, you can track which Google Ad Campaigns were most successful in bringing visitors to your site, your cost per acquisition, and how much each site conversion costs.

Behavior

Your website is your store window. Formerly known as “Content Experiments,” this feature of Google Analytics has been expanded and migrated to Google Optimize. You can leverage Google Analytics with Google Optimize to better understand split-tests for your WooCommerce site.

That’s a very, very brief introduction and broad overview of what Google Analytics can track. For guides, videos, and demos, head over to the official Google Analytics developer portal.

Why Is Google Analytics Important?

From reading the above list, you’ve probably already gleaned a few ideas you could use and are maybe now wondering how to add Google Analytics to WordPress. If not, here are a few more suggestions for why you should connect Google Analytics to your WordPress or WooCommerce site.

Integration

As suggested above, Google Analytics “just works” with most other Google platform services. If you have a Google Play app, you can use GA to track the Google Play Referral Flow from your associated WooCommerce site. If you have an active AdWords campaign with an email campaign component, you can align that data to track what’s working and what isn’t.

Attribution

Whether it’s a new sale or a new subscription, a new conversion is a delight. Whether you’ve had a managed WooCommerce site with us for years, or you’ve just decided to create your first online store, knowing why you gained a conversion is true bliss.

Imagine you’ve just got an unexpected rush of new conversions. Was it that new AdWords campaign? Did your latest Facebook campaign bring in those new clients? Or maybe it was the funny tweet from your college intern? Attribution (now in beta) from Google Analytics will help you stop wondering and start smiling as you better model the attribution for your conversions.

Recognition

Recognizing shifts in your website traffic and conversion rates spotlights new opportunities and helps you better focus your marketing efforts. For example, Google Analytics will help you break down which social media platforms are just bringing in new traffic and which platforms are now also bringing new conversions.

How to Signup with Google Analytics

Simply follow the instructions on the Google Analytics new account page. They won’t tell you how to add Google Analytics to WordPress, but they will ask some questions about your website and what types of data you’re interested in tracking.

Though entirely optional, you’ll probably want to also sign up for a Google Tag Manager account. Google Tag Manager helps you handle and unify the different tags and beacons across all the Google services (e.g., Analytics, AdWords, Play, etc.) and 3rd-party tags (e.g., AdRoll, AdAvisor, Twitter, etc.).

How to Install Google Analytics Using Headers and Footers Plugin

After you’ve created a Google Analytics account and created at least one tracking code, you’ll want to know how to add Google Analytics to WordPress. To enable Google Analytics to start collecting data, you’ll simply add the tag from Google Analytics to the headers (or footers) of your WordPress site.

One easy way to add the newly created tracking code is to use the Insert Headers and Footers plugin.

Step 1: Install and activate the plugin. If you have one of our Managed WordPress or Managed WooCommerce plans, you can use the Hostdedi Plugin Installer.

Step 2: Insert code in your header or footer by going to the Settings > Insert Headers and Footers menu.

Step 3: That’s it! Google Analytics wil now start collecting data.

How to Install Google Analytics in WordPress

After a few days, Google Analytics will have enough data collected to begin offering you insights. Unfortunately, the official Google Analytics dashboard offers you so much data and ways of looking at the data that it collects, it can feel a little like drinking water from a firehose. Many many first-timers to GA will find a Google Analytics WordPress plugin essential to not feeling overwhelmed.

Unfortunately, there isn’t an official WordPress plugin for Google Analytics. There is, however, an official plugin for WooCommerce called WooCommerce Google Analytics. Fortunately, there are quite a few 3rd-party plugins available. One such plugin is the MonsterInsights plugin.

Whichever plugin you choose, the installation instructions will be similar to the MonsterInsights installation instructions. The plugin will have a settings section where you can link the plugin to your Google Analytics account. This will redirect you to your account with Google where you will be informed there is a 3rd party app (your new plugin) requesting permissions to access your account. Click ‘Allow’ if you want the new plugin to help you with your Google Analytics data.

That’s it! Now you know how to put Google Analytics on a WordPress website.

Making the Most Out of Google Analytics

Whether you’re trying to start a new fan-club or start a new online business, you’ll want to make the most out of Google Analytics.

Narrow Focus — It’s easy to get distracted by the many, many metrics offered by Google Analytics. Have a set of just 5-10 indicators that are key to accomplishing your goals. Focus on those.

Regular Review — You’ve invested your valuable time into identifying your key metrics and designing custom reports for them. Now, remember to read the reports. You’ll want to review them weekly. Review daily if you’ve recently updated your site or launched a new campaign.

Make Changes — You’ve identified your KPI, you read the reports based on them, now use them. Have you seen almost no change in your metrics since your latest AdWords campaign launched? Try changing your campaign keywords. Google Analytics can be a roadmap to success. When you realize you’re driving down the wrong road, you should change roads.

Google Analytics is incredibly powerful, it’s free, and it’s super easy to install Google Analytics on your WordPress site. What are you waiting for?

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Information floods customers from the minute they pick up their phone in the morning until they put it on the charger at bedtime. Whether social media ads or robocalls about their car’s extended warranty, your customers are bombarded with a steady stream of noise.

It can be challenging to communicate with them if you don’t know how to cut through that noise to share what you have to offer. HubSpot email marketing can help your brand stand out and build customer trust. Keep reading to learn how to use HubSpot for email marketing.

Why Use Email Marketing?

Email may seem old-fashioned in comparison to something like influencers on TikTok. But if something works, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Email marketing can help you connect directly with your customers in a way that social media can’t.

Email marketing is the practice of targeting your customers through email. Customers subscribe to your email list, and you send them valuable content about your industry, brand, and products. These emails do many things, but on a macro level, they regularly get your brand name in front of customers. And that can help customers remember your brand and differentiate it from competitors.

But is email marketing still relevant? According to the stats, it is. Take a look!

• There are more than four billion email users worldwide. Some of them are your customers.
• According to 79% of marketers, email marketing is one of their top three best marketing channels, meaning they see a return on the time, energy, and money they invest in it.
• Email subscribers are more likely to convert into customers.
• Unlike social media followers, you own your email list. So you don’t have to play the algorithm game. You can show up in front of those customers without the hashtag hassle.

There are even more benefits to email marketing beyond effectiveness and reach. For example, you can easily build a relationship with your customers via email. You show up in their inbox and share valuable information with them. They learn that you’re a leader in your industry and get to know more about your brand simply because you emailed them. Building that relationship is a great way to increase brand awareness and customer trust.

And don’t forget product promotion. The average customer’s social media feed is full of ads they scroll right by. But in email, you can communicate the value of your products or services and promote your business on your terms without playing the viral trend game.

And maybe the best part is how you can segment your email audience. Not every customer is ready to click buy. You can segment your warm leads from your new subscribers with a good email list. That means you can tailor your communication to each segment and feed your customers the information they need to convert them from leads to loyal, paying customers.

Email marketing may seem too good to be true in a world of constantly evolving algorithms. But it’s not, and with HubSpot email marketing, you can build and implement a strategy in less time than it takes to try the next viral social media challenge.

How to Use HubSpot for Email Marketing

There’s no definitive method for how to do email marketing, so be ready to get your hands metaphorically dirty. Every business must do something different to attract subscribers and keep them engaged.

After choosing an email marketing software like HubSpot, a good plan starts with a clearly-defined strategy. This strategy will help you market to every customer on your list.

Steps for building a HubSpot email marketing plan:

1. Define Your Audience. Marketing 101 is about knowing your ideal customer persona and creating content tailored to their needs. Before you do anything with your email list, define this ideal customer and know what they need from you.
2. Set Goals. Gather information about your industry’s email statistics, such as open, click-through, and unsubscribe rates. This data will help you set realistic goals and show how you compare to your competitors.
3. Build Your List. Like Rome, you won’t build your email list in a day. Understand that this portion of your strategy will never end. Use forms to collect contacts and entice customers to sign up with lead magnets. These customers then agree to allow you to send them marketing emails. Based on what lead magnet they sign up for or where they sign up, put them into a specific email segment. Marketing segmentation will help you tailor which content you send to which customers.
4. Choose Campaign Types. There are four types of successful email campaigns, from newsletters sent out at regular intervals, promotions sent out to announce sales or new products, retention emails to keep loyal customers engaged, and acquisition emails to turn subscribers into customers. You’ll send each of these emails, but you need to know when and to which email segment to send them. And what works for your business may not be what works for others. So choose carefully and keep your ideal customer in mind.
5. Create a Schedule. Think about how often you’d like to email your subscribers. Set your schedule and stay consistent. Consistency will help your customers get to know your brand and prevent them from unsubscribing if you show up in their inbox after a long period of inactivity.
6. Measure Results. Once you’ve sent a few emails, you’ll have some data to show you how your campaigns are doing. Look at open rates to see how your subject lines are performing. Your unsubscribe rate will show you where your audience stops engaging with your company. There are tons of email analytics to help you refine your strategy. Checking in regularly will help your list continue to flourish. The HubSpot WordPress plugin can help you record and analyze this data.

Ready to Jump into Email Marketing?

Email marketing allows you access to customers in a way that social media simply can’t. But it’s vital to remember that once someone gives you permission to email them, you’re a guest in their inbox. You should never abuse that privilege. Continually send them valuable information that’s relevant to them, and they will stick with you.

HubSpot email marketing can help kickstart your email marketing strategy for your online business. And the best part? The HubSpot WordPress plugin helps collect email subscribers and gives you the data you need to refine your email marketing strategy.

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If you’re new to WordPress, you may be wondering about sidebars. A sidebar is a section of a WordPress website that displays additional information or a navigation menu alongside the main content. It’s normally a vertical column on either side of a page, but it can also be seen under the footer.

Keep reading to learn how to add a sidebar in WordPress.

What is a WordPress Sidebar?

A sidebar is a widgetized section of your WordPress site where you can display content that isn’t on the main page. Widgets are used to bring secondary material to your website. For example, a widget may display a list of your most recently published blogs, a tag cloud, or a search bar. A WordPress sidebar can be changed based on the pages it appears on, or it can be populated with the same content on every page.

A blogger can use the sidebar across an entire website, or construct multiple iterations of sidebars for different pages and topics. These parameters are adjusted in WordPress using the active WordPress theme or a plugin.

WordPress Sidebar Examples

Some of the most popular websites in the world, including eBay, Wikipedia, and Amazon, feature sidebars. We’ll use a red box to emphasize the sidebar section in each example below.

Practical Applications for WordPress Sidebars

Sidebars come in handy in a variety of situations. You can combine several tactics at the same time. You could, for example, include a search box, navigation links, adverts, and more in one WordPress sidebar. Consider the following scenarios:

Add a Search Bar

You can add a search box to your sidebar to make it easier for people to find material. Instead of combing through your content archives, visitors can use a search bar to find information using a keyword or phrase.

Provide Navigational Assistance

You can utilize your sidebar to provide navigational assistance as well. In WordPress sites, navigation menus are frequently found in the headers. However, you might find that adding some navigational links to your sidebar — or even shifting your entire navigation menu to the sidebar — is a better fit for your design.

Promote Social Media

Another use of a WordPress sidebar is to encourage your site visitors to follow you on social media. One of the most effective ways to grow your audience is through social media. You can send updates to readers across many websites by linking to your social media platforms, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. You could also include a button that allows users to share your content on social media.

Generate Income With Ads

If you rely on advertisements to make money, your sidebar is an excellent location for them. To make money, place adverts in your sidebar section. You can use the WordPress Custom HTML widget to add pay-per-click ad modules from Google AdSense and other ad networks to your sidebar.

Feature Specific Content

Include your most popular posts, recent posts, related content, and more in a featured content sidebar. Use the sidebar to direct readers’ attention to your most popular or recently published blog entries. This will boost your SEO performance and attract more traffic to your content.

How to Add a Sidebar in WordPress: 2 Methods to Try

In this article, we’ll go through two different ways on how to add a sidebar in WordPress.

Method 1: Using WordPress Customizer

The methods below demonstrate how to add a sidebar in WordPress site using the default theme option.

1. Go to Appearance > Customize > Sidebar.

2. You must select the right or left sidebar from the corresponding dropdown menu to make your sidebar visible.

3. The default layout dropdown menu allows you to choose a sidebar for the entire site. You can also customize a sidebar for each of the following locations: Pages, Blog Posts, and Archives.

4. Select the “No Sidebar” option in the dropdown menu to remove the sidebar from any of these locations.

5. You can alter the WordPress sidebar template, such as sidebar width, once at least one of your sidebars is configured. You can specify how much of your content area the sidebar will occupy.

6. Click “Publish” to save the sidebar settings.

7. Finally, go to Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets to start adding stuff to your dashboard.

Method 2: Using a WordPress Plugin to Create a Custom Sidebar

The methods below demonstrate how to add a sidebar in WordPress using a WordPress plugin.

To begin, choose a WordPress plugin for the sidebar. The Custom Sidebars plugin has been used in this case. You can use it to maintain and replace your website’s sidebars. It works with any theme and requires no coding. We can divide this process into two sections.

Make your first WordPress sidebar by following these steps.

1. Go to Plugins > Add New and install the Custom Sidebars plugin.

2. Once the plugin is installed and activated, go to Appearance > Widgets on your dashboard and select “Create a New Sidebar.” When you click it, you’ll be able to give your custom sidebar a name and a description.

3. If you’re going to create more than one sidebar, give each one a specific title so you can remember which one is which.

4. Under the custom sidebars area, your new item will now appear.

5. All you simply have to do now is drag and drop the elements you want to your new WordPress sidebar template from the Available Widgets column.

6. Choose where your new sidebar will appear.

A custom sidebar called new Sidebar with a search bar, calendar, and navigation widget.

When you build a new custom sidebar, it won’t appear on the frontend unless you tell the plugin where it should be placed. To determine where the new WordPress sidebar will appear, follow these steps.

1. Go to Appearance > Widgets Custom Sidebars section.

2. Find the sidebar you want to add to your site and click on “Sidebar Location.”

If you get a popup that says, “There are no replaceable sidebars. Please allow at least one as replaceable,” make sure to check the checkbox that says “Allow sidebar to be replaced” under the theme sidebar section.

3. On the next screen, you’ll have the choice of selecting from a long list of criteria, including sidebar and footer options. Selecting the sidebar for chosen categories option, for example, allows you to determine which categories the sidebar should display on.

4. Ensure you save your changes after you’ve chosen your criteria, and you’ll be all set.

5. If you want to add a custom WordPress sidebar to a certain post or page, on the other hand, you’ll need to update that individual page. When you enable the plugin, a new sidebars widget appears in the WordPress editor for new and existing posts.

6. All that you have to do now is to select the custom sidebar(s) you want for the different locations. Simply leave the rest blank if you only want to use one option, and WordPress will use your default settings instead.

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• While WordPress works with a wide range of settings and servers, a managed WordPress hosting service optimizes the technology to provide WordPress the best possible performance.
• Sites on a Managed WordPress hosting plan are typically faster than those on standard hosting plans since the provider handles server optimization and system updates.

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It seems like everyone has a side hustle these days. But on top of a day job, housework, caring for loved ones, and catching up on a hyped TV show, who has the time? Well, you do. A passive income website can change your finances and your thoughts about earning money. These passive income business ideas are great for creating revenue streams you can set and forget.

What is Passive Income?

Passive income is money you earn through a business that mostly runs itself. While you’ll spend time setting up the business and creating the product, an excellent passive income business requires minimal upkeep and continually brings in money. Unlike a typical job, passive income doesn’t require active involvement on your part. So there’s no showing up for 40 hours a week.

Instead, passive income is something people can typically do on the side of their regular job. They aren’t getting rich quick schemes. In many cases, a passive income business earns money steadily and slowly. But over time, that passive income can make a huge difference in the business owner’s life.

Benefits of Passive Income

Anyone with an internet connection can implement most passive income business ideas. There are many benefits to starting a passive income business, not just how easy it is to start.

Passive income benefits include:

• Stability. Passive income means more stability because you’re earning more money than just your standard paycheck. That extra cash can make it easier to weather hardships and unexpected emergencies.
• Security. Earning more money can pull you out of the paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle. Passive income can be the difference between pinching pennies and knowing your bills are comfortably covered.
• Financial Freedom. When you rely on one source of income to cover your bills and lifestyle, you don’t have as much freedom to invest in the things that matter to you. But passive income can give you the freedom to pursue your passions or even leave a job you don’t love.
• Achieve Your Goals. It doesn’t matter if your goals are to pay off debt, save for retirement, or treat yourself to a night out whenever you feel like it. Passive income can help you reach those goals faster than just working a typical day job.
• Pursue Your Passions. If you’ve always wanted to quit your job, travel the world, or even create an art studio in your home, passive income can help. The extra money can help you pursue the things you care about faster than you could otherwise.

Passive Income Business Ideas

Passive income is a positive thing. Here are some passive income business ideas you can start today.

1. Start a Dropshipping Store

Selling physical products can be intimidating. There are the overhead costs of keeping the stock, and the rates for shipping products can be astronomical. But with dropshipping, you can set up a store that sells physical products without those worries. To start a dropshipping store, you must build a website, choose a niche, find a supplier, and set your prices. Customers place orders on your site, and the suppliers ship the orders for you. This process means you don’t have to worry about keeping stock or shipping orders.

2. Create a Blog

If you like writing, blogging is a great way to earn some money. Blogging can be a lot of work upfront, but it can also lead to multiple passive income streams.

To start a blog:

• Find a topic you can write about for years
• Register a domain name
• Plan out your editorial calendar
• Research keywords to target in your content
• Get to posting

Some of the most common ways to monetize a blog are through affiliate links and sponsored content. With affiliate links, you earn a commission when people click on links in your content. You can find sponsored post opportunities by joining ad and influencer networks, which typically involve earning money to post about specific products.

It’s worth noting that blogging can be a great backbone for other passive income ideas. Building an online platform in the form of a blog can bring traffic to your site through your posts. It will enable you to monetize content and make people aware of your dropshipping products or some of the digital products mentioned later.

3. Create and Sell Online Courses

Do you have some expertise to sell? Creating an online course is a great way to get paid to share your information. And if you already have a blog on that topic, then you will have an audience primed and ready to buy the course. You can choose to build your courses on your website or through a third-party platform. If you create a course on your site, you won’t have to worry about paying the fees that course platforms charge.

4. Publish Sponsored Posts on Instagram

If you love posting to Instagram and already have a following, sponsored posts may be a great way to earn money. Sponsored posts usually involve creating a photo or video about a specific product. The sponsoring company will compensate you for making that content and, in many cases, will share that content with their followers too.

If you’d like to get some sponsored content opportunities for your Instagram account, make sure your posts are consistent and your photos are good. Brands typically prefer to work with accounts that stick to their niche and create content around a specific topic.

5. Sell Digital Art

You can sell your art digitally online, whether you’re a graphic artist, illustrator, animator, or photographer. All you have to do is create the art once and sell it repeatedly. People can purchase your work to make things like posters, stickers, event invitations, video content, or even print and hang in their homes. Sites like Etsy and CreativeMarket are great places to sell digital files, but creating your own online store will give you the most control of how your products sell, and you won’t have to pay transaction fees to a large company.

6. Print-On-Demand Products

If you have some clever ideas for novelty coffee mugs or sassy T-shirts, creating print-on-demand products might be the passive income business idea for you. To start a print-on-demand business, create some designs and find a print-on-demand company you’d like to work with, like Printful or Printify. Then, choose what kind of products you’d like to sell. You can put your designs on shirts, canvas bags, or even phone cases. And the best part is you don’t need to learn screenprinting to make this idea work. The print-on-demand company will handle it all for you.

When selling products, it’s a good idea to choose a niche and make products that fit into that particular niche. And blogging about that niche is a great way to bring potential customers to your site.

7. Write an eBook

Do you have a topic you know a lot about but don’t feel like it would make a good course? Try writing an eBook. To start, outline your topic and set a writing schedule. From there, it’s about writing it all out or hiring a ghostwriter. When the book is finished and edited, you can sell it as a PDF download from your site or even upload it to Amazon where it will be available through their Kindle Direct Publishing program.

Are You Ready to Start a Passive Income Website?

Building the website is one of the first steps in creating the passive income business of your dreams. No matter what route you choose for your passive income business, your website is a crucial component.

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