Tag: monsterinsights

How to Do a UX Audit of Your WordPress Site
Do you want to perform a User Experience (UX) audit of your WordPress website?

User experience is an important factor in the success of a website. A good user experience can lead to more conversions and sales, while a poor UX can cost you money.

In this article, we will show you how to easily do a UX audit of your WordPress website step-by-step.

Here is a quick overview of all the steps we will cover to perform a UX audit on your WordPress website:
What Is UX, and Why Is It Important?

User experience or UX describes the feelings and opinions that users have while using your website.

A pleasant user experience means users find your website easy to use and helpful.

By contrast, a poor user experience means users find your website difficult to use and can’t do what they want to do.

Creating a good user experience allows you to help users make the most out of your website. This eventually leads to conversions, sales, and business growth.

On the other hand, a negative user experience can cause visitors to leave your website without signing up or buying something in your online store. This causes you to lose potential sales and customers.

How to Perform a UX Audit of Your Website

As a business owner, you need to regularly check your website to make sure that it offers a good user experience.

This practice is called a UX audit. You can perform a UX audit by yourself using a combination of tools (you may already be using some of them).

During this process, you will look for issues that may negatively affect user experience on your website. When you find a problem, you can document it and then start fixing it.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Step 1: Define User Goals and Objectives

First, you need to put yourself into users’ shoes to understand what they are looking for when they reach your website.

For instance, if your website is an online store selling pet toys, your audience’s goal is likely to look at pet toys, read customer reviews for those products, and make a purchase.

Similarly, if you run a how-to blog, then your audience’s goal would be to read a tutorial and learn how to do something.

Understanding what your users want to achieve will allow you to help them better.

The easiest way to do this is by creating user personas for your target audience.

This exercise allows you to better understand users and their expectations of your website. Most importantly, it helps you figure out the goals and objectives of your target audience.

You can then analyze your website using these personas to see how quickly your content, products, and services can help those users.

Step 2: Test Your Website for Usability Issues

Testing your website for usability helps you quickly find problems that could destroy the user experience.

However, many issues often go unnoticed by website administrators until a user reports them. Users are more likely to switch to your competitor’s website than tell you about issues on your site.

Luckily, there are plenty of excellent tools that you can use to quickly detect potentially harmful usability issues on your website.

PageSpeed Insights (Free)

Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool lets you quickly examine a URL for performance and usability issues.

It runs tests on your website and then presents the results for both mobile and desktop devices by assigning each one a score.

This score is given in four categories:
1. Performance
2. Accessibility
3. Best Practices
4. SEO
It also tests for Core Web Vitals, which are a set of website performance metrics that Google considers essential to a website’s overall user experience.

When you run the test, the language may initially sound too technical. However, you will also find links to resources explaining these concepts in beginner-friendly terms with tips on resolving each issue.

You can also read our guide on how to optimize your website for Google’s Core Web Vitals.

Google Search Console

PageSpeed Insights is a handy tool to quickly look up URLs.

However, you will have to manually run the tests, and you can’t find which pages on your website are having issues until you specifically test them.

What if you could automate this process, quickly find the pages with usability issues, and get alerts when a new problem is detected?

This is where Google Search Console comes in.

It is a free tool provided by Google for website administrators who want to see how their websites are performing in search.

User experience is an essential metric for search rankings. This is why Google wants to alert website owners when a usability issue is detected.

First, you will need to visit Google Search Console and add your website as a property. For instructions, you can follow our tutorial on how to add your website to Google Search Console.

Once you have added your website, it may take a while for Google to collect some data and start showing reports.

After that, you will see your site’s performance and usability reports in the ‘Experience’ section.

You can click on each report and drill down to find the pages where usability issues are detected.

For example, on this demo website, we found four pages in the ‘Mobile Usability’ section that were having issues.

You can click on each row to find the exact pages where the issues were detected.

Google Search Console will also alert you by email when a new crawling or usability issue is detected.

Besides usability and crawling issues, Google Search Console is a treasure trove of valuable data. To learn more, you can see our expert tips on using Google Search Console to get more traffic.

Step 3: Find the Pages Performing Poorly

Automated tools can help you catch many problems. However, they are not perfect and may not be able to identify many common UX problems.

If you have a small website, you can go to each page to manually review it yourself. However, it is impossible for most medium to large websites to do this manually.

So, how do you find pages with poor UX?

One easy way to find these pages is by using MonsterInsights. It is the best Google Analytics plugin on the market that allows you to see where your users are coming from and how they interact with your website.

First, you need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. For more details, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: There is also a free version of MonsterInsights that you can try. However, we recommend upgrading to the paid version and unlocking the full potential of the plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin will run the setup wizard and help you connect WordPress with your Google Analytics account.

For more details, you can see our tutorial on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

Once you are connected, MonsterInsights will start tracking your website visitors.

Next, you need to set up the plugin to easily track conversions.

Enable eCommerce Conversion Tracking

If you use an eCommerce platform on your WordPress website, MonsterInsights can help you easily track conversions.

Google Analytics comes with enhanced eCommerce tracking, which works for most eCommerce websites, including WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, MemberPress, and more.

However, you will need to enable it for your website manually.

Start by visiting the Insights Â» Addons page in your WordPress admin dashboard to install and activate the eCommerce addon.

Next, you need to enable enhanced eCommerce tracking in your Google Analytics account. Go to your Google Analytics dashboard and select your website.

From here, click on the ‘Admin’ button in the bottom left corner.

On the next screen, you will see different Google Analytics settings.

Under the ‘View’ column, just click the ‘Ecommerce Settings’ link.

On the next screen, simply turn on the toggles next to the ‘Enable Ecommerce’ and ‘Enable Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting’ options.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button when you are done.

Check Low Conversion Pages for UX Issues

Poor user experience is one of the main reasons for low conversions, abandoned carts, and high bounce rates.

You can view your conversion tracking reports in MonsterInsights to find pages with low conversions and higher bounce rates.

Simply go to the Insights Â» Reports page inside the WordPress admin area and then switch to the ‘eCommerce’ tab.

From here, you can see an overview of your top-performing products and conversion sources.

For advanced reports, you need to switch to your Google Analytics account and go to the Engagement Â» Pages and screens tab.

From here, you can sort the pages by conversion rate to see the pages with the least conversions.

Using Google Analytics, you can also track pages with the highest bounce rates, the least amount of time spent on them, and more.

For more conversion tracking options, you can see our complete guide on WordPress conversion tracking. It will also show you how to track form conversions, affiliate link conversions, and more.

Step 4: Ask For User Feedback

As you can see, many UX audit activities involve automated tools, analytics reports, and manual testing.

The entire point of the UX audit exercise is to improve user experience. So, why not just ask your users what they think?

Asking for user feedback can get you accurate input from real visitors about your website. It can help you find specific problems and fix them more easily.

This is where UserFeedback comes in.

Note: There is also a free plugin called UserFeedback Lite that you can try. We recommend upgrading to the Pro version to unlock the full potential of the plugin.

UserFeedback allows you to quickly run surveys and collect user feedback on your website. It also lets you show the surveys to the right users at the right time.

For example, you can show surveys to users on the pages with fewer conversions or display a feedback form to users on mobile devices.

For more information, you can see our UserFeedback announcement post.

Step 5: Optimize Your Website Speed & Performance

Website speed is a major contributor to user experience. Slow sites cause poor UX and prevent users from moving forward and accessing your content.

The tools we mentioned earlier, like PageSpeed Insights and Core Web Vitals, can help you evaluate the performance of your website.

However, if you are using MonsterInsights, then you can also run a website speed test inside your WordPress admin area.

Simply switch to the Insights Â» Reports page and then open the ‘Site Speed’ tab.

The report will run the same tests as PageSpeed Insights and show you a report. It will also give you practical tips to improve website performance.

Fixing Performance and Speed Issues

The easiest way to fix most performance issues is by simply installing a WordPress caching plugin.

We recommend using WP Rocket, which is the best WordPress caching plugin on the market. It lets you easily optimize your WordPress website without learning the technical stuff.

First, you need to install and activate the WP Rocket plugin. For details, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, WP Rocket will start caching your website’s content.

Unlike other caching plugins that generate a cache when a user visits your website, WP Rocket automatically starts creating a cache in the background.

This means each new user on your website will see a cached version that loads much quicker and improves user experience.

You can learn more by reading our tutorial on setting up WP Rocket with more detailed instructions.

If caching doesn’t immediately fix your website speed, we recommend following our complete WordPress speed and performance guide. It includes step-by-step instructions on how to optimize your website speed.

Step 6: Evaluate Website Navigation

Users expect your site to have a navigation menu with the links they need to find the information they want.

Sometimes, a website may not have a navigation menu that helps users reach the page they want. This leads to a poor user experience, and visitors may leave and try some other website.

You need to make sure that your website has a straightforward navigation menu that takes users to the critical areas of your website.

Adding a search bar to your website’s header or navigation menu can also improve user experience. If users can’t find a link quickly, then they can try searching on your website.

However, the default WordPress search is not very good.

Instead, we recommend using SearchWP. It is the best WordPress search plugin on the market and quickly improves the search experience on your website.

SearchWP allows you to make everything on your website searchable, including custom fields, eCommerce attributes, custom tables, categories, tags, and more.

First, you need to install and activate the SearchWP plugin. For more details, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit the SearchWP Â» Algorithm page and switch to the ‘Engines’ tab.

From here, you can adjust the search engine settings for the different content types by scrolling to the Posts, Pages, and Media sections.

Here, you can choose which attributes are searchable on your website. You can also choose their relevance.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.

SearchWP will now replace your default WordPress search feature with its own custom search engine.

For more details, you can see our tutorial on how to improve WordPress search with SearchWP.

Step 7: Test Conversion Elements

A lot of the time, poor user experience is caused at the end of a conversion path.

For instance, you might have users trying to submit your lead capture form, but something is stopping them from doing so.

Luckily, you can run split tests and manually test elements on your website to identify and fix problems.

Run A/B Split Tests to Figure Out UX Issues

An easy way to test your conversion elements is by running A/B split tests.

An A/B split test allows you to create two or more versions of a page with slight differences. It then shows users a different version randomly.

You can then compare the results to find out which variation of the page performed the best among your users.

The easiest way to run these tests on your WordPress website is by using Thrive Optimize. It lets you quickly create and run A/B tests on your WordPress website.

First, you will need to install and activate Thrive Optimize plugin. You can purchase the plugin with Thrive Architect or get it with Thrive Suite bundle.

Next, install and activate the Thrive Product Manager plugin on your website. You can download it from your Account Dashboard on the Thrive Themes website.

Upon activating the plugin, you need to go to the Product Manager page in the WordPress admin area.

Next, you need to check the ‘Install Product’ box under the Thrive Optimize and Thrive Architect products.

After that, click on the ‘Install Selected Products’ button to continue.

After installing the plugins, you will need to create or edit a post/ page and then click on the ‘Launch Thrive Architect’ button at the top.

This will show a popup where you can choose how to edit the page.

You can edit the page as a regular page using your theme template or as a landing page with a custom template.

If you choose a pre-built landing page, then you will be asked to choose a template.

Thrive Architect comes with dozens of beautiful templates for various niches to choose from.

After that, you will be able to edit your page in Thrive Architect’s page builder.

It is an intuitive design tool where you can point and click on any element to edit it or click on the ‘+’ button to insert new elements.

Once you have finished editing your page, don’t forget to click the ‘Save Work’ button to store your changes.

After that, click on the ‘A/B’ button in the right column to create a new A/B test.

To run your A/B test, you need to have at least two versions of a page.

On the next screen, click on the Add New Variation button to create a new version of your landing page.

It will now create a new variation, and you can start editing it using the Thrive Architect.

Make the changes to the page you think will work better than the previous version.

After that, simply click on the ‘Save Work’ button to store your changes, and then click on the ‘A/B’ button again.

You can choose how much traffic you want to send to each page variation and then click on the ‘Set Up & Start A/B Test’ button at the top.

This will bring up a popup where you can configure the A/B test settings.

You need to give your test a title and description. Afterward, you can turn on Automatic Winner settings and set minimum requirements for a variation to win.

Click on the ‘Next’ button to continue.

Finally, you will be asked to choose a goal for the test. For example, if it is a product page, then you may want to choose ‘Revenue’.

Finally, click on the ‘Start A/B Test’ button to finish the setup.

Thrive Optimize will now start showing the two variations of the page to your users and keep track of user interactions on the page.

You can view the test results anytime by visiting the Thrive Dashboard Â» Thrive Optimize page.

Once the test has run its duration, you can see which page has performed better for conversions or the goals you set during the test. You will then be able to make changes to improve the UX on your website.

For more details, you can see our guide on how to run A/B tests on your WordPress website.

Manually Test Conversion Elements

A lot of time, you may not be able to run A/B split tests for all your pages. Luckily, there are other ways to test whether conversion elements on your pages are working.

Website owners are often just looking at the static representation of their website and not interacting with it like a real user would. That’s why many interactive failures go unnoticed for a long time.

This is when you will need to do some manual work. You can try to imitate a user journey as best as possible to complete a conversion.

For instance, if you run an eCommerce store, you can start from the page where your users usually land. Afterward, look at product pages, add items to the cart, and complete the checkout.

Within your UX audit, you must test all your forms, cart functionality, and checkout experience by interacting with those elements like a customer.

Plus, don’t forget to test these elements on both mobile and desktop environments.

Step 8: Test User Flows to Find Bottlenecks

A user flow is a customer’s journey across your website. A user will usually take a predictable path to different areas of your website until they buy something or submit a form.

The best way to track user flows is by using MonsterInsights. It comes with a User Journey addon that allows you to see every step of a customerâ€™s journey throughout your site, including the pages and products they looked at and how long they were there.

Simply install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin.

Note: You will need at least the Pro plan of the plugin to use the User Journey addon.

After setting up MonsterInsights, you need to go to the Insights Â» Addons page. From here, locate the User Journey addon and then install and activate it.

Next, you need to install and activate the eCommerce addon. This will help you track customer journeys on popular eCommerce platforms for WordPress like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, MemberPress, and more.

Now, MonsterInsights will show the user’s journey on individual orders. For example, in WooCommmerce, you can go to WooCommerce Â» Orders page and click on an individual order.

On the order details page, scroll down to the MonsterInsights User Journey section.

This will show you all the user interactions on your site with their times and durations.

For more details, you can see our guide on how to enable customer tracking in WooCommerce.

If you are not using an eCommerce platform, then you can still track the user journey for your WordPress forms.

If you are using WPForms to capture leads, then it comes with user journey tracking that helps you track which path a user took to submit the form.

Like conversion elements, other areas of your website could disrupt user flow and block the path that leads them to become a customer.

You will need to manually evaluate user paths in Google Analytics to see where their journey abruptly ends. You can also simulate the user paths to see if you can come across a usability issue preventing the user from going forward.

Step 9: Evaluate Website Content Quality

Visual elements are not the only things that create a good or bad user experience.

Your website content plays a significant role in convincing users to stay on your WordPress blog or website and look around. It also helps search engines find your content more easily and send more visitors to your site.

We recommend performing a complete SEO audit of your website and optimizing your content for SEO.

To do that, you will need All in One SEO for WordPress. It is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market that allows you to easily improve your content for search rankings and user experience.

All in One SEO comes with built-in SEO analysis, a headline analyzer, and site-wide SEO audit tools. All these features help you improve the quality and discoverability of your content.

You will also need to evaluate your content. For example, if a particular page is not ranking or converting well, then consider making it more comprehensive by adding more helpful content.

For more details, you can see our guide on how to fix content decay in WordPress.

Don’t forget to check your content for spelling and grammar mistakes. They could make your website seem unprofessional and create a bad user experience.

We recommend using Grammarly. It is the best AI-powered writing tool that helps you automatically correct spelling and grammar mistakes.

Grammarly also has a free forever plan with spelling and grammar checks. However, we recommend buying a paid plan to unlock more powerful features.

We hope this article helped you learn how to do a UX audit of your WordPress website. You may also want to see our guide on how to do an SEO audit of your site or our expert picks for the best email marketing services to grow your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post How to Do a UX Audit of Your WordPress Site first appeared on WPBeginner.
12.07.2023
How to Easily Create Post Purchase Surveys in WooCommerce
Are you looking for the best way to gather useful feedback about your WooCommerce store from your active customers?

User surveys can help you get valuable information so you can use it to make data-driven decisions. For example, they can help you find out how to improve your sales funnel or why your customers bought a particular product.

In this article, we will show you how to easily create post purchase surveys in WooCommerce.

Why Use Post Purchase Surveys in WooCommerce?

If you have a WooCommerce store, then you may be wondering what your customers think of your products and online store. There’s no easy way to find out without actually asking them.

Luckily, you can use a WordPress survey plugin to collect real user feedback quickly and easily. This feedback will help you discover the ‘why’ behind every website visitor’s action. This is something you can’t learn from Google Analytics alone.

When creating your customer survey, make sure you don’t add any unnecessary questions. The questions you ask should get you the most valuable information and insights.

Here are some examples of questions you can ask your customers after checkout:
- How long have you been a customer?
- How did you discover us?
- Was our pricing page easy to understand?
- Which of our products have you used?
- How satisfied are you with our products?
- Have you needed to contact customer service?
- Do you have any additional comments or suggestions?
By asking for user feedback after each WooCommerce purchase, you will learn ways you can improve your sales funnel to boost user experience and increase sales.

When you know the why or the intent behind users’ actions, you can easily figure out why your visitors buy or do not buy your products.

With that being said, let’s take a look at how to easily create post purchase surveys in WooCommerce. We will cover two different methods:
1. Creating Post Purchase Surveys Using UserFeedback
2. Creating Post Purchase Surveys Using WPForms
Method 1: Creating Post Purchase Surveys Using UserFeedback

UserFeedback is an easy-to-use survey plugin by the MonsterInsights team. It lets you ask your website visitors questions and collect their feedback in real time. It also makes it easy to add the survey to specific WooCommerce pages, such as the order confirmation page.

UserFeedback includes a Post Purchase Review template to give you a head start in creating your survey. Plus, you can customize how your popup surveys look so that they completely match your brand and site design.

First, you need to install and activate the UserFeedback plugin. For step-by-step instructions, you can follow our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: There is a free version of UserFeedback that you can use to get started. However, you will need the features of the Pro version to create a post purchase survey.

Setting Up the UserFeedback Plugin

Once the plugin is activated, the setup wizard will automatically launch. Click the ‘Start’ button to begin the setup.

Next, you will be prompted to create your first survey to show you what the plugin is capable of.

We won’t be using this example survey, so you can go ahead and use the default answers.

You can choose from a few pre-written questions or create your own question. You will also be able to change your questions at any time.

For this tutorial, you should simply click the ‘Next Step’ button to continue.

Next, you will see the option to enable specific UserFeedback features, depending on your license level.

Go ahead and enable the features you want or that your license level allows.

Once you have done that, you need to click the ‘Next Step’ button at the bottom of the page.

Now, you can enter the email address where you want the survey responses to be sent.

Since we won’t be using this survey, you don’t need to make any changes and can simply click the ‘Next Step: Publish’ button.

In the final step of the setup wizard, the features and addons you enable will be installed.

Then, you can click on the ‘Exit to dashboard’ button at the bottom of the page.

You will see the sample ‘First Survey’ that you created with the wizard.

Now you can unlock the Pro features of the plugin. You need to enter the license key that was emailed to you when you purchased a UserFeedback plan.

You will need to navigate to UserFeedback Â» Settings in the WordPress admin area. Once there, simply paste your license key into the field and click the ‘Verify’ button.

Make sure you click the ‘Save Settings’ button once you have done this.

After that, you can enable the Pro features by going to the UserFeedback Â» Addons page.

For each addon, you will need to click the ‘Install Addon’ button, followed by the ‘Activate’ button that appears.

This is important since the Additional Templates addon includes a Post Purchase Review template, and the Question Types addon allows you to add star ratings and more. Other addons allow you to further customize your survey form.

Now that you have successfully installed the UserFeedback plugin and its addons, you are ready to create your post purchase survey.

Creating a Post Purchase Survey Using UserFeedback

To create a new survey, you need to return to the UserFeedback Â» Surveys page and click the ‘Create New’ button.

This will show you dozens of survey templates that you can use as a starting point.

You need to scroll down until you find the Post Purchase Review template and then click it.

A new survey will be created for you. Some helpful questions have already been added.

You can change any question’s type and title by simply pointing and clicking.

Each question has a Settings tab where you can set the question as ‘Required’. The Logic tab lets you show or hide the question based on the customer’s previous answers.

With UserFeedback, you can ask unlimited questions and receive unlimited responses. You can ask all types of questions, including multiple-choice and free-form questions, and even capture emails and collect star ratings.

You might like to add some of the questions we listed at the beginning of this article. To add a question to your survey, simply click the ‘Add Question’ button after the last question.

When you choose a question type from the dropdown menu, a new question will be added.

After that, you will be able to add a question title. Depending on the question type, you can then customize the question in other ways, such as labeling checkboxes or radio buttons.

Tip: The ‘Preview’ link at the top of the page doesn’t just preview the form but also allows you to customize its colors.

You can also create a custom thank you message and redirect users after their submissions.

When you have finished editing your survey questions, just hit the ‘Next Step: Settings’ button. This will open the Settings page, where you can customize your survey even more.

In the ‘Tracking’ section, you can enable or disable Google Analytics tracking if you have MonsterInsights installed.

Next, in the ‘Targeting’ section, you can select what types of devices and pages you want your survey to appear on. You can display the survey on all device types or create different surveys that target desktop and mobile users.

Next, you can scroll down to the Pages setting area. This is important because it allows you to choose where the survey will be displayed.

The default setting is ‘All Pages’. This will display the survey on every page of your online store. However, we only want to survey customers after they have made a purchase.

In this case, we should display the survey on the order confirmation page that is displayed after checkout. This page is also known as the WooCommerce thank you page.

To target this page, you will need to select ‘Page url is’ from the dropdown menu. After that, you should type ‘order-received’ in the next field.

This works because the setting matches partial URLs. The full URL will change with each transaction but will always contain the characters ‘order-received’.

You can also scroll down to the ‘Behavior’ section. Here, you can configure settings like:
- Display Timing â€“ When the survey will appear on the page.
- Display Length â€“ How often the survey will appear to website visitors.
- Survey Run Time â€“ How long the survey will appear on the designated pages.
In addition, you can enable or disable the ‘Start Survey Minimized’ option.

This displays a less visible version of your survey instead of automatically opening the first question.

Once you are done changing the settings, you can click the ‘Next Step: Notifications’ button.

This will take you to the Notifications page, where you can choose to send yourself an email with each new response to the survey. Simply leave the ‘Send Email’ toggle switched on and then enter one or more email addresses.

You can also enable conditional logic to trigger email notifications when visitors respond to your questions in a certain way.

For example, you might only want to receive an email if the user checks a box labeled ‘Do you want a callback?’

For this to work, your survey needs to contain at least one question with a radio, checkbox, NPS, or star rating question.

After that, click on the ‘Next Step: Publish’ button to continue.

Publish Your Survey

Lastly, there’s an option to schedule the survey for a later date and time.

If you are ready to publish your survey immediately, then go ahead and click the ‘Save and Publish’ button.

That’s it! You’ve successfully created a survey form.

Now when your customers purchase items from your store, your survey will pop up on the order confirmation page.

Tip: You may not see the customer survey when you are logged into WooCommerce. You will need to open your online store in a new incognito window or a different web browser.

Viewing Your Survey Form Results

Once you start getting responses, you can analyze them right from your WordPress admin dashboard using easy-to-read reports.

Simply navigate to UserFeedback Â» Results to see the total responses, impressions, and more details.

Method 2: Creating Post Purchase Surveys Using WPForms

WPForms is the best WordPress contact form plugin on the market. It comes with a powerful surveys and polls addon, which allows you to quickly create highly-engaging survey forms.

It lets you combine the Surveys and Polls addon with powerful WPForms features like conditional logic, multi-page forms, custom notifications, email integrations, and more.

Note: You will need the Pro plan because it includes the WPForms Surveys and Polls addon. WPBeginner users can use our WPForms coupon to get 50% OFF on all WPForms licenses.

Setting Up the WPForms Plugin

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once the plugin is activated, you need to go to the WPForms Â» Settings page and enter your license key. You will find this information in your account on the WPForms website.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Verify Key’ button.

Once you have done that, you should head over to the WPForms Â» Addons page and scroll down to the Surveys and Polls addon.

Go ahead and click on the ‘Install’ addon button to install and activate the addon.

Now you are ready to create the post purchase survey form.

Creating a Post Purchase Survey Using WPForms

You need to visit the WPForms Â» Add New page to create a new form. This will launch the WPForms form builder interface, and you can choose from different pre-built form templates.

First, you should provide a title for your survey form at the top of the page.

After that, you need to choose a template. Start by clicking on ‘Addon Templates’ to list templates that are compatible with the Surveys and Polls addon.

Then you need to click the ‘Use Template’ button on the Survey Form template. This will load a sample customer feedback form template with several fields already added to it.

You can just point and click to edit the fields, rearrange them with drag and drop, or remove them from the form. You can also add new form fields from the left column.

WPForms supports all commonly-used form fields, including dropdown, radio buttons, checkboxes, Likert scale, text input, rating scale, and many more. This makes it super easy for you to build highly-interactive survey forms.

There is some conditional logic already built into the form. For example, the ‘How can we improve?’ field will only appear if a user selects 1 or 2 stars in the ‘Your Experience’ field.

You can see this by selecting the ‘How can we improve?’ field and then clicking the ‘Field Options’ tab on the left, as seen in the image above.

If some of your customers log in to your online store, then you can make their life easier by auto-filling some of their information from their user profiles.

For example, to auto-fill their email address, you need to click on the Email field, then click the ‘Field Options’ tab on the left. Once there, just click on the ‘Advanced’ tab to show the advanced field options.

You will notice a field where you can set a Default Value for the email field.

You can enter information from their profile automatically by clicking on ‘Show Smart Tags’.

Now you simply click the ‘User Email List’ option, and the {user_email} smart tag will be entered into the field. This will automatically add the email address for logged-in users.

You can also easily remove any fields that you don’t need on the form.

For example, if you would like to remove the ‘Name’ field, then you should point at that field with your mouse and then click the red Trash icon that appears at the top right of the field.

If you would like to add more questions, such as the ones we listed at the beginning of this article, simply drag a new field onto the page and then customize it.

Once you have created the form, you need to click the orange ‘Save’ button at the top of the page to store your form settings.

Next, you can go to the Settings tab and select ‘Confirmations’ in the WPForms form builder.

Here, you can choose whether to show a message or a page or even redirect users to a URL when they submit the survey form.

Besides that, the WPForms Notifications tab lets you edit the notification settings so that you get email alerts when a user fills out your survey.

You can now click on the close button to exit the form builder.

Adding the Survey Form to a Custom Thank You Page

If you have gone through the trouble of creating a custom WooCommerce thank you page, then you can easily add your post purchase survey to it using a shortcode or a block.

Note: Whether you are using the default thank you page or a custom one, you can also display the survey as a popup using a plugin. See the next section for details.

You will find the shortcode you need by visiting the WPForms Â» All Forms page.

You can then use the shortcode to add the form to your custom thank you page by following our guide on how to add a shortcode in WordPress.

Alternatively, if you created your custom thank you page using the block editor or a page builder plugin like SeedProd, then all you need to do is drag the WPForms widget onto the page and then pick the survey form you just created from a dropdown menu.

Once you have saved your custom thank you page, your customers will see the survey after checking out.

Automatically Showing a Survey Popup Using OptinMonster

You might prefer to have the survey pop up automatically over the order confirmation page, similar to what happens with the UserFeedback plugin in Method 1.

The first thing you need to do is install the free OptinMonster plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: In this tutorial, we will use the free OptinMonster plugin because it does everything we need. However, with a Growth subscription, the premium version of OptinMonster has much stronger integration with WooCommerce.

Upon activation, the OptinMonster setup wizard will start.

Simply follow the onscreen instructions to set up OptinMonster on your website and create a free account.

Once you complete the setup, you will find yourself on the OptinMonster dashboard.

You will see a welcome message, a link to the OptinMonster user guide, and a video to help you get started.

Now you will need to scroll down until you find a box where you can create a new popup.

Simply click the ‘Create New’ link.

You will now see a collection of popup templates. Since our popup will just contain our post purchase survey, we will use the minimal Canvas template.

You can find this template by typing ‘canvas’ into the search field.

When you point your mouse over the Canvas template, two buttons will appear.

You can create your popup by clicking the ‘Use Template’ button.

You will see a popup asking you to give the campaign a name.

You can type in ‘Post Purchase Survey’ and then click the ‘Start Building’ button.

The OptinMonster builder will open with your selected template. You can see a preview of the popup on the right, and there are blocks on the left that you can add to the popup.

You need to find the WPForms block and drag it onto the page.

You can now select the survey you want to add.

Simply click on the name of the WPForms post purchase survey that you created earlier. The WPForms shortcode will be added to your popup.

There is still a placeholder image and text block on the page. These can be safely deleted.

When you hover your mouse over the image, a purple toolbar will appear. You can delete the image by clicking the Trash icon. You will be asked to confirm the deletion.

You can delete the text block that says ‘Drag blocks and elements to start building your campaign’ in the same way.

Your finished popup should include just the WPForms shortcode. This is a good time to save your work by clicking the ‘Save’ button at the top of the screen.

Your next job is to click the ‘Display Rules’ tab and set how and where the popup will be displayed.

The first rule determines when the popup will be shown. The default value is after you have been on the page for 5 seconds. This will work for most online stores, but you can change the value if you like.

Now you need to scroll down to the second rule, which you will find just below the ‘AND’ label.

The default value is to display the popup on every page of your WordPress website. You need to change this so that it only displays the post purchase survey on the order confirmation page.

To do this, you need to click the dropdown menu for ‘is any page’ and select ‘contains’ instead.

Another field will appear, and you need to type ‘order-received’ here.

This rule will match the confirmation page URL. Although the URL changes with every transaction, it will always contain the characters ‘order-received’.

Now you can click the ‘Next Step’ button to determine what happens when the conditions in those two rules are met.

The default settings here will display the popup without any effects or sound. If you would like to add an effect or sound, just use the dropdown menus.

Once you are finished, you need to click on the ‘Next Step’ button. You will see a summary of the display rules you just created.

Make sure you click the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.

Finally, you can click the ‘Publish’ tab at the top of the screen and then click the ‘Publish’ button under ‘Publish Status’. This will push the popup live on your online store.

You can now close the OptinMonster builder by clicking the ‘X’ icon in the top right corner.

Your customers will now see the post purchase survey whenever they finish checking out. Here’s how it looks in our demo store.

Viewing Your Survey Form Results

WPForms shows survey results in beautiful charts and graphs. You can also print survey results and export them to your favorite spreadsheet software.

To view your survey results, you need to visit the WPForms Â» All Forms page and click on the ‘Survey Results’ link below your survey form.

On the results page, you will see your survey responses displayed in an interactive chart and tables.

You can export responses to a single question and the entire survey.

On the top, you will see options to switch to different chart types and export options.

You can save individual survey results in JPEG, PDF, and Print formats to easily share them on presentation slides, blog posts, or social media.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to create post purchase surveys in WooCommerce. You may also want to see our guide on how to create smart coupons in WooCommerce or our expert picks for the best WooCommerce plugins for your store.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post How to Easily Create Post Purchase Surveys in WooCommerce first appeared on WPBeginner.
30.06.2023
How to Track Customer Journey Using MemberPress (Step by Step)
Would you like to know what visitors do on your membership site before they sign up?

When you track your customers’ journeys in MemberPress, you can discover the steps they take before deciding to purchase a membership. This information can help you optimize your site for better user engagement and increased conversions.

In this article, we will show you how to track customer journeys using MemberPress.

Why Track Customer Journey Using MemberPress?

When you are running a WordPress membership site, your customers will need to purchase a user account to access certain benefits, such as exclusive content, premium newsletters, online courses, or digital downloads.

MemberPress is a popular membership plugin that comes with advanced features.

For example, it allows you to accept payments, add membership levels, create gated content, restrict access based on different membership levels, make members-only forums, and more.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could see the path your MemberPress customers take before making a purchase? You could see which pages they land on, follow their journey as they navigate to other parts of your site, and even see how long they spend on each page.

This information can give you insights into your customer’s behavior that you can use to offer a better user experience on your WordPress website, as well as boost your sign-ups.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily track MemberPress customer journeys. Here are quick links that you can use to jump ahead to any section:
Tracking MemberPress Customer Journeys Using MonsterInsights

The fastest and simplest way to set up MemberPress customer tracking is with the MonsterInsights plugin. It lets you view your Google Analytics traffic and visitor statistics right from the WordPress dashboard.

The plugin offers an eCommerce addon. This feature automatically detects MemberPress and other eCommerce plugins. Then, it starts tracking customer behavior in Google Analytics.

It also comes with a Customer Journey addon that allows you to see users’ behavior before they sign up.

First, you will need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: You will need the Pro plan to access the eCommerce and User Journey addons that we will use for this tutorial. However, there is also a MonsterInsights Lite version you can use for free.

Upon activation, you will see the welcome screen and the setup wizard. Simply click the ‘Launch the Wizard’ button and follow the on-screen instructions.

For detailed instructions, see our article on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

Bonus: Switch to Google Analytics 4 Using MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights also helps you set up a Google Analytics 4 (GA4) property through its Dual Tracking feature. GA4 is the latest version of Google Analytics.

If you haven’t created a Google Analytics 4 property yet, then we encourage you to do it right away.

For more details, please see our guide on how to switch to Google Analytics 4 in WordPress.

Installing the eCommerce Addon in MonsterInsights

Once you have configured Google Analytics on your website, the next step is to install the eCommerce addon.

To do that, you need to visit the Insights Â» Addons page and navigate to the ‘eCommerce’ addon. Simply click the ‘Install’ button, and the addon will automatically activate.

As soon as it is activated, the addon will begin to gather data. You will find this data in the MonsterInsights eCommerce Report.

You can access the report by navigating to Insights Â» Reports and then clicking on the ‘eCommerce’ tab. You may need to wait up to 24 hours to see any metrics.

Enabling Enhanced eCommerce Reporting in Google Analytics

The next step is to enable eCommerce tracking in Google Analytics. eCommerce tracking is not enabled by default in Google Analytics, so you must manually turn it on.

First, you will need to head over to your Google Analytics account dashboard and click the ‘Admin’ option.

Next, you need to click on the ‘Ecommerce Settings’ option.

It is located in the View column.

On the settings page, just click the sliders under ‘Enable Ecommerce’ and ‘Enable Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting’ to turn them on.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button when you are done.

Now that you have enabled the enhanced eCommerce settings in Google Analytics, you can head back to your WordPress website dashboard.

Simply navigate to Insights Â» Settings and then click the ‘eCommerce’ tab.

Next, you will need to make sure that the ‘Use Enhanced eCommerce’ option is enabled under the eCommerce Tracking section.

MonsterInsights will now automatically detect that you are using MemberPress and start recording analytics.

Installing the User Journey Addon in MonsterInsights

Now that Google Analytics is tracking your MemberPress site, the next step is to enable the MonsterInsights Customer Journey addon.

This addon will allow you to see the steps each customer takes before making a purchase in MemberPress, such as the pages they visit, the time spent on each page, and more.

First, you will need to go to Insights Â» Addons from your WordPress admin panel. Next, navigate to the User Journey addon and click the ‘Install’ button.

The addon will automatically activate and start tracking your customers’ journeys.

Viewing MemberPress Customer Journeys

The User Journey addon is now active. Once a visitor purchases a membership on your site, their customer journey will be automatically recorded and saved.

You might be wondering where to find that information.

Simply navigate to MemberPress Â» Transactions to see a list of your MemberPress orders.

You can see the details of a transaction by clicking its transaction number in the first column.

Now, you can simply scroll to the bottom of the transaction details to find the ‘User Journey by MonsterInsights’ section.

You will be able to see each step the user took along the way to purchasing a membership.

This includes the time they viewed each page, the titles of the pages they visited with a link, and the time they spent on each page. You will also see the total number of steps and time a user took before becoming a paying customer.

That’s a lot of information about the journeys your visitors take to become paying members. How can you use all of that data?

Using Customer Journey Tracking in MemberPress

Now that you are tracking MemberPress customer journeys, here are a few suggestions for using that data to improve your website and increase conversions.

Is there a post or page on your website that many visitors read before purchasing a membership? You can increase your sales and conversion rates by sending more traffic there.

For example, you can add more internal links to that post or page from other posts on your website.

You can also look for users who purchased a membership taking fewer steps or less time. Do they have anything in common so that you can start to target similar users?

For instance, are they from a similar location or age group? Or did they come from the same referral source?

You can also look at all of the pages your visitors are reading. What do most users want to know before they make a purchase? Can you simplify their journey by offering that information on a single landing page that tells them everything they need to know?

As you take time to study customer journeys in MemberPress, you will learn more about your online sign-up process and sales funnel. You can use that knowledge to improve the user experience and increase sales.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to track customer journeys using MemberPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to start your own podcast or our expert picks for the best AI chatbots for your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post How to Track Customer Journey Using MemberPress (Step by Step) first appeared on WPBeginner.
19.06.2023
How to Manage Ads in WordPress with Adsanity Plugin
Are you looking for a way to manage ads in WordPress with AdSanity?

Selling advertising space is one of the best ways to make money online. However, creating, adding, and tracking your ads can become time-consuming and complicated.

In this article, we will show you how you can easily manage ads in WordPress using the AdSanity plugin.

Why Manage Ads in WordPress Using the AdSanity Plugin?

Like billboard owners, many website and blog owners make money online by selling advertising space. However, WordPress doesn’t come with an easy way to manage your ads.

Most WordPress themes don’t even have space where you can show advertisements. By default, you will need to edit your theme files to insert ad code into WordPress.

That’s where AdSanity comes in.

This advanced WordPress ad management plugin allows you to show ads anywhere on your website using ready-made blocks, widgets, and shortcodes. You can even tell AdSanity to show a random ad to visitors without writing a single line of code.

AdSanity comes with built-in reporting and scheduling. It also supports self-hosted ads, HTML5 ads, and external ad networks like Google Adsense.

With that being said, let’s see how you can make money online by managing ads with the AdSanity WordPress plugin.

Step 1: Set Up the AdSanity Plugin

First, you will need to install and activate AdSanity. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to go to AdSanity Â» Settings in your WordPress admin dashboard. Here, select the ‘Licenses’ tab.

You can now go ahead and add your key to the ‘License’ field. You can find this information under your account on the AdSanity website.

With that done, click on ‘Save Changes’.

Now, you are ready to create ads for your WordPress website. To get started, go to AdSanity Â» Create Ad.

To start, you will need to add a title by typing it into the field that shows ‘Give this ad a title’. Visitors won’t see this information, so it’s for your reference only.

Next, it’s time to choose an ad type. Your options are Ad Hosted On-Site, External Ad Network, and HTML5.

If you are just getting started, then it’s a good idea to try different types of ads. You can then look at the results and prioritize the types that make the most money.

With that in mind, let’s look at each option in detail.

Ad Hosted On-Site

To start, you may want to build and host your own ad on your website. By selling ads on your WordPress blog, you get to keep all the profits.

You can also use self-hosted ads to promote your own content. This includes products you sell in your online store or your upcoming webinars, conferences, and other events.

To create a self-hosted ad, select the ‘Ad Hosted On-Site’ tab. After that, you can open the ‘Ad Size’ dropdown and choose a size from the list.

Larger advertisements are more likely to catch the visitor’s attention but can also distract from your site’s content.

After making a decision, you will need to type a URL into the ‘Tracking URL’ field. This is where visitors will go when they click the ad.

By default, the URL will open in the same browser tab. However, you may want to open it in a new tab, particularly if the advertisement is linking to someone else’s website.

For example, if you are linking to an affiliate marketing partner, then you will typically want to check the ‘Open in a new window’ box.

Once you have done that, it’s time to upload the image that AdSanity will show to visitors.

Simply select ‘Set an image’ and then upload a banner or other ad graphic.

Finally, you may want to type some information into the ‘Notes’ field.

These notes will only be visible to people who have access to the WordPress dashboard, so it’s perfect for writing quick reminders.

If you run a multi-author WordPress blog, then you can even use the ‘Notes’ field to communicate with other users.

External Ad Network

While you can sell advertising space directly to other businesses, many website owners use an advertising network instead. These networks are often hassle-free because you don’t have to deal with advertisers or worry about collecting money.

Instead, the network decides which ads to place on your site, collects the payment, takes their management fee, and then sends you the rest.

If you are using an advertising network, then click on the ‘External Ad Network’ tab.

You can now type a title into the ‘Title’ field.

After that, you can choose a size for your ads. If you are using Google AdSense, then you may want to see our guide on the highest-performing Google AdSense banner sizes and formats.

You can also see our guide on how to optimize your AdSense revenue in WordPress.

Once you have done that, it’s time to copy the advertisement code provided by your network. The steps will vary depending on the network you are using, but you will often find the ad code by logging into the account you have created with that network.

If you are using Google AdSense, then see our guide on how to properly add Google AdSense to your WordPress site.

When you have the code, simply paste it into the ‘Ad Code’ box.

Finally, you can type any extra information into the ‘Notes’ field.

HTML5 Advertisements

If you want to create multimedia ads featuring a mix of animations, audio, video, and other content, then AdSanity has full support for HTML5. This means you can create engaging, interactive ads using HTML5 and then upload those files to AdSanity.

To add an HTML5 ad to your WordPress blog or website, simply select the ‘HTML5’ tab.

You can now type in a title for the ad.

After that, click on ‘Choose File’ and then select the HTML5 file you want to use.

With that done, you need to open the ‘Ad Size’ dropdown and choose how big or small the HTML5 ad should be.

When creating an HTML5 advertisement, we recommend using one of the ‘Responsive’ size options, as these tend to look the best.

Finally, you may want to add some notes by typing them into the ‘Notes’ box.

Step 2: Organize Your Advertisements Into Ad Groups

As you create self-hosted, external network, or HTML5 ads, it’s a good idea to organize those advertisements into groups.

For example, you might create a ‘holiday advertisements’ group for all the campaigns you run during the holiday season. This can make it easier to find a specific ad, even if you have created lots of advertisements for WordPress.

To create an ad group, click on the ‘Add New Group’ link. You can now type in the title for it.

Just like WordPress categories and subcategories, you can arrange your advertisement groups into parent-child relationships.

By default, all of AdSanity’s groups are parent groups. If you want to create a child group instead, then simply open the dropdown that shows ‘Parent Group’ by default.

You can then select the group you want to use as the parent.

When you are happy with how your advertisement group is set up, click on the ‘Add new Group’ button to save your changes.

To add a self-hosted, external, or HTML5 ad to a group, simply check that group’s box.

Step 3: Publish or Schedule a WordPress Ad With AdSanity

When you are happy with your ad, it’s time to make it live. If you want to show the ad right away, then simply click ‘Publish’.

Another option is to schedule the ad so that it will appear on your site automatically later. This allows you to schedule all your campaigns in advance, which is a great option if you run lots of campaigns or you are a busy business owner with limited time.

To schedule an ad, click on the ‘Edit’ link next to ‘Publish forever.’

You can now set the date and time when the ad will go live.

You can also choose when the ad gets removed from your website.

If you want to keep the ad on your site indefinitely, then click on the ‘Publish Forever’ button.

When you are happy with your schedule, simply click ‘Publish.’

Step 4: Placing the Ad on Your WordPress Website

The next step is placing the ad on your online marketplace, store, or website. You can use shortcode, but using the ready-made AdSanity blocks is typically easier.

To add an advertisement to a page or post, simply open that post or page for editing. Then, click on the ‘+’ button.

To start, type in ‘AdSanity.’

You will now see all the different AdSanity blocks that you can use.

To add a specific ad, select AdSanity Single Ad.

You can now open the ‘Select an ad’ dropdown and choose the advertisement that you want to show. You can also change the ad’s alignment using the ‘Align’ settings.

Another option is to show advertisements from the same ad group. This allows you to display multiple related ads on the same page or post.

To do this, click on ‘AdSanity Ad Group’, which adds the block to your layout.

You can then open the ‘Select an ad group’ dropdown and choose the group you want to use.

You can also pick how many ads to show in the block and how many columns to use in the advertising area.

Finally, you can show a random advertisement from a particular group using the AdSanity Random Ad block. This is useful if you have created many different ads but have limited advertising space on your website.

In the popup, simply click the ‘AdSanity Random Ad’ block.

You can now open the ‘Select an ad group’ dropdown menu and choose the group that you want to use.

Once again, you can change the advertisement’s alignment using the small icons in the ‘Alignment’ section.

When you are happy with how the page or post looks, either click on ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ to make the advertisement live.

You can also add the AdSanity blocks to any widget-ready area in your WordPress theme. For step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to add and use widgets in WordPress.

Are you using a block-based theme? You can also use the full-site editor to add an AdSanity block anywhere on your website.

Finally, you can embed a single ad on any page, post, or widget-ready area using a shortcode. Simply head over to AdSanity Â» Manage Ads and find the ad that you want to show.

You can then go ahead and click on ‘[shortcode]’. This will copy the ad’s shortcode to your computer’s clipboard.

Now, you just need to add the shortcode to your website. For step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to add a shortcode in WordPress.

Step 5: Monitor Your WordPress Ads Using AdSanity and MonsterInsights

After publishing one or more ads, it’s important to do conversion tracking. This allows you to see what’s working and what isn’t. By continuously monitoring and fine-tuning your ads, you should get more clicks and conversions.

If you are showing HTML5 ads or ads from an external advertising network, then you will need to set up AdSanity’s Google Analytics Tracking Addon. This allows you to track views and clicks on these advertisements.

Simply install and activate the plugin, and then follow the onscreen instructions to set up the add-on. If you are using MonsterInsights, then the AdSanity Addon will recognize the connection as soon as you authenticate your Google account, which makes the setup process much easier.

For more information, please see our guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

For self-hosted ads, you can simply go to AdSanity Â» Reports in your WordPress dashboard.

Here, you will find the following information:
- All-Time Summary: The total views and clicks across all your ads, plus the total click-through rate.
- All-Time Top 10 Clicks: The 10 ads that have got the most clicks.
- All-Time Top 10 Click Through Rate: The 10 ads that have the highest interaction rate based on their display rate. Here you will also find the total views, clicks, and the click-through rate.
- All-Time By Ad Group: The 10 best-performing ads in each ad group, based on views, clicks, and click-through rate.
We hope this article helped you learn how to manage ads in WordPress with the AdSanity plugin. You may also want to check out our guide on how to increase your blog traffic and our expert picks for the best WordPress popup plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post How to Manage Ads in WordPress with Adsanity Plugin first appeared on WPBeginner.
15.06.2023
9 Best WordPress Geolocation Plugins (2023)

Are you looking to use a geolocation plugin on your WordPress website?

Finding where your visitors are coming from can help you create personalized experiences. You can show marketing campaigns to people from specific countries, boost engagement, and increase conversions.

In this article, we will take a look at the best WordPress geolocation plugins.

Why Use a WordPress Geolocation Plugin?

Geolocation plugins can help you learn about your visitors’ physical locations so that you can create custom user experiences. By using geotargeting in WordPress, you can show relevant and location-specific content and products to people.

As a result, you will see an increase in engagement, build trust with your audience, and get higher conversions on your WordPress website.

There are several ways to use geolocation plugins. For instance, you can create marketing campaigns in your eCommerce store and show discounts and shipping offers to customers from specific countries.

If you have a physical store, then tracking geolocation can help you get more customer reviews for your business. You also display map pins to users that are in your region and direct them to your business.

Similarly, you can showcase your best content to users from different locations. Let’s say you have a food blog with an article on the best places to eat in Indonesia. Using geotargeting, you can display this content as a popup to people from that region.

Another advantage of using a geolocation plugin is content locking and preventing unwanted access to your site. With geolocation, you can restrict access to articles or parts of your website to users from different countries.

If you are running an affiliate website, then geotargeting can also help you show the correct affiliate links or products to visitors based on their location.

That said, let’s see which is the best geolocation plugin for WordPress.

1. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the best lead generation and conversion optimization software for WordPress websites. It helps you grow your email list, get more leads, and boost conversions.

OptinMonster offers a drag-and-drop campaign builder and dozens of beautiful templates for your marketing campaigns. You can create popups, floating bars, fullscreen messages, slide-in popups, and more.

The best thing about using OptinMonster is that it offers powerful display rules. For example, you can use the Physical Location display rule to geotarget your campaigns to users from different countries.

The Physical Location rule lets you show relevant content, discounts, and other campaigns to the right audience.

You can also translate your targeted message into different languages and then display it to users from a particular country.

Here’s a preview of a campaign by Sportique, where customers in San Fransico get free delivery for orders over $80.

OptinMonster also lets you combine geolocation targeting with other display rules.

For example, you can use its Exit-Intent technology to show a popup to users who are about to leave your site. Or you can schedule location-based campaigns and display offers to visitors in a particular timezone.

Besides that, OptinMonster easily integrates with leading email marketing software. Plus, there are lots of customization options in the campaign builder.

2. WPForms

WPForms is the best contact form plugin for WordPress. It is a beginner-friendly plugin that offers a drag-and-drop form builder, tons of form templates, customization options, and more.

WPForms has a Geolocation addon that helps you collect location information with form submissions. You can find out which country, state, and city your users are from.

This helps you better understand your audience by tracking their journeys and providing personalized experiences. You are able to show targeted messages based on the user’s location and turn leads into customers.

Using the WPForms Geolocation feature, you can also embed Google Maps into your forms. The feature can autocomplete form entries, making it easier to enter an address quickly. Users can even adjust the location pin on the map to enter their location.

Besides that, WPForms lets you accept file uploads, create multi-page forms, offer user registrations, set up surveys, capture partial form entries, make conversational forms, and more.

Alternatively, if you need an advanced form plugin that offers the geolocation feature, you might want to consider Formidable Forms.

3. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It makes it super easy to add Google Analytics to your WordPress website without editing code or hiring a developer.

MonsterInsights shows important data using analytics reports inside your WordPress dashboard. For example, you can use its Top Countries report to see where your website visitors are coming from.

Using this data, you can better understand your audience and create content or offers for users from different locations.

Aside from that, MonsterInsights also helps set up advanced tracking on your website. For example, you can track eCommerce performance and see which products drive the most sales. Similarly, the plugin also helps track form conversions in WordPress.

Other features offered by MonsterInsights include link and button click tracking, custom dimensions, site notes and annotations, top keywords, and more.

4. GeoDirectory

GeoDirectory is the next WordPress geolocation plugin on our list. If you have a directory website and want to show global listings, then this is the right plugin for you.

It works with popular WordPress themes and page builders. You can easily create business directories with maps, locations, reviews, and addresses using GeoDirectory.

The plugin also offers different addons. For instance, you can use the location manager to add unlimited locations, easily switch between other locations, add smart search on your website, and more.

GeoDirectory includes other features, including a powerful events manager, automated business owner claims, spam protection, and integrations with WordPress backup plugins.

5. PushEngage

PushEngage is the best push notification software for WordPress. It is very easy to use, and you can step up push notifications on your website without hiring an expert.

Push notifications are short messages that appear in your user’s browser. They have a high open rate since people already opt-in to view these notifications.

Using PushEngage, you can create personalized messages based on the user’s geolocation. The plugin lets you segment your subscribers based on their region. This way, you can send targeted notifications to users from specific regions.

With PushEngage, you can also A/B test your messages, create automated drip campaigns, send offline notifications, set up smart triggers to send messages, and more.

6. GeoTargetingWP

GeoTargetingWP is another geolocation WordPress plugin that helps you show content and products to users based on their location.

The plugin is a great solution for affiliate marketers because you can show country-specific offers. For example, the plugin lets you display particular affiliate products and links based on the user’s location.

With GeoTargetingWP, you can also restrict access to different content or parts of your website based on geolocation.

Similarly, you can also use GeoTargetingWP in your WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads store. The plugin will let you restrict access to your products based on the customer’s location. This feature is really helpful if your products can’t be shipped to certain areas.

Other than that, the plugin will auto-detect the user’s location and help you set up geotargeting based on country, city, state, zip code, or radius. It can also create geotarget menus and widgets for WordPress blogs.

7. TrustPulse

TrustPulse is the best social proof plugin for WordPress that helps boost conversions on your website by up to 15%.

The plugin uses the fear of missing out (FOMO) effect to display user behaviors on your website as social proof. This helps build trust with your visitors and increase sales.

With TrustPulse, you can use geolocation to show a recent purchase to users from specific locations.

For example, let’s say someone from Boston buys a product on your site. You can then show this notification to other visitors from Boston as social proof.

TrustPulse can also help show live notifications for demo registrations, survey completions, email signups, and more based on the user’s location.

The plugin is super easy to use, and you can set up targeted notifications in no time. It also offers different customization options, conversion rate tracking, analytics reports, and more.

8. Geolocation

Geolocation is a free WordPress geolocation plugin that allows you to add geotags to content on your website. Using the plugin, you can add a location or address to any blog post or landing page.

Once you have added the geo-information to your content, visitors will see a short description before, after, or at a custom location within the blog post or page.

Geolocation also lets you add a map with a pin to content on your site. You can use a shortcode to display this map. The plugin works seamlessly with Google Maps and Open Streetmaps.

9. CloudGuard

CloudGuard is another free WordPress geolocation plugin that uses the power of the cloud and a content delivery network (CDN) to restrict access to the login page.

The plugin adds an extra layer of security to your WordPress website. It helps protect unwanted login attempts from specific locations. You can select which countries users can log in from and block access from other regions.

CloudGuard is a lightweight plugin because it uses Cloudflare’s free geolocation service. This means that you won’t have to worry about your website being slowed down by the plugin.

The plugin also helps you monitor login attempts in your WordPress dashboard. It even displays a world map showing where the unauthorized logins have occured.

What Is the Best WordPress Geolocation Plugin?

If you want to run targeted campaigns based on the user’s location, then OptinMonster is the best WordPress geolocation plugin in our experience. It offers powerful display rules and multiple campaign types to choose from. Plus, you can combine different targeting rules to show your campaign to the right audience at the right time.

On the other hand, if you are looking to learn more about your visitors and find out where they are coming from, then WPForms and MonsterInsights are the perfect plugins for the job. They will help you see the top countries that drive traffic and track user journeys across your WordPress forms.

Besides that, you can use GeoDirectory to show global listings on your directory website. Or PushEngage can help you send targeted push notifications to users based on their location.

We hope this article helped you learn about the best WordPress geolocation plugins. You may also want to see top picks for the best virtual business phone number apps and our guide on how to increase blog traffic.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post 9 Best WordPress Geolocation Plugins (2023) first appeared on WPBeginner.

07.06.2023
Introducing UserFeedback â€“ Easy Survey Tool to Uncover What Users are Really Thinking
Do you want to know why your website visitors abandon your site?

Ever wished there was an easy way to read your website visitors’ minds WITHOUT learning telepathy or using an expensive user survey tool that costs a fortune?

If youâ€™re like me and most other smart website owners, then you have at least wished for this solution a couple of times in your WordPress journey.

Today, Iâ€™m excited to share the launch of my free UserFeedback plugin, which enables you to collect real user feedback quickly and easily.

We built this tool because we want to know the “why” behind every website visitor’s action that Google Analytics won’t tell you.

When you know the why or the intent behind users’ actions, you can easily figure out why your visitors buy or do not buy your products.

Background Story

In 2016, I acquired a Google Analytics plugin for WordPress, completely revamped it, and launched it as MonsterInsights.

The goal of this plugin was to help users make informed decisions by showing them the data that matters to their businesses.

For example, you can easily see which products or pages are the most popular or where your most profitable traffic comes from.

As the plugin grows, I often get asked by our users: is there a way to understand the intent of every website visitors’ actions?

When you know the intent … the “why” behind users’ actions, you can figure out why customers purchased from you or, better yet, why they did NOT purchase from you.

Unfortunately, Google Analytics only tells you half the story: “What is happening on your website?”. It’s not built to answer the other half of the question: “Why are your visitors doing that?”

In fact, most of the customer feedback tools in the market charge exorbitantly high prices, which aren’t affordable to small businesses.

After a lot of thought and consideration, we decided to release a brand-new plugin called UserFeedback, which enables you to understand user intent by collecting real time feedback from them.

With UserFeedback, you can:
- Create a demographic survey to fill out your buyer personas
- Ask website visitors to leave their phone number for a callback
- Run customer satisfaction surveys to see what buyers think about your products
- Run NPS surveys
- Ask for feedback on your website design
- Run product surveys to find out what buyers are actually using your products for
- And so much more
What is UserFeedback?

UserFeedback is a free and powerful WordPress plugin that lets you launch in-the-moment surveys to collect quality feedback from your website visitors.

It comes with built-in templates and questions to make creating feedback surveys quick and effortless, including:
- Website feedback/experience
- Ecommerce store survey
- NPS survey
- Post purchase review
- Product usage survey
- Competitive research
- And so much more!
Anything youâ€™ve ever dreamed of being able to easily ask your customers, you can ask with UserFeedback.

In combination with a powerful analytics tool like MonsterInsights, website owners can finally see both the â€œwhyâ€ and the â€œwhatâ€ of their usersâ€™ behavior on their WordPress websites.

When you have direct access to your visitorsâ€™ wants and needs, you can make changes that will take your website and business to the next level.

My plan is to continuously add more helpful templates and addons to make UserFeedback even more powerful and essential to understanding your website visitors.

Collect Feedback in Minutes, not Hours

UserFeedback makes it super easy to launch a survey in minutes, not hours. Its 20+ survey templates give you a head start, so you donâ€™t always have to start a feedback survey from scratch.

Each of those templates is pre-designed for different user needs. Based on your requirements, choose the right template, make quick changes, and publish it on your website.

For example, the Website Design Feedback template comes with a star-rating question, whereas the NPS Survey template lets your users grade their loyalty on a scale of 1 to 10.

The best part is that you can build and preview your design within the dashboard.

Get Best Results with Laser Targeted Surveys

UserFeedback enables you to display the right surveys at the right time to the right users. Here are some targeting options you can use for the best results.
- Logged in status: Choose to show your surveys only to logged in or not logged in users.
- Page URL: Show it only on certain pages
- Traffic source: Display it based on the traffic source, like organic traffic, PPC ads, social media, and so on.
- Device type: Choose which types of devices the survey should appear
- Display timing: Choose the right time to show the survey.
- Exit intent / scroll targeting: You can show it to users who abandon the site on desktop or show when a user scrolls halfway down the page.
- And much moreâ€¦
Now that you know how UserFeedback works, letâ€™s take a look at how our customers are using UserFeedback to grow their businesses.

1. Focus on What to Prioritize Next

Are you looking to redesign your website? Wondering how to improve your website copy to boost sales and conversions?

One of the best things about UserFeedback is that it lets you collect feedback score on every page of your site. That way, you can quickly find pages that arenâ€™t resonating well with your audience and prioritize those pages while redesigning.

2. Get Feedback to Validate Your Plans

Pushing out new changes on your site can be intimidating. It’s especially true when you change the pricing plan on your website.

With UserFeedback, you can validate your plans with a survey and learn what users think about your latest plans.

3. Boost Profit by Reducing Customer Churn

UserFeedback comes with several targeting options, including exit intent. This targeting option helps you understand why users are leaving by collecting feedback at the exact moment when people churn.

4. Collect a Constant Stream of Great Suggestions

Do you want to encourage users to provide you with suggestions to improve your product?

One of the reasons most people hesitate to provide feedback is that itâ€™s not easy to do so. With an on-site survey, you can make it convenient for them to send you feedback. Plus, you can collect a constant stream of suggestions to improve your product.

5. Fix the Problems Before They Develop

The biggest benefit of collecting feedback is that it helps you quickly identify problems before they develop. That means you can quickly rectify your problems before your customers start complaining about it.

Get Unlimited Everything â€“ Questions, Responses, and Sessions

A big reason why we built UserFeedack is that most feedback tools are just too expensive. They slow down your site and charge you based on the number of responses and sessions â€¦

Letâ€™s take a look at how UserFeedback surveys compare to another feedback tool, Hotjar.

As you can see while the basic plan is free, it only allows you to get responses for up to 35 daily sessions.

On the other hand, UserFeedback lets you ask unlimited questions and get unlimited responses without a daily session limit!

Whatâ€™s Coming Next for UserFeedback?

UserFeedback is a great tool that helps you uncover more insights about your website visitors that Google Analytics won’t tell you. Iâ€™m extremely pleased with the community response so far, as everyone is loving the new features.

We have lots of great features coming, including:
- Customizable survey designs so you can fully tweak them to match your websiteâ€™s colors, fonts, and personality.
- Advanced integrations to automatically let you send a special email, add entries to a spreadsheet, and so on.
- Additional prebuilt templates to collect feedback for a variety of additional websites.
Weâ€™re truly building something special here. If you have ideas on how we can make the plugin more helpful to you, please send us your suggestions.

As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner, and we look forward to continuing to serve you for years to come.

Yours Truly,

Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner

P.S. Want us to acquire or invest in your WordPress business? Learn more about the WPBeginner Growth Fund.

The post Introducing UserFeedback â€“ Easy Survey Tool to Uncover What Users are Really Thinking first appeared on WPBeginner.
06.06.2023
How to Write a Great Blog Post (Structure + Examples)
Do you want to write a great blog post, but arenâ€™t sure how to structure it?

You can write a compelling and helpful blog post, but without the right structure, only a few people may read it. The people who do visit your blog might even get lost and give up without finishing the post.

In this article, we will show you how to write a great blog post, even if you’re a beginner.

Why is Structure So Important in Blog Posts?

According to our blogging statistics research, there are over 600 million blogs. With so much competition, youâ€™ll need to do everything in your power to make your blogs stand out, including using the right structure.

A well-structured blog leads the reader from one point to the next in a logical way thatâ€™s easy to follow and understand. Many people simply skim blogs, so the right structure also helps people find the parts theyâ€™re interested in reading.

A clear structure doesnâ€™t just help visitors understand your content. Search engine bots will also find it easier to crawl your blogs and then show them to the right people. This will improve your search engine rankings and get more visitors to your WordPress blog.

How to Write a Great Blog Post (Structure + Examples)

You might be a world-class writer, but without a clear structure your blog posts may still be difficult to read.

With that in mind, letâ€™s look at how you can write a well-structured blog post, even if you’re a complete beginner. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the topic you want to read about.
Create a Descriptive and Compelling Headline

Your postâ€™s headline is usually the first thing people see. No matter how good your blogâ€™s content is, youâ€™ll struggle to get readers with a boring title.

A compelling headline will catch a personâ€™s attention no matter whether they spot it on social media, an RSS feed, in their search engine results, or some other location.

That said, the headline should describe what the post is about, while also making people want to read it.

With countless blogs on the internet, itâ€™s hard to cut through the noise. While thereâ€™s no magic formula for creating the perfect headline, BuzzSumo analyzed over 100 million articles and concluded that the ideal headline length is between 11 words and 65 characters.

If you include numbers in your headlines, then research suggests people prefer to share headlines that have single-digit numbers.

BuzzSumo also found that more people engage with headlines that include the current year.

Even simply adding a year to the end of a title may be enough to increase your blog traffic.

People are also more likely to share headlines that suggest newness, so you may want to try including phrases like â€˜for the first time.â€™

Another trick is teasing must-have information by saying things like â€˜need to know,’ ‘you need to,’ or â€˜the best.â€™

If youâ€™re writing a â€˜how toâ€™ post, then think about the problem your blog solves. What might someone type into a search engine when theyâ€™re facing this problem? This is often a great starting point for a compelling â€˜how toâ€™ headline.

After drafting a title, you can enter it into a headline analyzer such as AIOSEO. This plugin will use real data to score your headline and suggest ways to improve it. In this way, even beginners can write a compelling blog headline.

If you don’t want to install a plugin, then you can use WPBeginner’s free Headline Analyzer.

For more information, please see our guide on how to use a headline analyzer in WordPress to improve SEO titles.

Write a Clear and Concise Introduction

Every great blog post needs a clear introduction that tells visitors what the post is about. This helps people decide whether theyâ€™re interested in the topic.

Just like the headline, itâ€™s not enough to simply state what the blog is about. You also need to make the visitor want to carry on reading.

People donâ€™t want to waste time on blogs theyâ€™re not interested in. Having said that, your introduction should be short and to the point. Ideally, you should aim for 1-3 paragraphs.

When it comes to creating a tight, focused introduction, a good trick is to try and include your blogâ€™s keyword as early as possible. By sticking to this goal, youâ€™ll be less likely to go off-topic.

Depending on the kind of blog youâ€™re writing, you may get good results by sharing interesting or surprising statistics in the introduction. This example from MonsterInsights is guaranteed to catch the attention of any online store owner who wants to get more sales.

Another option is to talk about a problem and promise a solution.

This RafflePress post discusses a problem the user may have: promoting your business on Instagram can be expensive and not everyone has a big budget.

It then promises a solution: get noticed on Instagram for free.

Many introductions also use FOMO, or fear of missing out. By adding time pressure, you can make people want to read the post now, rather than risk missing out on a giveaway, event, trip, or anything else the post is talking about.

This travel blog takes a pretty standard â€˜Top Places to Visitâ€™ listicle and turns it into a race against time.

Weâ€™ve also seen blogs draw the reader in by sharing a humorous personal story. If this anecdote resonates with the target audience, then it can be a powerful hook.

For example, this introduction makes it very clear that the author knows exactly what the reader is going through.

No matter what approach you take, if youâ€™re going to hook your audience, then you need to know all about them. The best way to learn about your audience is by using Google Analytics.

For step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to install Google Analytics. If you’re already a GA user, you may also want to see our ultimate guide to Google Analytics 4.

Break Up Content with Headings

A 2022 study by the Policy Institute and Centre for Attention Studies found that most people feel their attention span is shorter than it used to be.

No matter how good your writing is, all your hard work will go to waste if readers canâ€™t concentrate on more than a few paragraphs.

Thatâ€™s why we recommend using headings to break your post into bite-sized chunks.

Headings help readers skim the post and find the content theyâ€™re interested in reading. It also makes it easier for them to revisit sections they want to read again.

Before you start writing, itâ€™s a good idea to map out all the headings youâ€™ll use and the content youâ€™ll add to each section. This will keep you focused as you write the post.

Ideally, your headings should summarize each major point you want to make. In fact, readers should be able to understand the flow of your blog simply by scanning the headings.

Letâ€™s look at an example. Here, we have some tips on how to store coffee beans correctly. Although each paragraph provides useful extra information, you can get all the tips just by reading the headings.

After creating your headings, organize them so your content flows logically. For example, if youâ€™re writing a fitness blog then you shouldnâ€™t tell readers how many times to repeat an exercise before showing them how to do it.

When itâ€™s time to add these headings to your WordPress website, there are six built-in heading tags that you can use.

Similar to bullet points and numbered lists, you can use these headings to create a nested structure of headings and subheadings.

However, we recommend keeping the heading hierarchy as simple as possible, to avoid confusing your readers. This means using H2 headings for main sections, and then H3 for subsections, and so on.

Add a Table Of Contents

A table of contents lists the postâ€™s main points and provides links to specific sections. This gives visitors an overview of what the blog covers while allowing them to jump straight to the content theyâ€™re interested in.

This can keep visitors on your website for longer, even if theyâ€™re only interested in part of a blog post.

A table of contents can even improve your WordPress SEO, as Google often uses the table to automatically add â€˜jump to sectionâ€™ links in search results.

The easiest way to add a table of contents to your WordPress blog is by using AIOSEO.

AIOSEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin and comes with a built-in table of contents block.

This block saves you a ton of time by automatically generating a table of contents based on the postâ€™s headings, while also allowing you to customize the table.

For complete step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to create a table of contents in WordPress posts and pages.

Keep Paragraphs and Sentences Short

Imagine opening a blog post just to find a wall of text. Chances are, youâ€™d leave the page immediately. That said, itâ€™s important to break your blog into short paragraphs and sentences. These are easier to skim and look much less daunting, especially on mobile devices.

A good trick is to avoid long and complicated words, intricate metaphors, and flowery language. All of that to say: keep it simple. Youâ€™ll lose people if you try to be too clever.

Ideally, you should aim to make a single point per sentence, using as few words as possible.

Often, you can break grammatical rules if it gets your point across in fewer words. This may mean starting sentences with things like â€˜Or,â€™ â€˜And,â€™ or â€˜But,â€™ or using more casual language and fragments rather than full sentences.

You should also organize your sentences and paragraphs to give the reader the most important information first, and then go into finer detail from there. This makes it easier for the reader to skip sections theyâ€™re not interested in.

In this TrustPulse blog, the writer starts by explaining what eCommerce email marketing is. Then, they give Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign as examples of popular email providers.

The next paragraph talks about why email marketing is important, before exploring specific features. As you can see, the section starts with the most important point and then gets more and more detailed.

Add Images, Video, and Other Media

Visitors donâ€™t want to feel like theyâ€™re reading a novel when they visit your blog. With that in mind, itâ€™s a good idea to add visual content like photos, infographics, screenshots, graphs, and diagrams.

Immediately, this breaks up your text, but it also helps visitors see what each section is about, at a glance. Each piece of visual content is also another opportunity to grab the readerâ€™s attention as they scroll through your post.

It even seems like blogs with visual content are more popular. According to our blogging statistics research, posts with more than seven images get 116% more organic traffic compared to posts that have no images. Similarly, blogs with videos get 83% more traffic than those without video.

If youâ€™re writing â€˜how toâ€™ blogs, then images help visitors understand what they need to do. For example, this PushEngage blog uses screenshots to show readers what to click next in order to create a landing page in WordPress.

If youâ€™re promoting an affiliate product, then visuals like images and videos are a great way to show that product in action. This can often get you more affiliate revenue.

Letâ€™s look at an example. This post about soil-less indoor garden kits shows lots of photos of the different kits available to buy on Amazon, complete with Amazon affiliate links.

Just be aware that lots of high-resolution media can add to your siteâ€™s loading time, so itâ€™s important to optimize your images and other media. Readers will also need to scroll past any media theyâ€™re not interested in, which can be particularly frustrating for smartphone and tablet users.

With that being said, all visuals should add value for the reader.

Wrap Up Blog Posts With a Conclusion

A good conclusion summarizes all the points you’ve made throughout the blog, without introducing any new information.

Depending on the topic, you may sometimes want to suggest an actionable solution or share your top pick of all the products, WordPress plugins, travel destinations, and anything else youâ€™ve compared or reviewed throughout the blog.

However, as a general rule conclusions tend to be pretty short, so donâ€™t worry if your conclusion is one or two sentences.

End With a Compelling Call To Action (CTA)

When the reader reaches the end of the post, you need to tell them what to do next. This should be an action that keeps them engaged with your blog or gets them to convert, which is known as a call to action.

In the following Easy Digital Downloads post, you can see several calls to action on the page.

A good call to action is clear, asks for the user to take a precise action, and has a sense of urgency. For example, you might ask them to download a PDF or subscribe to your email newsletter.

Even if you use the same call to action, itâ€™s a good idea to customize it for the individual post. In the following image, interior design blog Decorilla is using its standard call to action, which encourages readers to schedule a free consultation using a booking form.

However, theyâ€™ve tweaked the messaging to suit the blogâ€™s topic, which is how to decorate a childâ€™s bedroom.

If youâ€™re not sure what call to action to use, then ask yourself why youâ€™re writing this blog. If you want to get more comments, then you might ask readers to share their opinion or answer a question by posting it in the comment section.

You might even offer a reward for commenting, such as entering the reader into a giveaway or contest. For example, the example below gives readers a list of books and asks them to comment on which one they want to win.

Another option is to suggest some posts the visitor might want to read next.

For the best results, include links that relate to the current blog in some way, which is exactly what AffiliateWP does on their affiliate marketing blog.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to write a great blog post. You may also want to learn how to make money online blogging, or check out our list of the best SEO plugins and tools you should use.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post How to Write a Great Blog Post (Structure + Examples) first appeared on WPBeginner.
05.06.2023
How to Get GA4 Site Annotations and Notes in WordPress

Are you looking to add site notes and annotations to Google Analytics and track them in WordPress?

You can record key changes to your WordPress website and other events that impact website traffic using annotations. These notes can help you uncover additional insights and provide context to changes in traffic on your website.

In this article, we will show you how to get GA4 site annotations and notes in WordPress.

What Are Google Analytics Annotations?

Google Analytics annotations are short notes that you can record in the analytics reports. They help you track internal changes that can impact your website traffic.

For example, you can record changes you made on a particular day, like sending out a new email campaign, posting on social media, or running an ad campaign.

You can also record when you make changes to the content on your WordPress blog, such as publishing a new landing page, editing the meta title, updating website designs, and more.

Using site notes and data from Google Analytics reports, you can exactly see what caused your website’s traffic to change.

Let’s say you launched a new ad campaign on a particular day and added an annotation in Google Analytics. The next time you view the traffic stats and see a change, you will know that it could be because of the new campaign.

This also removes the need to backtrack your moves. You don’t need to go through your notebook, social profiles, or update logs to review your changes on a particular day.

Why Get GA4 Annotations and Notes in WordPress?

Sadly, there are no site notes and annotations in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) yet.

GA4 is the latest version of the popular analytics platform by Google. It lets you track visitors from your website and mobile app in the same account. Besides that, the new version also uses a different method of collecting and processing website data.

There are many differences between Google Analytics 4 vs. Universal Analytics. One of these is the lack of site notes and annotations, which was available with Universal Analytics, which no longer can be accessed from July 1, 2023.

After the sunset date, you won’t be able to add more site notes to your Universal Analytics property. This means you will need to manually make your own notes or record key changes to your website from your WordPress dashboard.

That being said, let’s see how you can get GA4 site notes and annotations in WordPress.

How to Get GA4 Site Notes and Annotations in WordPress

The easiest way to get GA4 site annotations and notes in WordPress is by using MonsterInsights. It is the best analytics plugin for WordPress and makes it super easy to configure Google Analytics without editing code or hiring a developer.

The MonsterInsights Site Notes feature lets you add annotations directly to your traffic reports and from the WordPress content editor. Plus, it offers features to easily control and manage your site notes.

For this tutorial, we will use the MonsterInsights Pro version because it includes Site Notes and more features like customizable categories, the ability to add screenshots and media to your notes, and more.

In the Pro version, you will also get advanced features like eCommerce tracking, link tracking, form conversion tracking, advanced dashboard reports, and more.

However, there is also a MonsterInsights Lite version you can use to get started and add Site Notes to your analytics reports.

First, you will need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you will see the MonsterInsights setup wizard. Simply click the ‘Launch the Wizard’ button to continue.

From here, you can follow the onscreen instructions to set up Google Analytics in WordPress. For more details, please see our guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

With MonsterInsights, you can also set up dual tracking. It allows you to track data in a GA4 property and Universal Analytics simultaneously. This way, when Universal Analytics shuts down, you will have historical data in Google Analytics 4 for analysis and comparison.

You can see our guide on how to switch to Google Analytics 4 in WordPress for more details.

Adding Site Notes and Annotations in WordPress

Once you have set up Google Analytics in WordPress, you can now add site notes to your MonsterInsights reports.

First, you need to go to Insights Â» Reports from your WordPress admin panel and open the ‘Overview’ report. After that, just click the ‘Site Notes’ option below the graph.

You will now see more options appear.

Go ahead and click the ‘+ Add New Site Note’ button.

After that, you will need to enter the details of your site note.

You can start by selecting a date. Then, simply type in your site annotation details, like a change you made to a blog post or when you sent an email newsletter.

MonsterInsights also lets you select a media file that you can attach to your site note. For example, this can be a screenshot or video of your campaign uploaded to the WordPress media library.

There is also an option to select a category for your annotation. There are 3 categories offered by MonsterInsights by default, but you can add more. The default categories are Blog Post, Website Updates, and Promotion.

Once you have entered the details, simply click the ‘Add Site Note’ button.

You can then view all your site notes under the graph.

Managing Your Site Notes in MonsterInsights

You can also manage your Google Analytics annotations by going to Insights Â» Site Notes from the WordPress admin panel.

Here, you will see all the site notes you have already added. Plus, you can click the ‘Add Site Note’ button to insert more annotations.

Next, you can switch to the ‘Categories’ tab and customize your site note categories.

MonsterInsights lets you add more annotation categories by clicking the ‘Add New Category’ button. Simply enter a name for your new category and select a color of your choice.

There is also the option to edit existing categories. For instance, you can edit the Promotion category, change its name, and select a new color.

Lastly, you can switch to the ‘Export’ tab in the Site Note settings to save your annotations.

MonsterInsights will create a CSV file to save on your computer. You can then use the exported annotations for future use or analysis.

Adding Site Notes in the WordPress Content Editor

Another advantage of using the MonsterInsights Site Notes feature is that you can add notes from the WordPress content editor.

This is really useful if you are publishing or making changes to a blog post or landing page. You can quickly make a note, and it will appear in the MonsterInsights reports.

First, you will need to add a new post or page or edit an existing one.

From here, simply open the ‘Post’ settings panel on your right and scroll down to ‘MonsterInsights’. From here, you must enable the toggle for ‘Add a Site Note’. After that, you can enter your note and select a categoit.

Once the page or post is published, it will automatically create an annotation in MonsterInsights. You can then view it by heading to Insights Â» Site Notes in your WordPress admin panel.

We hope this article helped you learn how to get GA4 site annotations and notes in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on WordPress SEO and our expert picks for the best Google Analytics solutions for WordPress users.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post How to Get GA4 Site Annotations and Notes in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

31.05.2023
Pretty Links vs ThirstyAffiliates: Which is Right for Your Site?
Are you looking for the best affiliate link management plugin for your website?

The right affiliate URL management plugin will help you add relevant links to your site, so you never miss a chance to make money. They’ll also make it easier to monitor, update, and fine-tune your links to get as many sales as possible.

In this article, we will compare Pretty Links vs ThirstyAffiliates, to help you decide which affiliate plugin is right for your website.

Why Use an Affiliate Link Management Plugin?

Affiliate marketing is where you earn a commission every time someone buys a product using your unique referral link. Itâ€™s a great way to make money online without having to create and sell your own digital downloads or physical products.

However, itâ€™s not enough to simply add affiliate links to your site. To get sales, you need to place those links in the right place and show them to the right people.

It’s also important to monitor the number of click-throughs and conversions, identify any broken links, update outdated URLs, and much more.

This can take a lot of time and effort, which is why so many marketers use an affiliate link management plugin. The right plugin can help you better manage your affiliate links, and even help automate certain processes like contextual linking.

In this Pretty Links vs ThirstyAffiliates guide, we’re comparing two of the most popular affiliate plugins to see which is right for your website. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the feature you want to compare.
Pretty Links vs ThirstyAffiliates â€“ Overview

An effective link management plugin is a must-have for any affiliate marketer. With that being said, let’s start with an overview of these two popular link management plugins.

ThirstyAffiliates â€“ Overview

ThirstyAffiliates is an affiliate management plugin that allows you to replace ugly affiliate URLs with branded links.

It has everything you need to make money online blogging with WordPress including link scheduling, Google Analytics integration, automatic keyword linking, geolocation specific links, and an automatic 404 checker.

You can also organize your links into categories, so itâ€™s easier to work with lots of different affiliate partners.

Note: We have been using ThirstyAffiliates on our own websites including WPBeginner for over 5 years.

Pretty Links â€“ Overview

Pretty Links is also a popular affiliate link management plugin for WordPress thatâ€™s trusted by over 200,000 websites.

You can use Pretty Links to replace long and complicated affiliate URLs with cleaner, more memorable alternatives. These links are easier to post on social media, podcasts, forums, and many other platforms.

You can even create links that originate from your domain name, so they seem more trustworthy to security-conscious shoppers.

In addition to link cloaking, Pretty Links is a complete affiliate link management tool that has tons of advanced features including automatically adding links to your site and detailed conversion reports.

Affiliate Link Management

Affiliate links are a great way to monetize your WordPress blog or website. However, maintaining those links can take a lot of time and effort, especially if youâ€™re a small team. If you donâ€™t manage your links effectively, then you may miss opportunities to make money.

Here’s a look at how these plugins can help you manage your affiliate URLs.

ThirstyAffiliates â€“ Affiliate Link Management

ThirstyAffiliates allows you to manage your links from a single location in your WordPress dashboard. This can save you a ton of time if you ever need to update those URLs.

For example, if an affiliate partner changes a link, then you can simply edit the URL once in the WordPress dashboard, and ThirstyAffiliates will automatically redirect to the new URL across your entire WordPress website.

ThirstyAffiliates’ also support categories, which work in a similar way to post and page categories in WordPress.

This helps to keep your links organized, no matter how many affiliate partners you work with.

However, there’s no way to add tags to your links.

Pretty Links â€“ Affiliate Link Management

Just like ThirstyAffiliates, Pretty Links provides a single location where you can manage all your affiliate links.

Again, this means you can edit an affiliate link once, and Pretty Links will apply the change across your entire WordPress website.

Although Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates handle link management in a very similar way, Pretty Links does have some extra features. To start, you can add both categories and tags to your affiliate links.

It even has a separate section where you can manage all your affiliate tags.

This can be particularly useful if you have lots of different affiliate partners or a ton of links that you need to keep organized.

Pretty Links also has a ‘Notes’ section for each link where you can leave reminders for yourself, or even notes for other people.

In this way, you can communicate with clients, guest bloggers, partners, and anyone else who shares the WordPress dashboard with you.

Winner â€“ Pretty Links

If youâ€™re looking for a tool to help you perform essential link management, then both plugins are a great choice.

Both Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates will save you a ton of time with link management, no matter how many URLs you add to your online store, blog, or website. However, Pretty Links has a few extra features that can help you organize your links, so it has a slight edge over ThirstyAffiliates in this area.

Link Checker

Broken links are bad news for any website, but 404 errors cost affiliate marketers money.

When a visitor clicks on an affiliate link, it typically means theyâ€™re thinking about buying the product. If they get a 404 error, then youâ€™ve missed out on a potential sale.

As an affiliate marketer, you need a link management plugin that helps you fix broken links before they start costing you money. Here’s what both plugins have to offer.

ThirstyAffiliates – Link Checker

ThirstyAffiliates has an Automatic 404 Checker that scans your site and then reports any problems. It will show information about each link in the ‘404 checker’ area of the WordPress dashboard.

You can check for broken links by visiting this tab, but ThirstyAffiliates will also notify your site admin about any broken URLs it discovers. However, there’s no option to send these email notifications to a different email address, which may be a problem if you share the WordPress dashboard with other people.

The Automatic 404 Checker also isn’t enabled by default, so you’ll need to go into the plugin’s settings to activate it.

ThirstyAffiliates also allows you to check the health of specific links as youâ€™re adding them to your online marketplace or website.

This allows you to verify that a link works before publishing it.

Pretty Links â€“ Link Checker

Pretty Links has a Link Health feature that scans your site and creates weekly reports about any broken links it discovers.

However, just like ThirstyAffiliates, you will need to go into the plugins’s settings to enable this feature, as it doesn’t run by default.

Unlike ThirstyAffiliates, Pretty Links prioritizes the links that get you the most conversions, by scanning your best-performing links first. This feature is particularly useful for large sites that have hundreds or even thousands of affiliate URLs.

You can see the Link Health report in the WordPress dashboard, but Pretty Links can also notify you about broken links via email. By default, Pretty Links will email your site admin but you can change this to any other address in the plugin’s settings.

Winner â€“ ThirstyAffiliates

Both of these plugins allow you to identify and fix broken links without having to manually track 404 pages in WordPress.

However, ThirstyAffiliates lets you check that a link is working before publishing it, simply by clicking a button. This is a quick way to avoid 404 errors happening in the first place, which gives this plugin a slight advantage over Pretty Links.

Link Scheduling

Scheduling helps you create automated workflows for your affiliate website. This is important for busy website owners who donâ€™t have time to enable and disable affiliate URLs manually.

Itâ€™s also useful if your affiliate partners run sales and other time-sensitive promotions, as you can organize your campaigns in advance.

Let’s see how these plugins compare when it comes to link scheduling.

ThirstyAffiliates â€“ Link Scheduling

With ThirstyAffiliates, you can set the date and time when your affiliate URLs will go live.

You can also create redirects for any visitors who click your affiliate URLs before theyâ€™re active, or after theyâ€™ve expired.

For example, you might show a custom landing page explaining the promotion has ended, and suggesting some alternatives affiliate products visitors may want to buy instead.

In this way, you can improve the user experience and possibly even turn 404 errors into sales.

Pretty Links â€“ Link Scheduling

Unlike ThirstyAffiliates, Pretty Links doesnâ€™t allow you to schedule when your links will go live. However, you can set links to expire automatically on a specific date or after a certain number of clicks. This is perfect if you want to use FOMO to increase conversions.

Similar to ThirstyAffiliates, you can automatically redirect visitors after a link has expired. For example, you might use a page builder plugin to design a custom Sorry page, or you can forward them to an alternative affiliate product.

Winner â€“ Tie

If you like to plan your affiliate campaigns in advance, then this is a good reason to choose ThirstyAffiliates over Pretty Links. However, if you want your links to expire automatically after a certain number of clicks, then this is very easy to set up using Pretty Links.

URL Cloaking

Link cloaking is where you replace complicated affiliate URLs with user-friendly links that have your own branding. This makes the links look more trustworthy, which encourages shoppers to click on them.

Cloaked links are often shorter, so theyâ€™re also easier to share on social media. In addition, link cloaking hides your affiliate ID, so itâ€™s more difficult for malicious third parties to hijack your links and steal your commissions.

Since it’s such an important feature, let’s compare how ThirstyAffiliates and Pretty Links handle affiliate URL cloaking.

Pretty Links â€“ URL Cloaking

Every time you add a link to Pretty Links, you have the option to set up link cloaking. Simply type in the original link and the cloaked URL that you want to use instead.

You can then choose between various redirection types, including 301 redirects, 307, and JavaScript redirection.

You can then mark the links as no-follow or sponsored, so youâ€™re in complete control of your WordPress SEO.

â€˜Sponsoredâ€™ tells search engines that the URL is a paid placement or advertisement. Although no-follow and sponsored links are similar, â€˜sponsoredâ€™ helps search engines understand this is an affiliate URL, so itâ€™s a great example of Pretty Links paying attention to the finer details.

Sometimes you may need to pass a parameter to the target URL, such as a coupon code or customer ID. With Pretty Links, this is as simple as checking a box.

ThirstyAffiliates â€“ URL Cloaking

Similar to Pretty Links, ThirstyAffiliates makes it easy to cloak your affiliate URLs. In fact, the process is practically identical as you simply type in the original link and the URL you want to use instead.

You can also easily change whether the cloaked link opens in a new tab, mark URLs as nofollow, and pass query strings to the destination URL.

However, ThirstyAffiliates only allows you to set up 301, 302, and 307 redirects, so you have fewer options compared to Pretty Links.

If you want to mark affiliate links as sponsored, then you’ll need to add this as an additional rel attribute tag in the plugin’s settings.

This is much more difficult than how Pretty Links handles sponsored links.

On the plus side, ThirstyAffiliates has a unique smart uncloaking feature that helps you follow Amazonâ€™s terms and conditions. The Amazon Associates Program forbids using any kind of redirection including link cloaking. If you ignore this rule, then you may get banned from their affiliate program.

If youâ€™re creating an Amazon Affiliate Store using WordPress, then it’s easy to uncloak a specific Amazon link.

Even better, if you add all your Amazon links to the same category, then you can enable automatic clink uncloaking for that entire category.

Now, any Amazon links you add to your website will be uncloaked by default. This is something that Pretty Links doesn’t offer, and it’s a very attractive feature for anyone who uses Amazon affiliate links.

Winner â€“ ThirstyAffiliates

No matter whether you choose Pretty Links or ThirstyAffiliates, youâ€™ll get advanced link cloaking features.

For the typical affiliate marketer, ThirstyAffiliates and Pretty Links have everything you need to create more shareable, user-friendly, and safe links. However, if you plan to use lots of Amazon links, then ThirstyAffiliatesâ€™ automatic link uncloaking is a must-have feature.

Automatic Keyword Linking

It’s easy to overlook an opportunity to add affiliate links to your blog posts. This becomes a bigger problem if you run a multi-author WordPress blog or have guest bloggers.

Both Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates can scan your site for specific keywords and phrases and then convert them into affiliate links automatically. Let’s take a closer look at how both plugins handle automatic keyword linking.

Pretty Links â€“ Automatic Keyword Linking

When you add a new URL, you can type in an unlimited number of keywords and phrases. Every time you use these words in your posts and pages, Pretty Links will insert the affiliate link automatically.

Even better, Pretty Links will scan your older content for these keywords and phrases. If youâ€™ve already published some content, then you can start earning money from your back catalog without having to manually update any posts.

Pretty Links also has a settings tab where you can control exactly how this auto-linking works on your site.

This includes setting a limit for the number of affiliate URLs that Pretty Links can add to a single page, so the links donâ€™t distract from your content or annoy your visitors.

Pretty Links can also add a disclosure to every page where it auto-inserts an affiliate URL.

Undisclosed links can create a legal nightmare, so Pretty Links can earn you extra income without risking any fines or damaging your reputation.

ThirstyAffiliates â€“ Automatic Keyword Linking

ThirstyAffiliates works in a very similar way, as you can add keywords every time you create a link. ThirstyAffiliates will then automatically add the link to every page or post that features that word.

Just like Pretty Links, ThirstyAffiliates lets you limit how many affiliate links it will add to a single page or post.

However, unlike Pretty Links it allows you to set a global limit in the plugin’s settings and a limit for a specific affiliate link.

In the plugin’s general settings, you can also disable auto-linking on your homepage and archive pages. You can also disable auto-linking for your pages or posts.

Often, sales pages and landing pages have their own clear call to action. Affiliate URLs can distract from that CTA, so this is an easy way to disable them across all your pages.

These extra settings give you much more control over how auto-linking is used on your WordPress website.

Once you’ve set up auto-linking, it can be difficult to keep track of all the affiliate URLs across your website. With that in mind, you may want to look at the Link Inserted Scanner, as it lists every page and post that uses a particular affiliate link.

This is a simple but effective way to keep track of your URLs, even when using the auto-linking feature.

Winner â€“ Tie

Auto-linking can help you earn extra commission so itâ€™s a must-have feature for all affiliate marketers. Although ThirstyAffiliates has some extra settings, both Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates have everything you need to automatically add affiliate URLs to your content, while still keeping control over your links.

Affiliate Marketing Reports

It’s important to monitor how your affiliate links are performing. In this way, you can see whatâ€™s working and not working, and then adjust your affiliate marketing activities to get the best results.

Letâ€™s see how ThirstyAffiliates vs Pretty Links stack up in terms of affiliate marketing reports.

ThirstyAffiliates â€“ Affiliate Marketing Reports

ThirstyAffiliates has a reporting dashboard that spans multiple tabs. Here, you can see the total clicks on your different affiliate links and identify your top-performing URLs.

Some links may get more engagement from certain geographical locations. To help you spot these trends, ThirstyAffiliates has a Geolocation Report that tracks link clicks based on the visitorâ€™s location.

Depending on the data, you might decide to show different content to users, based on their geographical location.

For more detailed information, we recommend pairing ThirstyAffiliates and Google Analytics. After making this connection, ThirstyAffiliates will send all its data to your Google Analytics profile.

You can even cross-match the information against your Google Analytics data. In this way, you can get a detailed insight into the people who convert, including the devices and operating systems theyâ€™re using, and how they arrived at your site.

This is how we use ThirstyAffiliates on WPBeginner to get maximum insights.

Google Analytics is a powerful tool, but it can be difficult to set up. For that reason, we recommend using MonsterInsights. It is the best analytics solution for WordPress users and can show all your ThirstyAffiliates and Google Analytics data inside the WordPress dashboard.

Pretty Links â€“ Affiliate Marketing Reports

Unlike ThirstyAffiliates, Pretty Links doesn’t show you data automatically in a reporting dashboard. Instead, you’ll need to generate custom reports by selecting the links you want to analyze. You can start by generating standard reports, which show the total clicks and unique clicks on each affiliate link.

This is useful to know, but clicks donâ€™t necessarily mean sales and affiliate revenue. With that in mind, you can also create conversion reports, which show the total conversions and the conversion rate for each link.

Unlike ThirstyAffiliates, there’s no way to explore your data based on geographical location by default. However, Pretty Links does integrate with MonsterInsights and Google Analytics.

This allows you to take the built-in Pretty Links reports to the next level and access more detailed information, including where visitors are located.

MonsterInsights will even send real-time data to Google Analytics, so you can track clicks as theyâ€™re happening.

Pretty Links also has a unique auto-trim clicks feature that automatically filters known robots and unidentifiable browser clients from your click data, stats, and reports. This can greatly improve the accuracy and quality of your reports.

Winner â€“ Pretty Links

Both of these plugins provide easy access to all the information you need to make decisions based on real data, especially if youâ€™re using a plugin such as MonsterInsights. However, Pretty Linksâ€™ auto-trimming feature can significantly improve the accuracy of this information, so itâ€™s our top pick when it comes to affiliate reports.

Professional and Community Support

Both Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates are easy to use. However, even experienced affiliate marketers need help from time to time, so letâ€™s compare their support options.

Pretty Links â€“ Professional and Community Support

If you prefer to find answers yourself, then Pretty Links has detailed online documentation and a blog where youâ€™ll find step-by-step guides covering everything from how to use specific Pretty Links features, to general advice on running a successful affiliate site.

If you want one-on-one support, then you can submit a ticket to their Premium Support Request page.

According to Pretty Links, you can typically expect a response within 1-2 business days.

If you donâ€™t have a support license, then Pretty Links encourages you to reach out using their contact form or post to their support forum on the official WordPress repository.

The Pretty Links team members are very active on the free forum and respond quickly to user questions. If you plan to join the conversion, then we recommend reading our guide on how to properly ask for WordPress support and get it.

ThirstyAffiliates â€“ Community and Professional Support

If you choose ThirstyAffiliates, then youâ€™ll have access to a huge knowledge base covering both the free and premium versions of the plugin. Thereâ€™s also a blog where they regularly post affiliate marketing tips, along with step-by-step guides on how to use ThirstyAffiliates.

Similar to Pretty Links, this may be all the information and resources you need to answer your questions and solve any problems you have.

When it comes to one-to-one support, premium customers can submit a ticket and get a response within 24-48 hours. Again, this is very similar to the level of support we see from Pretty Links.

If you have the free plugin then you can use the ThirstyAffiliates contact form, or post to the ThirstyAffiliates support forum. The ThirstyAffiliates team actively monitors this forum and responds to questions quickly, so this is a great resource for anyone using the free plugin.

Winner â€“ Tie

When it comes to support, both plugins offer plenty of options. After comparing and contrasting all of the free and premium support, we’re confident you’ll have no problems getting the help you need, no matter whether you choose Pretty Links or ThirstyAffiliates.

Price Comparison

To help you build a successful affiliate marketing business, itâ€™s important to find a plugin that fits your budget. Letâ€™s see which plugin offers the best value for money.

Pretty Links â€“ Price Comparison

Pretty Links has three pricing plans, which seem to target beginners, affiliate marketers with multiple websites, and established marketers who have up to 5 websites.

If youâ€™re a new marketer with a single WordPress website, then the Beginner plan ($99.50 per year) has everything you need to get started. In fact, the only difference between Beginner and the more expensive plans is the number of websites you can use Pretty Links on.

If you have multiple websites, then you’ll need to upgrade to Marketer, which allows you to use Pretty Links on two websites for $149.50 a year.

If you own more than two websites, then Super Affiliate is the most expensive plan ($199.50 per year) and allows you to use Pretty Links on up to 5 websites.

ThirstyAffiliates â€“ Price Comparison

Just like Pretty Links, the only difference between the different ThirstyAffiliates plans is how many sites you can use the plugin on.

If you’re a new affiliate marketer with a single website, then the Basic plan should have everything you need, for $79.50 per year.

If you have multiple websites, then ThirstyAffiliates does represent better value for money. Their Plus plan allows you to use ThirstyAffiliates on up to 5 websites, for $129.50 per year.

If you have more than 5 websites, then the most expensive ThirstyAffiliates plan is priced at $199.50 per year, but you can use it on up to 10 websites.

By comparison, Pretty Links’ most expensive plan is also priced at $199.50 per year, and you can only install the plugin on 5 websites.

Winner â€“ ThirstyAffiliates

If you own a single website, then both Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates offer similar features, for a similar amount of money. However, if you own more than 2 websites, then ThirstyAffiliates seems to offer the best value for money.

In fact, if you have more than 5 websites, then you’ll almost certainly need to use the ThirstyAffiliates plugin.

Pretty Links vs ThirstyAffiliates â€“ Which is Right for Your Site?

If youâ€™re looking for an affiliate link management plugin with advanced auto-linking features, then both Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates are great choices.

Both plugins can help you unlock extra revenue while saving you a ton of time. By allowing you to auto-link keywords and manage your links from a single location, Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates make affiliate marketing easy, no matter whether youâ€™re a hobby blogger or an experienced business owner.

The affiliate marketing plugin thatâ€™s right for you will vary depending on your website, your affiliate partners, and the specific features you need.

With that being said, each plugin has its own strengths and drawbacks. If you want to schedule links in advance, then we recommend using ThirstyAffiliates. If Amazon is your main affiliate partner, then ThirstyAffiliatesâ€™ smart link uncloaking is a must-have feature that can help you comply with Amazonâ€™s terms and conditions.

If youâ€™re worried about bots or malicious third parties affecting the accuracy of your data, then the auto-trimming feature in Pretty Links is perfect. Weâ€™ve seen this feature significantly improve the accuracy of affiliate reports, so itâ€™s a must-have if you want precise data.

We hope this article helped you decide whether Pretty Links or ThirstyAffiliates is right for your site. You may also want to see our guide on how to create an email newsletter and our expert picks of the best email marketing services for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post Pretty Links vs ThirstyAffiliates: Which is Right for Your Site? first appeared on WPBeginner.
12.05.2023
Why Is WordPress So Hard (And How to Make It Easier)
If you’re comparing different website builders, then you may have come across the sentiment that WordPress is hard to use.

WordPress is the worldâ€™s most popular website builder powering over 43% of all websites on the internet. However, some people complain that WordPress is more difficult to use than solutions like Squarespace and Wix.

In this article, we’ll address the myth of why WordPress is so hard, and share the tricks, tools, and techniques you can use to harness the full power of WordPress without any difficulties.

Why is WordPress So Hard?

Over 43% of all websites on the internet are built on WordPress. This might make you wonder:

Why are so many people using a difficult platform?

Unlike website builders such as Squarespace, WordPress is completely open source, customizable, and flexible. You can use WordPress in any way you want, which might sound confusing for new users.

This is particularly true if you’ve previously used a website builder like Wix.com. These platforms typically have limited features and control exactly how you use their tools. This might make it seem like that they’re easy to use, but they are also very restrictive.

With the right techniques, tools, and information, WordPress is just as easy as any website builder, but without any of the restrictions.

By choosing WordPress, youâ€™ll get the freedom to use any web host and domain provider, so you can update, customize, and extend your WordPress website in exactly the way you want.

In the official WordPress repository alone, youâ€™ll find over 60,000 free plugins that can add all sorts of features to your website. Think of plugins like apps in your iPhone except they’re for your websites.

When it comes to designing your site, you can use any free or premium theme, or even use drag & drop page builders to create a completely unique design.

There are no provider terms and conditions to follow, and you own all the content on your site.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at why nearly half of all website owners in the world ignore the myth that WordPress is hard to use and choose WordPress as their platform.

WordPress Isn’t Hard (But Here’s How to Make it Even Easier)

At WPBeginner we donâ€™t believe that WordPress is hard. However, if you donâ€™t have the right tools, tricks, and know-how, then WordPress can feel more complex than it actually is.

With that in mind, letâ€™s see how you can make WordPress easier. You can use the links below to jump to any section of the post.
Choose the Right Web Hosting Provider

By choosing the best WordPress hosting, you can set your site up for success. The right host will provide exactly the features you need to build and run a successful WordPress website, even if you have no previous experience.

Some hosts even perform crucial WordPress maintenance tasks such as creating backups, adding security plugins, and installing updates. This will make WordPress feel effortless.

For example, Bluehost is a well-known WordPress hosting provider that automatically installs and set up WordPress for you when you sign up.

From time to time, you may encounter problems or have questions.

A good host will offer support over email, phone, live chat, and other channels so you’ll have no problems getting your site back on track.

As the worldâ€™s most popular CMS, there are lots of companies that offer WordPress hosting. For that reason, weâ€™ve done the research and created a list of the best web hosting companies to help you find the provider that’s right for you.

Here are the top WordPress hosting companies that we recommend:
1. Bluehost – great for beginners – includes free domain.
2. Hostinger – growing fast in popularity due to affordable prices, fast speed, includes free domain.
3. SiteGround – premium WordPress hosting provider, uses Google cloud. Slightly higher prices.
4. WP Engine – enterprise managed WordPress hosting provider, great for large sites.
Install Must-Have WordPress Plugins

The best part about WordPress is that you can easily add any feature to your site using plugins, without hiring a developer.

There are eCommerce plugins to help you create an online store, plugins that turn WordPress into a membership site so you can sell courses, add smart lead generation forms to grow your business, improve your SEO rankings, and much more.

In fact, there are over 60,000 free plugins in the official WordPress repository alone, so you’ll have no problems finding a plugin that meets your exact needs.

To help you get started, here’s our expert list of the must-have plugins for your WordPress website.

Our top 5 free WordPress plugins that we always recommend include:
1. WPForms – best drag & drop online form builder for WordPress.
2. AIOSEO – best WordPress SEO plugin to boost your SEO rankings.
3. MonsterInsights – easily see your website analytics to make data-driven decisions.
4. Duplicator – easily create regular backups for your website.
5. SeedProd – drag & drop page builder to create custom website designs without any code.
Find the Perfect WordPress Theme

WordPress themes control how your site looks and acts. There are themes designed for specific markets like WooCommerce themes and membership site themes, but also multi-purpose themes that you can customize to fit almost any type of site.

Just like plugins, there are countless free themes to choose from. In fact, there are over 10,500 free themes in the official WordPress repository alone.

Youâ€™ll find even more on top WordPress theme providers websites.

This includes Elegant Themes, Astra, StudioPress, and more.

Itâ€™s important to choose a theme that looks good, has the features you need, and is also high quality. To help you make the right decision, see our guide on how to select the perfect WordPress theme.

If youâ€™re looking for theme recommendations, then check out our expert pick of the most popular and best WordPress themes.

Use a WordPress Page Builder

When building your site, youâ€™ll create posts and pages using the WordPress block editor.

If youâ€™re using a block-enabled theme such as Divi or Astra, then you can also add content using the full-site editor.

This editor allows you to completely change the theme layout and add new sections to your website without writing any code.

This is a great start, but it can be very basic and has a limited number of features.

We still recommend using a page builder plugin such as SeedProd. SeedProd allows you to create completely custom page designs and comes with ready-made blocks that you can drag and drop anywhere on your site.

This includes advanced blocks like countdown timers, contact forms, Google Maps, payment fields, and much more.

After adding a block to your site, you can customize it using the settings in the left-hand SeedProd menu.

This makes it easy to create custom home pages, landing pages, and more.

For more on this topic, please see our guide on WordPress Block Editor vs Page Builders, as well as our expert tips to master the WordPress content (block) editor.

Use a WordPress SEO Plugin

Most visitors will find your site through search engines like Google. To help search engines show your content to the right people, youâ€™ll need to work on your WordPress SEO.

SEO is a huge topic that often includes technical tasks such as adding rich snippets schema markup to your site.

Thankfully, thereâ€™s a WordPress plugin for everything and SEO is no exception. There are lots of different WordPress SEO plugins and tools you can use for individual tasks, but we recommend AIOSEO as itâ€™s the complete SEO toolkit for WordPress.

AIOSEO comes with powerful features including breadcrumb navigation, advanced eCommerce SEO support for WooCommerce, local SEO, an internal link assistant, and much more. This means you donâ€™t have to set up and learn multiple SEO plugins.

AIOSEO also scans your pages and posts as youâ€™re writing them and creates a checklist of ways to improve its SEO.

For step-by-step instructions, please see our ultimate guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress correctly.

Use Tools to Improve Site Speed and Performance

To provide a good experience, your website needs to load quickly.

WordPress is already optimized for speed and performance, but there are lots of tricks and tools that can make it run even faster. With that in mind, weâ€™ve created the ultimate guide to boost WordPress speed and performance that has everything you need to know.

Set up an Automated Security Plugin

WordPress is secure software, but hackers are always coming up with new ways to break into sites and steal data. To help new WordPress users keep their sites safe, weâ€™ve created an ultimate WordPress security guide.

We also recommend using Sucuri, which is the best WordPress security plugin.

Sucuri tracks everything that happens on your site, including failed login attempts and any changes to the WordPress files.

It also scans for malware and monitors whether your site appears on any blocklists, as this may mean thereâ€™s a problem with your siteâ€™s security.

If it finds an issue, then Sucuri will notify you automatically. In this way, you can protect your site without having to perform any manual checks, or learn complicated security tools.

To learn how we use Sucuri on our own websites, see our complete Sucuri review.

Set up Google Analytics

As a website owner, your goal is to get people to your site and keep them engaged. Thatâ€™s where Google Analytics comes in.

Analytics allow you to make decisions based on real data. For example, you can track website visitors and see the content that gets the most engagement. You can then create more of this popular content.

You can also see how long visitors stay on your site and the bounce rate, which is the percentage of users who exit your site on the first visit. You can use this information to increase pageviews and reduce bounce rate in WordPress.

Google Analytics is an important tool, but it can be complicated to set up. For that reason, we recommend using MonsterInsights.

MonsterInsights is the best analytics solution for WordPress users.

It allows you to easily install Google Analytics on your website and then shows helpful reports directly in the WordPress dashboard.

To learn more, please see our guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

Use Comment Filtering and Moderation

All website owners worry about comment spam.

Spambots and malicious third parties can easily flood a siteâ€™s comment section with links to malware and low-quality pages. This can hurt your websiteâ€™s reputation and may even affect its SEO.

You can moderate comments in WordPress directly from the dashboard, including manually approving and blocking comments, or even deleting them completely.

However, moderating every single comment can be time-consuming, especially as your site grows and attracts more visitors.

Thankfully, there are lots of tools to combat comment spam in WordPress. This includes Akismet, which automatically filters all comments through a global spam database.

To learn more, please see our guide to Akismet and why you should start using it right away.

Never Edit Your Theme Files Directly

WordPress is open-source software so anyone can see and edit its code, or even add their own PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. It may sound complicated, but there are lots of reasons to add custom code to WordPress.

For example, you might use a code snippet to completely disable comments, or remove the WordPress version number. Typically, it doesnâ€™t make sense to install a plugin for these small tasks, so WordPress gives you the option to use code instead.

Many WordPress tutorials will provide a snippet and then ask you to edit your themeâ€™s functions.php file.

The problem is that even a typo or small mistake in the code can cause errors or even break your site completely. You also wonâ€™t be able to update your WordPress theme without losing the customization.

This leads many people to think that WordPress is hard, when really the problem lies with their custom code.

That’s why we recommend using WPCode.

WPCode is the best code snippets plugin for WordPress and allows you to add custom PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and HTML without editing any theme files.

WPCode also has a built-in library of snippets that you can add to a site with just a few clicks. Even if youâ€™re a beginner with no coding experience, WPCode makes it easy to add custom code in WordPress in a safe way.

Keep Your WordPress Site Up-To-Date

Itâ€™s important to keep your themes, plugins, and core WordPress software up-to-date. Hackers try to exploit known errors and vulnerabilities in outdated software, so if you fall behind then your site could become an easy target.

Some updates even add features that make WordPress easier to use. For this reason, itâ€™s important to update WordPress core, update your WordPress plugins, and install the latest version of your theme.

Some web hosts will install these updates for you automatically, especially if youâ€™re using a managed hosting provider.

Another option is to enable automatic updates for WordPress and enable automatic updates for plugins and themes. With that done, youâ€™ll always have access to the latest WordPress features and fixes.

Automate Your WordPress Backups

WordPress is secure and reliable software, but it’s still a good idea to create regular backups.

Accidents and mistakes happen, such as deleting important content or editing the wrong page. Malicious third parties may also try to break into your site and delete your content.

By creating regular backups, you can always recover a working and error-free version of your website. Even if the worst happens and you lose all your data, you can simply restore your WordPress website from its latest backup.

They may be important, but many website owners overlook backups until itâ€™s too late.

The good news is there are many free and paid WordPress backup plugins that can do the hard work for you. We recommend using a premium plugin like Duplicator Pro as it can create backups automatically.

For added security, Duplicator Pro will save your backups to popular online storage solutions like Dropbox, OneDrive, or Amazon S3. This means you can log into these services from any location, and get access to a working copy of your website.

Learn WordPress

The right plugins, themes, and techniques will help you run a successful WordPress website with ease. In some cases, you can even completely automate important tasks such as making a WordPress database backup or performing a security audit.

For this reason, many website owners donâ€™t take the time to learn more about WordPress. We think this is a big mistake.

By continuing to learn you can often make WordPress even easier to use. With that in mind, here are just some of the free resources youâ€™ll find on WPBeginner:
- WPBeginner Blog. This is where we publish our WordPress tutorials, how-tos, and step-by-step guides. We have a huge library of free content, and weâ€™re publishing new information all the time.
- WPBeginner Dictionary. Complicated terms and technical jargon can make WordPress seem a lot harder than it is. For that reason, weâ€™ve created a directory that covers all the WordPress lingo.
- WPBeginner Videos. Our step-by-step WordPress 101 video tutorials have everything you need to get started with WordPress.
- WPBeginner on YouTube. Enjoyed our WordPress 101 series and want to learn more? Youâ€™ll find over 900 more videos on our YouTube channel covering everything from SEO, to common WordPress errors and how to fix them, how to embed dynamic social media feeds on your site, and much more.
- WPBeginner Engage Group. The largest and fastest-growing WordPress group for non-techies and beginners on Facebook. Here, you can connect with over 91,000 WordPress users, ask questions, and get support from the community.
Consider Hiring a WordPress Maintenance Service

The tips and tricks in this guide will make WordPress feel effortless, even if youâ€™ve never created a website before.

However, if youâ€™re looking for the ultimate hassle-free experience then you can always hire a maintenance service to take care of WordPress for you. This includes creating backups, installing updates, performing SEO audits, upgrading your siteâ€™s security, finding and fixing broken links, and more.

These services are perfect for first-time WordPress users or anyone who finds that day-to-day website maintenance takes too much time. If you want to hire a WordPress expert, then see our pick of the best WordPress website maintenance services.

We hope this article helped you see why WordPress is not hard, and there’s a good reason that nearly half of all websites on the internet use WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how much it really costs to build a WordPress website or see the most important reasons to use WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post Why Is WordPress So Hard (And How to Make It Easier) first appeared on WPBeginner.
25.04.2023