Independent Analytics Pro will use the currency conversion rates provided by the plugin and show your sales in your store’s base currency in the analytics reports.
If there is another currency switcher plugin you’d like us to support, please let us know, and we can add a new integration.
You can upload PDFs to your Media Library to make them accessible on your site. However, when someone views the PDF, it will be loaded using the browser’s built-in PDF viewer. Independent Analytics can’t record these visits because WordPress doesn’t get loaded.
To record analytics for PDF visits, you can install the PDF Viewer plugin by ThemeNcode.
PDF tracking also works with the paid version of this plugin, called TNC Flipbook.
Instead of relying on the browser’s PDF viewer, this plugin creates its own viewer that runs in WordPress.
Since WordPress gets loaded, this enables Independent Analytics to track the views.
Using this plugin, visits to your PDFs will show up automatically in the Pages report.
If there is another PDF WordPress plugin you’d prefer to use, please let us know about it so we can add an integration.
How to White-Label Your License Key for Client Websites
This feature is only available in the Pro version of Independent Analytics.
When running Independent Analytics Pro on your site, you’ll be able to see billing and other account info from the Analytics > Account menu in WordPress.
While that info is helpful for managing your own account, you may not want to share this kind of data on client sites where you’ve installed Independent Analytics Pro. For this reason, you can white-label your license key to hide the account info.
There are two different ways to white-label your license key.
White-label from a client’s site
First, if you are logged into a client’s website and visit the Analytics > Account page, you’ll see a notice at the top of the page about hiding your account info. Click on the “Click here” link and your license will be white-labeled.
This setting will sync with every other site using your license key within the next 24 hours. If you need the white-labeling to take effect immediately on another website, you can click the “Sync” link in the Account menu (pictured above).
White-label from your account dashboard
You can also white-label your license key from the account dashboard on our website.
You can find your account credentials in the email you received from us when you purchased Independent Analytics Pro.
Once logged in, visit the Licenses menu and then click on the license key you’d like to white-label. A menu will slide in on the right side, where you can check a box labeled “This license is activated on my client’s site.”
After checking this box, your account info will no longer display anywhere inside the WP dashboard.
If you need to make any edits to your account in the future, please do so through the same Account page on our website.
Some users have expressed privacy concerns over our use of Freemius, so we’d like to provide more information on how this works and how you can opt out.
While there have been privacy issues with Freemius in the past, they have systematically addressed these concerns, and there are no major outstanding privacy issues as of March 2023. This has been verified by independent analysis (read more here).
One change they’ve made is the ability to completely opt out of tracking even with paid versions of the plugin, and that’s what we’ll cover here.
How to opt-out of Freemius
If you are using the free version of Independent Analytics, then you were presented with this screen upon activating the plugin:
If you chose to Skip this step, then your site has never shared data with Freemius.
If you agreed to data sharing by accident or you changed your mind, you can visit the Plugins menu, locate our plugin, and click the blue Opt Out link pictured here:
You’ll see a popup allowing you to opt out of sharing your basic profile info, site info, and themes/plugins installed.
Opting out of these data sharing options won’t have any impact on Independent Analytics ability to run. We use this data primarily in aggregate to see things like the PHP versions that are most popular among our users, and the languages being used.
Opting Out for PRO users
If you are using Independent Analytics Pro, the steps are almost identical. You will still click the Opt Out link in the Plugins menu, but the popup is different in two ways.
The first difference is that you’ll notice there is no option to opt out of basic profile info. This is because this data was collected at checkout and was required to facilitate the sale.
The other difference is the Required section at the top, which shows that your site shares data about the license key and the plugin’s state. If you click on the Opt Out link there, you’ll see the following warning:
This is letting you know that opting out of sharing licensing data means that your site will no longer receive automatic updates.
It’s perfectly fine to opt out if you would like. You will just have to login to your account and download a new copy of the plugin whenever it’s updated. You’ll receive a zip file you can then upload through the Plugins > Add New menu to update.
Since you won’t receive update notifications, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit to get notified when we release a new update. Alternatively, you can keep the free version installed but deactivated and use that to get update notifications. We keep the free and pro versions in sync, so if you see a new update for the free version, that means there’s a new pro update available for download too.
Independent Analytics uses the same timezone set here in the General Settings menu:
If you haven’t configured a timezone there already, make sure to do that now. This will ensure that your analytics match your local time. It’s also important to set your timezone here because it’s used by other plugins and WP features, such as scheduling posts.
While editing the timezone, you can also edit the date and time formats:
These formats are both used by Independent Analytics when displaying dates and times.
This feature is only available in the Pro version of Independent Analytics.
When someone is referred to your site via a campaign URL, all other actions they take are attributed to that campaign.
Let’s imagine you share a campaign URL in a Facebook post. Someone clicks on the campaign link, taking them to the landing page on your site. They leave your site without viewing another page.
Here’s what that would look like in the Campaigns menu.
Now, let’s imagine that instead of leaving your site, they browse a few products, add one to their cart, and complete a purchase before leaving.
That same campaign would look like this instead:
As you can see, this campaign is now responsible for 8 views and $99 in sales.
In other words, the campaign stats aren’t tied to the landing page. The landing page is just one element of the campaign. When someone visits other pages on your site and completes a purchase, that is also attributed to the campaign.
This way, you are able to see the total result of a campaign and not just views for the landing page. In this example, it’s a Facebook post that generated $99 in sales.
Why Clicks from PPC Ads are Lower in the Campaigns menu
This feature is only available in the Pro version of Independent Analytics.
When running PPC campaigns in ad networks like Facebook and Google, you’ll get data on how many people clicked on the ad.
You might expect Independent Analytics to report the same number of Visitors in the Campaigns menu for that ad. However, it’s normal to see fewer Visitors in the Campaigns menu than Clicks reported by an ad network because these metrics work differently.
Here are a few reasons why these numbers differ.
Multiple clicks from the same person
One reason you’ll see more Clicks than Visitors is that some people will click on your ad multiple times.
For example, if someone clicks your Google ad twice, Google will show you two Clicks, but you’ll only see one Visitor in Independent Analytics.
The Facebook Clicks metric is misleading
In Facebook, the “Clicks” metric is misleading because it measures more than the number of clicks to your website. The Clicks metric also includes other engagements, such as someone clicking the Like button. For this reason, you will always see significantly more Clicks on your FB ads than Visitors in Independent Analytics Pro.
Some visitors exit quickly
It is also possible that someone clicks on your ad and then closes the browser tab immediately. In this case, the click will be counted in the ad network, but they won’t show up in your analytics because the site never got a chance to load.
Benchmarks
For Google Ads, it’s normal for the Visitors metric in Independent Analytics to equal ~90% of the Clicks reported by Google. For instance, it would be normal to see 100 clicks in Google Ads and 90 visitors for that campaign in Independent Analytics.
Since the Clicks metric in Facebook includes numerous other interactions, it is normal for it to be as much as twice the number of Visitors reported in Independent Analytics. For example, if 100 people Like your ad and another 100 click on the link, you’ll see 200 clicks in FB and 100 visitors for that campaign in Independent Analytics Pro.
This feature is only available in the Pro version of Independent Analytics.
When a visitor arrives on your site, a new session is recorded, and it continues until a period of inactivity that lasts for 30 minutes or longer.
When someone purchases a product, the sale is attributed to the referrer of that session.
For example, if someone clicks on your site in Google, looks at a few pages, and purchases a product, Google will be attributed with the sale.
Now, let’s say they find your site through Google, look at a few pages, and leave. The next day, they see a Facebook ad for your product, so they click the ad and buy the product. In this case, Facebook will be attributed the sale because it was the referrer of the session that included the purchase.
This is sometimes referred to as a “last click” attribution model.
As you might expect, this works the same way for the Geographic, Devices, and Campaigns reports; the sale will be attributed to the location, device, and campaign of the session with the sale.
Independent Analytics doesn’t include support for alternate attribution models, but this is a feature we would like to explore in the future.
Attribution for the Pages report
Sales attribution works differently for the Pages report than the other reports.
If the Pages report showed you the sale where the purchase happened, then you would see all of the sales attributed to the Checkout page. Instead, it is more useful to attribute the sale to the landing page i.e. the first page in the session.
Let’s say someone clicks on your site in Google, lands on “Article A,” views a few products, and then completes a purchase. The credit for the sale would go to Article A.
This is particularly useful for evaluating your SEO landing pages. Rather than measuring their performance by traffic, you can see the number of sales and conversion rate of each page.
If you have multiple websites, you may want to reuse some of the same custom reports. This is made simple via the importing and exporting options.
To begin, visit the Settings menu and locate the Export Reports section.
From here, you can select any reports you want to export or click the Select all reports checkbox at the top to choose all of them. Once you’re happy with your selection, click the Export Reports button.
You’ll get a JSON file you can import into any other site.
In the site where you’d like to import the reports, navigate to the Settings menu and locate the Import Reports section.
Use the Choose File button to select the JSON file you downloaded, and then click Import Reports. The reports will be added to your site immediately.
Please note that there is no duplicate detection at this time, so every report is always added. For this reason, make sure to only export the reports you need to add to other websites.
