Yes, Independent Analytics is fully compatible with multi-site installs.
You can Network Activate it to enable it for all sites on your network, and they will each have their own tracking and analytics dashboard.
Pro license activation
If you are using Independent Analytics Pro, you can Network Activate it just like the free version. Then, you can visit the Plugins menu, scroll to the Independent Analytics Pro, and click on the Activate License link. You’ll see a pop-up where you can enter your license key, and there is a box checked by default to activate the license for all sub-sites.
Please note that each subsite counts as a full website, so this will only be possible if your license key has enough activations for all sites in the network.
If you uncheck the box, you’ll have the option to choose which sub-sites you want to activate the license key on.
If you want to make a change to which sub-sites are activated in the future, you can visit the Network Admin > Independent Analytics > Account menu. You will find a Sites section there where you can activate/deactivate the license key on individual sub-sites.
View Duration is a measure of how long visitors spend on a specific page, on average. You’ll see the View Duration appear in the data table of the Pages menu.
View Duration is measured in a similar way as Session Duration. We take the time that visitors land on a page and subtract it from the previous page. For instance, the following session would tell us that the visitor spent two minutes on Page 1:
Page 1: 1:25pm
Page 2: 1:27pm
For this session, we would simply ignore Page 2. Likewise, when visitors only view one page, we don’t calculate View Duration.
This is the same way that Google Analytics calculates Time on Page, but with one critical difference. We omit unknown values from our calculation, while Google counts them as zero. This has the effect of lowering the View Duration towards zero, especially if you have lots of one-page sessions. For this reason, you will see that the View Duration reported in Independent Analytics is higher than the Time on Page metric in Google Analytics.
Session Duration is a measure of how long people spend on your site when they visit, on average.
You’ll see Session Duration show up in the Quick Stats of every page as well as in the table of the Referrer, Geographic, and Campaigns menus.
When someone arrives on your site, a new session is created, and each page they view is included in this session. The session concludes when there is a thirty-minute period of inactivity.
To calculate the duration of a session, we take the time of each view and subtract it from the previous one. For instance, imagine a session has views at the following times:
Page 1: 1:23pm
Page 2: 1:25pm
Page 3: 1:27pm
From this data, the session duration would be calculated as 4 minutes. While this works reasonably well, there is a drawback.
We know they spent 2 minutes on Page 1 and Page 2, but we don’t know how long they spent on Page 3, so that data is simply omitted.
Omitting the time spent on the last page lowers the average session duration, but since single-page sessions are also excluded (they tend to be brief), this has the effect of increasing the average session duration. In practice, the value is approximate but accurate enough to get a clear picture of engagement and see similar results over time.
This is similar to how Google Analytics calculates session duration, so the values should be similar when switching to Independent Analytics.
Why do I see “-” instead of a session duration?
If you’re looking at the table in a report, such as the Referrers report, you may see some referrers with a session duration of “-” instead of a real duration.
When a visitor views only one page before leaving, Independent Analytics cannot determine how long they spent on the site. If you have a referrer with 5 visitors and the session duration is omitted (-), it means all 5 visitors viewed only one page. You’ll also see that the bounce rate is 100%. If even one of them viewed a second page, Independent Analytics could calculate an average duration. For this reason, the issue of missing session durations usually resolves itself as more visitors arrive.
A new session is recorded when a visitor arrives on your site. As they view additional pages, these views are included in the same session until there is a 30-minute period of inactivity. If that visitor views any pages after that, they’ll be recorded in new sessions.
As an example, if a visitor arrives on your site, views 5 pages, and leaves, this will be recorded as 1 visitor, 5 views, and 1 session. If that same visitor returns the next day, views 2 pages, and leaves, the total values will be 1 visitor, 7 views, and 2 sessions.
There is one exception to the 30-minute inactivity period. If a visitor reaches your site from Facebook, then a new session is started, and Facebook is the referrer. If they return to your site 5 minutes later via Google, a new session is started and Google is the referrer of the session. This allows Independent Analytics to capture more referrer data.
Why are there fewer visitors in the Geographic dashboard?
If you check the Quick Stats on the Pages or Referrers menu and then visit the Geographic menu, you will likely see fewer total visitors and views.
This happens because the Geographic dashboard only counts visitors that could have their geolocation resolved. Sometimes, a visitor’s IP address is obfuscated and cannot be mapped to a location, so while their visit is recorded, they do not have a location saved and thus aren’t reported in the Geographic menu.
For most sites, the difference will be less than 1% of visitors, but it can be higher.
Why Does Independent Analytics Show Different Stats Than Google Analytics?
If you run both Independent Analytics and Google Analytics on your site simultaneously, you may notice a significant difference in the stats. There are a few reasons why this can happen.
Why Independent Analytics may record MORE visitors than Google
If you’re using a cookie consent form, Google Analytics won’t record a visitor until they opt-in. Depending on the design of your consent form, this number can be anywhere from 10-90% of your visitors.
On the other hand, Independent Analytics does not use cookies, nor does it store personally identifiable information, so it does not require visitor consent before tracking. This means that 100% of the visitors get tracked. This can lead to much larger visitor counts than seen with GA.
Why Independent Analytics may record FEWER visitors than Google
First, Independent Analytics does not track AMP pages, so you will see more visitors in GA if you are using AMP on your site.
Next, make sure that you have cleared your cache after installing IA. The cache needs to be cleared once so that the tracking script can appear on every page of the website.
Lastly, check if the Google Analytics script has been added more than once. It is easy to make this mistake if you end up with multiple plugins or custom scripts adding the tracking code to your site.
Those are the known reasons why you may see a difference between stats in IA vs. GA, but if none of those explanations fit your website, feel free to reach out to support@independentwp.com, and we can debug your site for any potential tracking issues.
Start by visiting the Settings menu and locating the Ignore by User Role section.
You will see the Administrator role blocked by default. If you’d like to track visits from administrators, click the Remove button and then click Save User Roles.
To ignore activity from additional user roles, use the dropdown to select a user role and then click the Add button.
Lastly, click the Save User Roles button to finalize your changes.
You can ignore as many user roles as you’d like, and this feature works with every user role on your site, including those added by other plugins.
Once a user role is blocked, their activity on the site will not be recorded as long as they’re logged in.
Ignore using a cookie
If you want to ensure these members are ignored even when logged out, you can check the Ignore via cookie box.
If enabled, anyone who logs into your site with one of the ignored user roles will have a cookie added to their browser. Independent Analytics checks for the presence of this cookie, which allows it to ignore them when they aren’t logged in.
Please note that this cookie has zero implications for visitor privacy. It is an opt-in feature made for you and other managers of the site to use, and the cookie itself contains no data.
The cookie is called iawp_ignore_visitor if you’d like to check it with your browser dev tools.
If you want an alternative solution to ignore activity from yourself when you are logged out, you can ignore your IP address.
This feature is only available in the Pro version of Independent Analytics.
Independent Analytics Pro can send an automated HTML email report to numerous recipients.
Here’s a full preview of what an email report looks like:
As you can see, it includes the Quick Stats, a chart of your daily views, and Top 10 lists for your:
Pages
Referrers
Countries
Devices
Campaigns
Forms
Link patterns
Landing pages
Exit pages
Now, here’s how you can get this report into your own inbox.
How to enable the email report
First, visit the Settings menu and locate the Email Report section.
In the Email Report section, start by choosing the interval you want the email to be delivered. You can choose between daily, weekly, or monthly delivery.
If you choose Daily, you’ll receive an email every day showing yesterday’s stats. If you choose Weekly, the email will be sent once a week and include the prior week’s data. It will be delivered on the first day of the week as selected in the settings. Lastly, if you choose Monthly, you’ll receive an email on the 1st of the month with data from the last month.
Next, you can choose the time of day you want the email to be delivered using the Delivery Time setting.
To add a recipient, enter your email address into the Add new email address input, then click the Add email button. Repeat this for as many email addresses as you want, then click the Save settings button.
If you enter more than one email address, the additional addresses will be BCC’d, so they’ll see the email as being delivered to the first recipient only.
Once your email address is entered, you can click the Send test email button to receive a copy of the email for review. It will include a full report on your site’s performance based on the interval you selected.
You’ll also see a notice at the top of the settings confirming the time and date of your next scheduled email.
Changing the From address
By default, the email report will use the site’s admin email address configured in the main Settings menu as the From address. However, you can change it to another address if you’d like.
If you change the email address, please make sure the email is coming from the same domain as your website. For example, if your website is example.com, you could send the email from hello@example.com. If you use an email address like example@gmail.com, it is likely to get marked as spam and not arrive in your inbox.
Changing the Reply-To address
You can also set a custom reply-to email address. For most users, this won’t be necessary, but if you’re sending the email report to clients who might respond with questions, you can customize this field with the best email address for them to respond to.
Customizing the footer text
There is a sentence that appears in the footer of the email, which by default reads, “This email was generated and delivered by …” followed by your website’s URL. This is to confirm that no external servers were ever in contact with your data in the generation and delivery of the email report.
You can customize this text to say whatever you would like by updating the Email footer text field.
Only plain text is allowed at this time (no HTML).
Pausing email deliverability
If you are sending daily email reports to your team, you may want to pause delivery around the holidays. To do so, you can click the Pause Emails button inside the notice with the next scheduled delivery date.
The notice will update to let you know that email delivery has been paused.
Emails will not begin sending again until the Resume Emails button is clicked.
Customizing the colors
There are also ten settings available to customize the colors of the email.
We recommend using a primary color along with a brighter and darker variation of that color. For the text, use a very light or dark color that will have ample contrast with the background color.
For example, here’s a look at what the email would look like with the purple header and sub-header backgrounds replaced with complementary shades of blue.
When customizing the colors, you can click the Preview email button to see how the email looks.
The preview will show up in a popup like this:
This is faster and easier than sending a test email every time you want to preview your color changes.
Once you’re done, make sure to save your settings to finalize your changes.
Privacy and deliverability
Independent Analytics Pro creates the email with your site’s data and delivers it via your own website. Your data is never shared with any outside sources, and the email does not contain any images or external resources.
This feature is only available in the Pro version of Independent Analytics.
Note: if you have customers logging in to checkout, please make sure to enable logged-in visitor tracking in order to track their sales.
Supported plugins
Independent Analytics Pro integrates with the following eCommerce plugins:
WooCommerce
FluentCart
SureCart
Easy Digital Downloads
Paid Memberships Pro
The new Quick Stats
After installing Independent Analytics Pro, you’ll see the Orders and Total Sales metrics appear in the Quick Stats like this:
If you click the Toggle Stats button and then select the eCommerce section, you’ll see that there are 8 different metrics you can enable in the Quick Stats.
The eCommerce section will be by the eCommerce plugin you’re using
While you may find similar stats in the analytics reports provided by your eCommerce plugin, these stats become especially powerful when combined with a filter. For example, you can filter a report to show only blog posts or social media sites and see how the metrics compare to the global averages.
One unique stat is the Conversion Rate, which lets you see the global conversion rate for your store. This can be especially useful when making optimizations that should lift the profitability of your store as a whole.
The new table columns
You’ll see all the same metrics from the Quick Stats available as new data columns.
Enabling these columns will let you evaluate the performance of specific pages, referrers, locations, devices, and campaigns.
For instance, here’s an example showing the orders and net sales for each referrer:
Independent Analytics Pro can report on eCommerce sales since the free version was installed. For instance, if you installed the free version 30 days ago and switched to the Pro version today, you would see sales show up for the past 30 days.
Sales from before the installation of Independent Analytics (free or pro) are not included in the analytics.
New orders that are placed will show up in the analytics immediately.
How does attribution work?
Please refer to the following tutorial to learn about how the sales attribution works:
How to Secure the REST-API and Still Use Independent Analytics
When someone visits a page on your site, Independent Analytics makes a single REST-API request that records the visit. Without the ability to use the REST-API, it cannot record any data.
If your site has disabled the REST API, you have to re-enable it now, or Independent Analytics will not be able to record stats.
Once the REST API has been re-enabled on your site, Independent Analytics will be able to record visits.
Can I still secure the REST API endpoints?
If you are concerned with securing the REST API while still using Independent Analytics, there are multiple options.
First, you can install a plugin like Disable REST API. This plugin allows you to disable the REST API while selectively enabling some endpoints.
Once you activate the Disable REST API plugin, you’ll find a new menu at Settings >Disable REST API. In this menu, you can click on the /iawp route to enable it, and then save your changes.
“iawp” stands for “Independent Analytics WordPress”
This will ensure that the /iawp route can be triggered by your visitors while locking down all other routes.
Alternatively, if you’d like to avoid installing another plugin, you can use the code snippet below:
function block_rest_api_except_ia( $access ) {
if (!is_user_logged_in() && $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] != '/wp-json/iawp/search') {
return new WP_Error( 'rest_disabled', __('The WordPress REST API has been disabled.'), array( 'status' => rest_authorization_required_code()));
}
return $access;
}
add_filter( 'rest_authentication_errors', 'block_rest_api_except_ia' );
This function will disable the REST API for anyone who isn’t logged in unless the request is for the Independent Analytics endpoint. This allows your analytics to be recorded without exposing any other endpoints.
You can add this code to a child theme, a custom plugin, or use a code snippet plugin like Code Snippets.
