Yandex Metrica is a really cool and free analytical tool that gives you a lot of data that can help you improve your website growth.
Not sure where this has been hiding all my life, but I am glad it found me. I am a data nerd, I have to be to do SEO and make sure I am helping my clients get where they want to be. We use a lot of tools here at 2 Dogs Media to do research and analysis – but now we have a new one that we may add to our arsenal.
We still have a lot of data analysis, research and testing to do with it before we will add it to our recommended WordPress tools list – but it is looking very good so far so we wanted to share it.
Yandex Metrica is a cool tool that gives you access to a lot of data about your website and the people who visit it. You can see how many visitors you get over a set time period, how they got there, what page on your site they visited, for how long they stayed, and so much more.
Don't hesitate to read the rest of this article at 2 Dogs Media. Republishing permitted with link back to original article at 2 Dogs Media.
A very cool resource! I wanted to check out the stats on my page for a while now but have never used it due to my lack of WordPress knowledge.
What Is Yandex Metrica?
Yandex Metrica is a free tool (and I am shocked it is free for all that it offers) – that gives so much amazing data about your website visitors that you can use to improve everything from your content to website structure.
It is basic and very easy to use, and can be used by anyone. You just need to have a Yandex account (yes, the Russian version of Google) and install the plugin for your WordPress blog.
The great ting about it is that even if you are working with a WordPress version older than 3.8, it will still work just fine.
Step 1: Install the Plugin
Click on Settings > Plugins in your WordPress dashboard, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Install Now button. Then go check what plugins are available for your WordPress blog if you haven't already (Minify CSS & JS etc.).
In my case I have 2 active plugins from this list installed so I will click Install Now button for Clean URLs plugin as well to be able to use Yandex Metrica.hing is that through it you might find out what drives your visitors and what they are searching for. That way you can improve all aspects of your website, from article content to SEO strategy.
Yandex Metrica is available here, under WordPress-plugin section. Or if you want some more information or simply try before you buy – feel free to simply visit them on Facebook .ally Google Analytics on steroids.
Apparently , the site is not available for free, so I was wondering how to get it.
Step 2: Download & Install the Plugin (Sorry, I do not own a Yandex account, so I cannot give you any information about using it.)
Go get your Yandex account here and click on "Get a Yandex.Metrica account". Get your code too and install the plugin. This is it. You should now have something like this showing up in your WordPress sidebar:
Yandex Metrica In case you don't want to download and install the plugin after all these steps – you can always use the WordPress dashboard to do that for you. It is available here as well as here .it has been around since 2009 but I only recently heard about it and tried it out. The short time I have been using it – I have fallen in love.
Features
Session replay – analyse website usage through a recording
Session replay helps to identify usability problems and eliminate obstacles to buying. This is why high numbers of conversion optimisers have watched session replays provided by Hotjar in recent years. Yandex.Metrica includes a similar feature free for all. In a session replay, scrolls, mouse movements and clicks, and keystrokes used to fill in forms, are all recorded. Naturally, keystroke recording can be blocked to prevent the saving of personal data in Yandex’ database.
Session replays offer averages and a detailed report, offering a huge amount of data. In the case of site metrics, these details are often unnecessary - after all, any visitor can leave the site as they wish within the allocated time frame. Nevertheless, all this information can be extremely helpful when identifying usability problems, which in turn enable you to fix them quickly.
It is possible to block recording in Yandex.Metrica. There are two ways to do this:
In addition, automatic recording can be disabled for all or specific application types/types of data, allowing users to decide when to save recordings. This can be done either by adding or removing the functions from "All applications", "Specific applications", and "Specific data types".
The advantage of blocking recording is that it reduces the amount of information stored in Yandex’ database. The disadvantage is that you cannot use any recorded information to carry out testing (e.g., determine which pages visitors see, which options they choose, and how much time they spend on a page).ble to record sessions and print the data onto paper or save it on your computer for later use in any spreadsheet (a common example is Microsoft Excel). You can also email yourself, copy and paste it into other programs like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. The data outputs include direct average numbers for each keystroke as well as total page views during that period.
Heat map – analyse clicks and scrolls
For example, as a default Google Analytics saves only data on clicks on links from one page to another. But users sometimes click on images and other elements that are not links. This is easiest to track using click and heat maps, which track mouse movements and clicks. In addition to clicks, you can track scrolls and find out how far downwards users scroll various pages. Yandex.Metrica offers analysts and marketers the click heat map familiar from Hotjar and CrazyEgg. The map collects data on clicks on every element, visualising them in various ways on a screenshot image. You can review clicks for each individual page or group of pages. In addition to clicks, you can also track scrolls: when and how far users scroll down the page.
Tracking calls to action (CTA) is an important part of the conversion funnel for many marketers and analysts. Calls to action can be placed all over a website – next to or within blog posts, above the fold on pages with lists of products or services, in a widget on every page, etc. This makes it hard to follow their results. Yandex.Metrica offers a recognizable set of features for tracking these CTAs. The plugin tracks and visualises clicks on CTA buttons as well as on all other links that lead to pages with calls to action. The plugin also allows you to capture data when a user opens a separate browser window, tabs or clicks away from the current page.
Another common issue is following the user journey along with data on individual events in Google Analytics using cross-domain tracking. When users go from page A in one domain to page B in another domain, any single click or event can be attributed only to one of these two pages – not both.
Form analytics
Forms are a bottleneck to conversion on many websites. However, without diverse event tracking, standard analytics software features are not sufficient for form tracking. That is why separate software is often used for form analytics purposes.
Yandex.Metrila is intended to fill this gap and make form analytics easier and more beneficial. Yandex.Metrila analyzes the whole funnel of web forms and creates analytics reports, including:
Individuals analyze website elements that affect their conversion rate. They get email alerts about changes in the quantity of visitors into a particular page.ica facilitates easy analysis of form completion. Form reports reveal which parts of the form are not filled in and what caused conversion failure. These three features – session replay, click heat maps and form analytics – make Yandex.Metrica a formidable tool for conversion optimisation: you gain access to several Hotjar features without a separate licence.
Yandex.Metrila is included with all Yandex.Metrika plans and plans that include this feature are available to all users. To buy additional tracking features, you need to purchase a separate license – for example, to view heat maps or track forms after they have already been submitted.
Analytics can be useful even if the user never clicks on any links in the form and leaves the site after filling it in. However, it is better to take advantage of all available information and see what kind of impacts form analytics have on your business. If your competitors are using Yandex.Metrila, you'll be able to study their behaviours and improve your own sales process accordingly.
Diverse API interfaces
Yandex also offers valuable features for users hoping to get more out of their data, and to analyse it using other tools. Various interfaces are available for this purpose:
- Reports API
- Google Analytics v. 3.0 compatible API
- Logs API
The last is the most interesting: with Logs API, you can obtain hit level data from a database without sampling. As everyone knows, Google Analytics only offers this to users of the payable version.
Conclusion
With two such prominent features as Session Replay (Webvisor) and Keyword Report, Yandex Metrica is absolutely must-use if you are planning to analyze and convert your Russian audience. You surely must use it in addition to your usual tracking tools.
Yandex has just announced they had released their new version of Yandex Metrica. The main thing in this version is the Auto-restart of the Yandex Metrica if it is not running in the browser session.
For example, you will need to change your tracking code and then have to restart Yandex Metrica in order for it to start tracking people who visit your site with the new code. This will help you a lot as more people will be tracked and you then can see their behavioral patterns in a better way.
