December Free Plugin of the Month: EDD Metrics

EDD Metrics is a recently-released free plugin that gives Easy Digital Downloads shop owners more visual and customizable eCommerce analytics.

Since the plugin is free, you can add it to your store from within the WordPress dashboard. Once activated, you will be able to view the metrics under Downloads > Metrics on the left sidebar. The plugin not only works for the Easy Digital Downloads core platform, but also adds metrics if you’re using the Software Licensing or Recurring Payments extensions.

Although you can get some of this information from the built-in Reports within Easy Digital Downloads, the EDD Metrics plugin improves on it by allowing you to customize time periods for all of the metrics, and by providing a comparison to the previous period for the same duration.

The comparison is an important feature because it tells you the increase or decrease of a metric from the same period in the past. Since you get a pulse of how a specific metric is doing, you can make business decisions around how best to improve particular metrics.

For example, if you see that your Renewals are decreasing compared to the past, you can focus on tactics to revive the renewal rate.

When you click on metrics, this is the overview page you will see with the below metrics:

• revenue dollar value
• number of sales
• average revenue per customer
• yearly revenue
• value and number of refunds (hover on the metric box to see the number)
• value and number of discounts (hover to see number)
• value of renewals (if you have the Software Licensing extension)
• number of new subscriptions (if you have the Recurring Payments extension)

You can change the time periods by clicking on the date section at the top right where you can pick from some default periods (last 30 days, this month, last month, last 7 days, last 3 months), or click on the dates to set the start and end dates for a custom period.

Whether you pick the default periods, or set a custom one, each metric box will adjust the comparison time period to the one you selected. This provides you with a lot of flexibility when it comes to doing comparisons to the past.

In the Revenue Details area, you can see a chart of your revenue over a set time period. In addition, you can view the comparison with previous period, 6 months in the past, and 12 months in the past.

On this page, you can also view the number of new customers, the renewal rate, and a pie chart of earnings by downloads and earnings by payment gateway. This provides a visual way to view this information, and adjust them for specific time periods.

EDD Metrics is a free and easy-to-use plugin that provides you with an additional layer of eCommerce analytics for your Easy Digital Downloads store. Once installed, you can access the metrics within your WordPress dashboard without navigating to a third-party site.

You can choose different time periods or set your own by picking the start and end dates. A great feature of the plugin is to compare the metrics with the same time period in the past.

What metrics are important for your Easy Digital Downloads store? What do you use to track them? Please share in the comments below.

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