How to Display Total Views on WordPress Posts

Human beings are social creatures, and we find comfort in connecting with other people. Humans are also very impressionable, often making judgments and decisions based on what others think and do.

These behaviors are directly related tosocial proof, where people act based on what they observe other people doing and enjoying. For online content, social proof can be anything from a celebrity endorsement to consumer reviews on a product page to recommendations from a family member.

While virality and SEO help increase visibility, social proof is also an effective way to increase engagement on yourWordPress site. One of the easiest ways to share social proof with your site visitors is by displaying the number of views specific pages or posts on your site have received. For example:

Image Source

By displaying these numbers on your site, visitors can tell when a particular post is gaining a lot of traction. As psychology predicts, they’ll want to engage with content that others enjoy, giving your site more engagement and increasing the likelihood of customers taking desired actions, like signing up for your service, purchasing a product, or subscribing to a newsletter.

This post will give an overview of WordPress’native views statisticand outline the two ways to display these numbers on your site to increase engagement and guide readers to your top performing posts.

WordPress Views

When you visit your WordPress analytics page, you’ll likely see a chart like the one below that summarizes your site traffic and engagement by type: views, visitors, likes, and comments.

Image Source

Views are the number of times a visitor loads a page on your site. These numbers are updated every five minutes.

It’s important to note that, although this number takes into account the actions that each visitor takes on your site, views are not the number of people who visit your site. That number is tallied under visitors — let’s go over this distinction below.

WordPress Views vs. Visitors

Views and visitors are the two main units of site traffic on your WordPress site. A visitor is counted when a user visits your site for the first time in a specific period (day, week, or month). Visitor count is typically lower than view count because a single visitor can view multiple pages in one sitting, but they’re still one visitor.

您可以这样考虑：有人通过主页进入您的网站，因此您的访问者Tally逐渐增加。然后，他们访问您的“博客”页面，然后访问您的“联系”页面。在这一点上，您的观点数量增加了三个，因为他们在您的网站上加载了三个唯一页面，但是访问者的数量仍然相同，因为一个人负责三个不同的页面视图。如果同一位访问者离开您的网站并在三个小时后回来，他们仍在同一访问者的情况下计算，但是视图会增加，具体取决于他们访问的几页。

Should you choose to display view counts on your WordPress site, there are two ways to do this. The first method involves additional plugin downloads, while the second requires some technical know-how. Let’s go over those below.

Displaying Post Views With a Plugin

If you don’t have the technical skills to edit your own code, there are various WordPress plugins available to help you display total post views — here are three we recommend:

1.Post Views Counter

Post Views Counter is a well-known, reliable plugin that you can use to display the number of times a post, page, or custom object is viewed. The tool can pull this data in four different ways:PHP,Javascript, Fast AJAX, orREST API.

Within the plugin’s display settings, you can customize the style and position of the view counter.

Image Source

You can also exclude view counts from individual visitors, like bots, logged-in users, or user roles like admin or editor.

2.页面查看计数

This plugin helps you display the number of post and page visitors to new and interested users. You can designate the plugin to only show the counts for individual posts or pages, helping you prioritize the most popular posts and content for increased engagement.

Image Source

The count display is minimalist, but you can alter the block’s position, color, and size to match your current theme.

3.Page Visit Counter

Page Visit Counter can be used to display page view count as content blocks at the bottom of specific site pages or restricted to certain post types. This plugin is highly customizable, ensuring that the module is aligned with your site’s appearance.

Image Source

Displaying Post Views Without A Plugin

If you feel comfortable editing code, you can display page views by making a few changes to your theme files:

1. Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard
2. Navigate to Appearance,then Theme Editor.
3. Open thefunctions.php文件。
4. Copy and paste the following code before the closing tag?>:

   function gt_get_post_view() {
   $count = get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'post_views_count', true );
   return "$count views";
   }
   function gt_set_post_view() {
   $key = 'post_views_count';
   $post_id = get_the_ID();
   $count = (int) get_post_meta( $post_id, $key, true );
   $count++;
   update_post_meta( $post_id, $key, $count );
   }
   函数gt_posts_column_views（$ columns）{
   $columns['post_views'] = 'Views';
   return $columns;
   }
   function gt_posts_custom_column_views( $column ) {
   if（$ column ==='post_views'）{
   echo gt_get_post_view();
   }
   }
   add_filter( 'manage_posts_columns', 'gt_posts_column_views' );
   add_action( 'manage_posts_custom_column', 'gt_posts_custom_column_views' );
   

5. Open thesingle.php文件。
6. Copy and paste this code in thewhile loop(press CTRL + F or Command + F to find it in the file):

7. Copy and paste this code where you want to display the number of post or page views:
   

8. Your post should look like this:

Image Source

Tracking Beyond Total Post Views

显示总帖子和页面视图是生成社会证明和权威的有用工具。尽管如此，它并不能深入分析内容的性能以及您的网站访问者。在下面，我们将建议您与WordPress集成的四个平台，以便更多地了解您的网站分析。

1.HubSpot WordPress Plugin

HubSpot的WordPress插件是在管理面板中查看网站指标的多合一工具。您将获得流量分析，页面性能或创建的任何自定义指标的概述。您还可以获取有关最狂热的受众成员的深入信息，帮助您创建他们喜欢的内容。

Pro tip:The HubSpot WordPress plugin will also let you use HubSpot email marketing, CRM, forms, popups, and live chat on your WordPress website.

Image Source

2.MonsterInsights

MonterInsights是另一个著名的Google Analytics（分析插件），拥有超过300万个活动装置。借助MonterInsights，您可以轻松地在WordPress中设置Google Analytics（分析），并访问Admin仪表板的分析和广告系列跟踪。您将获得有关谁在线的实时见解以及他们在您的网站上采取的行动以及最受欢迎的帖子的特定页面分析。

You can even use MonsterInsights to display your top-performing posts anywhere on your WordPress site to increase page views and engagement. This tool can be used across multiple devices, allowing you to view your analytics at any moment.

Image Source

3.Jetpack

Jetpack is a suite of security, performance, and site management tools for WordPress that compiles visitor behavior reports from Google Analytics. It comes with native standard measurement categories, like views and visitor count, but you can also create custom reports to obtain more detailed insights.

Image Source

4.谷歌分析

As a site owner, you’ve likely heard of Google Analytics. This plugin uses a tracking code to gain insight into website and page activity. You can use their default measurement reports or create custom objects to gain a more in-depth understanding of your users.

Image Source

Increase Engagement on Your WordPress Site With Social Proof

When you display a page and post views on your site, you tap into a basic human desire: fitting in. As social beings, when your site visitors see that a particular page or post has a significant amount of traffic, they’ll also want to interact with it and get in on the action.

如果您花时间在您的网站上显示这些数字，您可能会发现自己拥有一个更高表现的网站，其中一群更具参与度的关注者。