Do you want to learn how to create easy event tracking with Google Analytics in WordPress?
Event tracking helps you to track and measure the results of the most important links and other call-to-action buttons that you have on your website or blog.
Usually people think of tracking everything using Google Analytics. But tracking everything over at Google Analytics can be difficult that why if you can track them on your WordPress website, it will be so helpful.
In order to set up this process it can be tricky but since we have MonsterInsights plugin to help us, event tracking can easily be created on our WordPress website.
Quick Links
What Is Event Tracking In Google Analytics?
If your website has things where you want readers or customers to interact with, like, downloads, video plays, button clicks, flash elements, etc.
So basically each event can be tracked if a page loads or a page view happens.
Click here – to get MonsterInsights Plugin.
Basically, Event tracking allows you to track how your website readers or visitors are interacting and engaging with your content.
If you track the events on your website, it will help you to understand and measure conversions. What this means is, what’s exactly happening with each click, download, play, flash element, etc.
And once you have the right data to track and measure, you can optimize the less effective content and boost their conversions.
For example, if there’s a sidebar banner with a Buy Now button that you’ve added on your website, and now if you want to know how people are interacting with it. You can set up event tracking that will allow you to track how many people viewed it and how many actually clicked that button.
Isn’t it great? I’m sure you would love to know!
Basically, an event has 3 main components that you should know:
- Event Category: It is the name of the object people interact with on your website. For example – It can be “CTA” for call-to-action buttons, where the keyword “CTA” can be tracked and measured.
- Event Action: It actually is the name for the type of interaction that happens. For example – “Click” for clicking on the buttons. “Click” – These are keywords to track and measure.
- Event Label: This is just for noting down additional information about the events you want to track or measure. For example – “Buy Button” for your sidebar button, where “Buy Button” is used to identify the label we’ve added.
Now, if you want to set up a call-to-action button for event tracking, you can add the event conditions like the examples below:
Category: “CTA”
Action: “Click”
Label: “Buy Button”
Once you’ve added them, Google Analytics will start to record your call-to-action button clicks as custom events with the values that you’ve used above.
Setting Up Google Analytics Event Tracking In WordPress.
Generally by default, Google Analytics only tracks pageviews or hits on pageviews (see it under primary dimensions and metrics, on your Google Analytics Account).
So if you set it up you should have event tracking enabled to measure event hits (users’ interactions with the content).
There’s another way you can set up Google Analytics event tracking on your WordPress website.
- Using MonsterInsights Custom Link Attribution.
This method is the easiest method.
So basically the MonsterInsights Google Analytics plugin simplifies the whole process of setting up event tracking on your WordPress website where it takes just a few minutes to set it up.
You just have to install the plugin and you can follow along to set it up.
So let’s see how to set up event tracking on your WordPress website.
Adding Tracking Links Using MonsterInsights.
First of all, you need to install MonsterInsights Plugin. It’s the only WordPress Google Analytics plugin I use on my website.
It helps you use Google Analytics with WordPress with ease. It’s pretty simple actually.
MonsterInsights actually introduced a new Custom Link Attribution feature to allows you to easily add custom event tracking to those links you want to track.
So, what you’ll need to do is to have the latest version of the plugin installed on your site to use this feature.
Now, with this new Custom Link Attribution Feature, you will be able to track all your call-to-action (CTA) buttons and find out what’s happening with them. You’ll be able to see how well or relevant they are performing for your website’s conversions that you want to track.
You can also add event tracking to other important links on your website like your subdomains and then see how people interact with those links.
Now you’ll know how your clicks are performing.
Actually, It’s easy to add custom event tracking to your any WordPress links using MonsterInsights plugin. All you have to do is to add the following data-variable and tags to the HTML of those links you want to track:
<a href="https://www.example.com" data-vars-ga-category="Custom Category" data-vars-ga-action="Custom Action" data-vars-ga-label="Custom Label" >Example</a>
Once the tags are added, MonsterInsights will track all those WordPress links you’ve added this tag and provide you with some detailed reports.
For example, If you have to add custom event tracking on your sidebar with a call-to-action button, and the sidebar call-to-action button has a link to your pricing page: https://www.example.com/pricing
You can use the following event conditions:
Category: “cta”
Action: “click”
Label: “Buy button”
Now, all you need to do is to replace the event category, action, and label with your assigned event conditions.
Then your custom event tracking link will look like this:
<a href=”https://www.example.com/pricing” data-vars-ga-category=”cta” data-vars-ga-action=”click” data-vars-ga-label=”Buy button” >Buy Now</a>
So, that’s all you need to do.
Now, if you want to view the data from your custom event tracking links, just head over to the Publishers report in MonsterInsights.
Go to Insights -> Reports -> Publisher.
Then, scroll a bit down and view the Top Outbound Links report if you created a custom link like this. Here’s one that created for pricing in this example.
And if you are trying to track a custom affiliate link, you can view the Top Affiliate Links report to see the number of clicks you’re getting.
Conclusion.
So, I hope you’ve learned how to create event tracking with Google Analytics in your WordPress website.
You just have to know those parameters and set them up for every click, download, plays or any other event you want to track on your WordPress website.
So, get your MonsterInsights Google Analytics Plugin to set it up here.
