Last Updated on 1 year by Komolafe Bamidele
If you’re not event tracking in Google Analytics, then you’re losing valuable info on what your visitors actually do when they step into your site. Event tracking helps to keep everything organized.
With it, you can measure metrics like form impression, form conversion, affiliate link click, outbound link click, and so on.
Not only this, but you can also track events on your eCommerce site. Here, you can see the impression on your products, impression on your checkout page, and completed checkout impressions.
In addition to that, you can also track scroll tracking events. Here, you can tack scroll depth for 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% down of your page.
In this article, you will learn how to set up event tracking in Google Analytics in WordPress with MonsterInsights.
What is a Google Analytics Custom Event?
An event refers to user interaction on your site. This could be downloads, button clicks, video plays, or flash elements.
What is Event Tracking in Google Analytics Important?
Once set up, events can be tracked from a page load. It allows you to track how your site users are using your site and what actions they perform when they are on the site.
This way, you can understand and find your best-performing content, measure conversions, and attract more customers. You can also use your findings to improve on your least-performing content and optimize them to suit your audience’s needs.
Event Components
In Google Analytics, an event is made up of 3 main components
- Event Category: This refers to the object the visitor interacts with. For example, Refund, on an eCommerce page
- Event Action: This describes the action the user performs or the type of interaction. For example, click the URL of an outbound link
- Event Label: This provides extra useful information on the event you are tracking.
How To Set Up Google Analytics Events Tracking in WordPress With MonsterInsights
By default, Google Analytics is set to track only pageviews hits. If you want to track more than that, you would have to change the tracking options.
There are actually two ways to set up Google Analytics custom events tracking on your WordPress site, which are
- Tracking with MonsterInsights Custom Link Attribution
- Tracking by adding onclick Parameter on your link manually
By far, using MonsterInsights is the easiest way to use this feature. It is way faster since the plugin simplifies the entire process. With it, you can set up your event tracking in WordPress in minutes and forget about it.
This way, you won’t have to worry about placing the wrong onclick parameters on your link or even forgetting to place the code at all.
The second method – tracking by adding onclick parameters on your link manually is not really hard. But it is time-consuming.
You getting tons of traffic doesn’t guarantee good of conversion, but in-depth tracking of events on your site increase conversions
In addition, you would need to have some coding skills. This will help you make corrections when necessary.
Method 1: Adding Custom Link Tracking with MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights has been cited many times as the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. This is because of how well it integrates with Google Analytics.
With this plugin, you can bring your Google Analytics dashboard to your WordPress site and track more metrics than with would with Google Analytics alone.
A new feature of MonsterInsights is the Custom Link Attribution feature. This feature allows you to easily add custom event tracking to your links without having to do it manually.
All you need to do to access this feature is to install the latest version of the plugin on your site.
The Custom Link Attribution Feature allows you to track many important metrics including your call-to-action (CTA) button. With it, you can find how relevant this button is for your site’s conversion.
In addition to that, you can also add the feature to other important links in your subdomains to know how users interact with them.
To add custom event tracking to your links on WordPress is pretty easy with MonsterInsights. You won’t need to know much about coding though you would be dealing with codes.
Not to worry, this guide is indepth so you should be able to do it perfectly even if you have no coding skills.
To enable custom event tracking on your WordPress site with MonsterInsights, you would have to add the data-variable tag below to the HTML of your link.
After you’ve added the tags, MonsterInsights will track the link and provide you with details you need
How It Is Done
In this tutorial, you will add the custom event tracking tag on a sidebar call-to-action button. Let’s say the sidebar call-to-action button contains a link to your pricing page http://www.tutorial.com/pricing
Below are the following event conditions to fit this event type
- Event Category: “cta”
- Event Action: “click”
- Event Label: “Buy button”
In the tag above, you will replace the tag information in the event category, event action, and event label with the new conditions.
When done, your custom event tracking tag should look like this
With that, the set up is completed. MonsterInsights will collect data from your custom event tracking link. To view the data, navigate to the Publishers report in your MonsterInsights.
That is Insights >> Reports >> Publisher.
If you’ve created a custom link like the one for pricing as shown above, then scroll down. Here you can find all your links, including the Total Clicks on the links.
If you created a custom affiliate link, then scroll to the Top Affiliate Links report. Here, you can also see all your affiliate links, their labels, and the total clicks.
You can also track your AMP optimized custom links with the Custom Link Attribution feature.
Method 2: Tracking By Adding Onlick Parameter On Your Link
This method will require a bit more work though you should be able to get it working if you don’t want the Custom Link Attribution feature from MonsterInsights.
With this method, you can add custom WordPress event tracking using onclick parameter. To do this perfectly, you will need to know a little about Javascript.
Below is the format for the onclick parameter
Once again, I’m adding a call to action button to my pricing page. The process is actually the same here.
You will have to replace the event category, event action, and event value with the event conditions set. Here is how the call-to-action button link will look like once I’ve done that.
With that, Google Analytics will track the events you’ve set when users view the button or click on it.
Events You Can Track With MonsterInsights
There are several events you can track with MonsterInsights including scroll depth tracking and so on. Here is a full list including the event type, category, action, label, and value.
- Event Type: Download file link click
- Event Category: Downloads
- Event Action: URL of file
- Event Label: The label of the href attribute, either link title or text content
- Event Value: n/a
- Event Type: Outbound link click
- Event Category: outbound-link
- Event Action: URL of link
- Event Label: The label of the href attribute, either link title or text content
- Event Value: n/a
- Event Type: Affiliate link click
- Event Category: outbound-link-aff
- Event Action: URL of link
- Event Label: The label of the href attribute, either link title or text content
- Event Value: n/a
- Event Type: Telephone number link click
- Event Category: tel
- Event Action: URL of number, i.e., tel:1-234-567-8905
- Event Label: The label of the href attribute, either link title or text content
- Event Value: n/a
- Event Type: Email link click
- Event Category: mailto
- Event Action: mailto URL of mailto link, i.e., mailto:[email protected]
- Event Label: The label of the href attribute, either link title or text content
- Event Value: n/a
- Event Type: Checkout Page Impression
- Event Category: Checkout
- Event Action: Started Checkout
- Event Label: Checkout Page
- Event Value: n/a
- Event Type: Completed
Checkout
- Event Category: Checkout
- Event Action: Completed Checkout
- Event Label: Order ID Number
- Event Value: Price (integer)
- Event Type: Scroll 25% Down Page
- Event Category: Scroll Depth
- Event Action: Percentage
- Event Label: 25%
- Event Value: 1
- Event Type: Scroll 50% Down Page
- Event Category: Scroll Depth
- Event Action: Percentage
- Event Label: 50%
- Event Value: 1
- Event Type: Scroll 75% Down Page
- Event Category: Scroll Depth
- Event Action: Percentage
- Event Label: 75%
- Event Value: 1
- Event Type: Scroll 100% Down Page
- Event Category: Scroll Depth
- Event Action: Percentage
- Event Label: 100%
- Event Value: 1
- Event Type: Product Impression
- Event Category: Products
- Event Action: Impression
- Event Label: Impression
- Event Value: n/a
Event Tracking in Google Analytics Finally Verdict
In the article we have established that you can increase your sale, Lead, and conversion rates with the simple step of tanking every activity that occurs on your website like abandoned cart, Retargeting your audience, determine audience that engage in your website et.c
I hope I have provide in this article, if you have any questions, you can drop it in the comments section below, and kindly share it on your social media. This article might be helpful your friends.