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Google analytics event tracking is one of my
secret weapons.
It allows you to track anything on your site.
And shows you the highest converting:
- Pages
- Traffic sources
Best of all?
Let’s take a closer look at how you can use Google Analytics event tracking to grow your business.
What Will I Learn?
- What Is Google Analytics Event Tracking?
- Why Is Google Analytics Event Tracking Important?
- 10x Things You Can Track In Google Analytics
- What Can You Track With Google Analytics?
- How To Install Google Analytics The Right Way
- How To Set Up Google Events Tracking
- How To Set And Track Goals In Google Analytics
- How To Set Up Funnel Tracking
What Is Google Analytics Event Tracking?
Google Analytics event tracking shows you actions people take on your website.
These actions – which are called “goals” – are steps you want website visitors to take.
For example…
If you run an affiliate website you may want to track:
- Email sign ups
- Affiliate link clicks
Or if you run an eCommerce site you might want to track:
- Sales
- Product views
So take a moment to understand your goals to figure out which metrics to track.
Why Is Google Analytics Event Tracking Important?
Google Analytics event tracking allows you to identify:
- Traffic sources
- Campaigns
For example:
The event tracking data shows me…
If I want to increase affiliate clicks I should focus on tweaking these 2x pages because of the conversion rates-
AND:
If I wanted to bring high converting traffic to my site, I should focus on YouTube and Twitter (mostly YouTube) due to the conversion rates-
The data can also show you where your effort is wasted.
Take a look at this data from one of my eCommerce clients:
You can see that social media traffic has zero conversions.
But:
- CPC traffic
- Organic search traffic
So if they want to make more money, they need to double down on those traffic sources and stop doing social.
Because it’s free to use, there really is no excuse not to be doing it.
Here’s how to set it up…
10x Things You Can Track In Google Analytics
Google Analytics allows you to track:
The number of these elements you’ll need to track will depend on your business.
So, how do you know what to track?
What Can You Track With Google Analytics?
To work out what you need to track with Google Analytics, take a look at:
- Your current goals
- The actions you want your user to take
- The metrics to match them
This will vary from business to business.
Let’s take my blog as an example…
Example: Matthew Woodward’s Affiliate Website
The goal of any business is to increase income.
To do that in my case, I need users to:
- Sign up to my mailing list
- Download content upgrades
- Click my affiliate links
This means I’d need to set all of these as trackable “goals” so I can see:
- When
- Where
- How often
Below is an example of how this looks for affiliate link clicks:
This information allows me to see if I’m achieving my goal.
But it also allows me to see which:
- Pages perform well
- Pages perform poorly
- Offers perform well
- Products users are interested in
Okay, back to your site…
Take a couple of minutes to think about which elements are important to you.
You’ll likely need to be tracking some of the following:
Link clicks
- Affiliate links
- Internal links
- Product placements
Conversions
- Product purchases
- Mailing list signups
- Advert clicks
Downloads
- Content upgrades
- eBooks
Submissions
- Contact forms
- Surveys
- Blog comments
Content
- Pages read
- Page scroll percentage
- Bounce rate
How To Install Google Analytics The Right Way
You may already have Google Analytics but I’m going to show you how the pros do it…
Click this link to sign up for a free Google Analytics account.
Then:
- Download and install this Google Analytics Dashboard plugin
- Connect it to your Google Analytics account
Then we’ll look at how to configure each section…
How To Set Up Google Events Tracking
You can set up Google Analytics Event Tracking really easily…
Head to:
Tracking Code > Events Tracking
Inside your WordPress dashboard.
You should see a page like this:
Now turn all of these tracking elements on:
If you’re tracking affiliate links on your website, you’ll also need to set “Affiliates Regex” to match. (Regex is the most common term used in your affiliate links.)
For example, my affiliate links are all redirects which contain the term /get/:
- https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/get/ahrefs/
- https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/get/wprocket/
- https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/get/shortpixel/
This will then notify Google Analytics that URLs containing this term are affiliate links.
Custom Dimensions Configuration
Go to the next tab,“Custom Dimensions”.
Dimensions are the characteristics of the metrics you’re going to track.
If you’re tracking affiliate clicks you may want to know:
- Which authors write the most clicked posts?
- Which categories generate the most clicks?
- Which type of user clicks the most?
- Author: Matt Woodward
- Category: SEO
- Users: returning
To inform future decisions.
On this page, assign a unique dimension to each of the available slots:
You’ll then see this reflected in your Google Analytics dashboard.
Exclude Tracking
Click the next tab, “Exclude Tracking”.
Select the boxes for admins and editors:
This will exclude their metrics from your results.
Where Can You See The Events You Track?
You can see all of the events you track by going to:
Behaviour >Events
In you Google Analytics dashboard.
You will then be able to choose from your:
- Overview
- Top events
- Event pages
- Event flows
We will look at more specific events data you can see later in this guide.
How Long Do Events Take To Show In Google Analytics?
Google Analytics data can take up to 48 hours to show in your dashboard.
But if you go to:
Real-Time > Events
You can see what events are happening on your site right now.
eCommerce Configuration
If you’re an eCommerce site using WooCommerce, go to:
Integration > eCommerce
And select the “enhanced ecommerce plugin” from the drop-down menu:
Then install this plugin, and follow the configuration steps on the product page.
You’ll also need to setup eCommerce tracking in Google Analytic, which you can do using the instructions here.
How To Set And Track Goals In Google Analytics
You can set and track goals in Google Analytics by heading over to the Google Analytics website.
Then go to:
Google Analytics > Admin > Goals > New Goal
Here you can create a goal for anything.
These are the goals currently running on my blog:
Let’s look at how to set up the two you’re most likely to be running on your site:
- Outbound links
- Email sign ups
Example 1 – Affiliate Clicks
Let’s say you want to track an outbound link, like an affiliate link.
Here’s how to set this goal up:
- Custom
- Set the name, “Affiliate Click”
- Select the goal type as “Event”
- Set the category to, “Affiliate”
- Set the action to, “Click”
- Leave label and value blank (this can be changed later)
- Set the “Use the Event value as the Goal Value for the conversion” to “Yes”
It displays in your goals dashboard like this:
And your main Google Analytics dashboard like this:
Example 2 – Email Sign Ups
To set this goal:
- Custom
- Set the name, “Email sign up”
- Select the goal type as “Destination”
- Enter the URL of your “thank you” page
It displays like this in your goals dashboard:
And this in your main Google Analytics dashboard:
Once you have these set up you can set up funnel tracking…
How To Set Up Funnel Tracking
Funnels are the way visitors move from the 1st page they visit through to a conversion.
The more efficient your funnel is, the more conversions you will make.
The more inefficient your funnel is, the fewer conversions you will make.
This makes tracking funnels super important and they are easy to set up.
Once you start tracking you are able to see where traffic:
- Comes from
- Goes
- Drops off
Here’s how to track this…
Funnel Tracking Report
Head to:
Conversions > Goals > Funnel Visualization
Then select your target goal from the drop down menu at the top of the page.
You’ll see a visualization of the funnel your traffic goes through to reach a conversion.
If I tracked the funnel for people who sign up to my mailing list through my Fiverr post.
It gives me this image:
Here I can see the number of people who:
- Entered my site at each stage
- Left my site at each stage
- Who flowed from stage to stage
- The percentage of people who converted directly
If I can convince more of those 22,603 people to visit the landing page I’ll dramatically increase my conversions.
Being able to see this will help you to:
- See the exact problems in your funnel
- Update them
- See the result of that change
Goal Flow Tracking
Each traffic source will enter your funnel at a different stage.
They should then (hopefully!) move from one stage to the next.
We call this the “Goal Flow”.
You can see your goal flow by going to:
Conversions > Goals > Goal Flow
And selecting your goal from the drop down menu.
For example:
I want all of my search traffic to enter at top-of-the-funnel content, like blog posts.
But my social media traffic can enter at a later stage, like a sign-up landing page.
And I want all of them to end up at my sign-up page:
This visualization makes it easy to see:
- If all of my traffic enters at the right stage
- How people move from each section
- The conversion rates
- Areas for improvement
By looking at this for you own site you can optimize your website’s flows and create higher converting funnels.
Wrapping This Up…
Google analytics events tracking is a no-brainer.
It lets you see the key:
- Traffic sources
- Pages
- Links
All you have to do to take advantage of this free tool is:
- Connect your site to Google Analytics
- Choose your ideal conversions
- Set them as goals in the tool
- Track your funnels and flows
- Test and improve
185 Responses
We need extra effort to implement event tracker, but when its done, we can evaluate every component of our website. Really powerful tools.
Thanks
This tool will definitely help to increase our sales via means of analysis. Thank you for this post sir.
Glad to hear it – best wishes!!
This looks interest Matthew,
I will give it a try on my website and provide my feedback.
Let me know how it goes Mittal
Awesome tutorial Matt! I had previously been getting errors trying to get Google Analytics working, but using the plugin to get everything setup worked like a charm!
Great news David – glad it’s all up and running now :)
Hi Matt.
Thank you for this detailed tutorial. It’s really very helpful, informative and straight to the point.
I’m going to be implementing this Google Analytics Event tracking to my affiliate site. It will really help me track the overall progress and performance of my business.
Wasn’t aware of the analytics plugin and how useful it can be.
Thank you for sharing this tutorial.
Hey Emmanuel, awesome… glad I could help :)
Thanks, Matthew, this is an excellent guideline.
I have sent the article link to all my subscribers. Google Analytics is a tool that most marketers do not use fully (me included).
Looking forward to training a couple of our people to focus solely on this aspect of the business (so we can then offer it to others)..
Cheers and I appreciate all your hard work!
Dave : )
Thanks Dave. You’re right, Google Analytics is such a great but underutilized tool. Best of luck
Informative post. I was searching for something else but fortunately getting this post. Nice to see Google update because it always be beneficial for genuine persons.
Glad you came here Adit, thanks for commenting.
Excellent information again. I am looking forward for more updates.
Cheers Ollie
Thanks for sharing this technique. Actually, I am really finding great techniques in using Google Analytics. I want to experience more the benefits of this tracking tool aside from traffic tracking.
Well there are a ton of awesome Google Analytics hacks out there!
Great, I’ve learned so much from this blog post and it’s amazing.
I hope it helps you to grow :)
Great Matt….
This very excited and very helpful for me particularly…..
regards,
No problem Abuzzar!
HI Matt,
As a suggestion (not sure if it was mentioned above when I skimmed the comments), you may want to look into working with Google TagManager to set up the link tracking. I have found it can help streamline a lot of work in the long run. I use a combination of Analytics, TagManager, and Webmaster tools for much of my work alongside XML-Sitemaps and the usual browser developer tools. Definitely useful for Analysis and SEO.
Anyways, Cheers! (and thanks for the posts)
-Joshua
Hello
Can I track banner event click to conversion in google analytics ? Actually I have places banner click event code in my website for some banners and now I just want to track the total number of successful order people did after clicking that particular banner. It will be a great help if you can tell me the processor of doing that.
Thanks
For that you would need to use Google Analytics Ecommerce tracking as well
hi
thanks for this great article
i have quick question pleas
i have a blog that promote many amazon products , how can track which the most page or a link that drive me the most sales in amazon affiliate ? is there any way to set goals in GA to see the best page or link on GA ?
thanks again for this article
I don’t know if its possible on a page level with Amazon without creating seperate tracking ID’s manually
It is the same Mathew.
Now we just need to add it to our usual affiliate link that looks like this-
Ahrefs
Which ends up looking like this-
Ahrefs
Although i can read the correct example in your youtube video :)
just want to let you know :D
I think the WP comment system is stripping out your code =\
you can see here: http://prntscr.com/amhrj4
It looks the same?
looks the same for me as well the google code is lost
I am still new to this and learning about setting up Google Analytics. Was wondering if you can direct me to any posts or videos for beginners you may have, where I can learn about Analytics and its setup?
Hey,
You could also try these-
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/blogging/traffic/increase-traffic-with-google-analytics/
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/tools/google-analytics-hacks/
Thanks! I will check them out :)
Hi
How do u put onclick on a embeded youtube video. Do u have an example
Thanks
You will have to check out their developer documentation
This is only for the older analytics and not Universal Analytics. Is that right?
Yes this video is the older one I will update it for universal in due course
Hi,
Can I track in Google Analytics my affiliates’ opt ins? I see that we can track affiliate clicks but how about for affiliate opt ins?
Can you explain a little more?
We have a launch coming up. And we’re planning to give out prizes to our affiliate partners in a contest for opt ins, not only on sales. We have ClickBank but they can only track sales. We’re finding ways on how to track opt ins for our affiliate partners and wondering if we can track opt ins through Google Analytics. I can see from the video that we can track affiliate clicks but can we track visitors who opt in from their referral links?
Yes if your affiliate links had Google Analytics campaign tracking tagged on the URLs
Thank you! Just wondering, do you have a tutorial on how to do this? Sorry, it’s crazy busy over here. I hope you can help me out :)
Google ‘Google Analytics Campaign Tracking’
Hi Matthew, Nicely explained into the video, but I have doubt, what exact values I should put if I want to track videos on my blogs, and If I have videos on multiple pages I should set up all individually or it could set up once? Please advice.
You dont have to put a value
Hello,
I tried getting the report after sharing on google+ and when I clicked on the link it didn’t work. Please let me know.
Also do you know how to track on Facebook using google analytics?
Thanks.
Ooops sorry about that I have updated the link
What do you want to track with Facebook?
Hi Matthew,
Looks like the download link after liking it on facebook isn’t working, error below.
404. That’s an error.
The requested URL /get/analytics/web/template?uid=rxVEopOSQayvcQ6gp6ZmyQ was not found on this server. That’s all we know.
Sorry fixed that up :)
Hi Matthew,
wow! this is an incredible post ,this will help to learn a lot about how to track anything with google analytics. Thank you for putting all these at one place for easy reference.
Thank You
Best Regards
No problem :)
Matt,
I have applied event tracking to ecommerce website, thank you.
I have one requirement like, I want to create a user and give access to view only particular event category.
Example: I want to create ‘testUser’, this user have access to view only ‘amazon’ events not other event category. And we want to give these user details to ‘amazon’, so that it will be clear to amazon that our website is navigated the urls. Is this is way to send the reports to amazon.
Please guide me.
Thanks in Advance,
Krishna
You would need to build something that uses the Google Analytics API to do that
Could you please share some examples…
Thanks,
Krishna
I’m not a developer sorry but here are is the documentation https://developers.google.com/analytics/
Hi,
New to GA…
Is it me or do the following look the same?
Now we just need to add it to our usual affiliate link that looks like this-
Ahrefs
Which ends up looking like this-
Ahrefs
I’m not sure what you mean
Superb, just applied this to a couple of my ecommerce sites, thanks Matt!
No problemo :)
Hi Matthew,
I am trying to setup google analytics for one website, that displays different products(like TV, laptops, tablets..) from different wesites(amazon, flipkart..), If we select the product it will redirect to that website.
I want to track the visit of the websites and products. Can you help me out how to track?
Many Thanks in Advance,
Krishna
You need onclick tracking on the button that takes them from your site to the other sites
Thank You Matthew for the prompt reply.
Do you have any videos for ‘onclick tracking’ and how to setup?
Actually we are dynamically binding the products, so are we able to apply this onClick tracking for this?
Many Thanks in Advance,
Krishna
Matthew,
We are writing entire website code in HTML and JavaScript.
Thanks,
Krishna
I am not a developer sorry
Thanks for the reply Matthew.
Is it required to create goals after creating events?
Thanks,
Krishna
If you want to track events as goals, yes
Hi Matthew,
I went through a load of my articles and added the Event tracking code, then went back in to see WordPress had stripped the onclick stuff out.
How do you stop WordPress stripping it out and leaving it alone?
Many thanks
Ben
I guess you use the visual editor? I never touch it
I was trying to find out why the code wasn’t working (or at least I wasn’t getting any results in GA). When I read the question above, I went to check, and yes: the code got filtered out, somehow! Any idea how to get the code in, without losing it?
Hi Matthew,
I have a question. i dont understand why after every code u had wrote “1.00,true” what does it mean???
i want to track E Mailer. So how can i track that.
onClick=”_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’, ‘Emailler’, ‘click’, ‘BANNERNAME/url’);”
onClick=”_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’, ‘Emailler’, ‘click’, ‘BANNERNAME/url’,1.00,true);”
That sets the value of the event
tried adding Event Tracking to various place on the following page but none are being tracked: http://exerciseo.com/author/alkavadlo/
Are you able to see what the issue is and if the tracking code has been added correctly/incorrectly?
You can use the Google Analytics Debugger Chrome extension to see why its not working
Thank You Matthew Woodward.
Great post Matthew.
Small question, how do you track email subscriptions that come from popups?
Thanks
I use OptInMonster
Thanks for the great tutorial Matt.
Do you know of any WP plugins that can automate adding the tracking code values to links? I’m thinking of something similar to ThirstyAffiliates, which I’m already using for affiliate links.
Cheers
Toby
ThirstyAffiliates can do it natively
Hi Matt,
Tracking affiliate links still works right?
I’m having trouble getting it to work, but not just if something is conflicting with something, or perhaps because the links are PrettyLin links.
Yeah it does no problem
Finally, figure it out.
I was using “Google Analytics by Yoast”, for some reason the code you have above and code i found on other sites didn’t work.
I had to use the following code:
onclick="__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'affiliate link', 'product name', '/url-slug/');" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"Not sure if code will display in comment so here is screen shot.
http://take.ms/PwdAb
Thanks again.
Are you using legacy or universal analytics?
Using universal, but for some reason only the code I posted works with Yoast.
Even the code generated with gaconfig.com wouldn’t work.
There is a very handy Google Analytics debugger addon from Chrome that might help you out
I’ve had a similar issue as well. I’m using Yoast for SEO and Analytics, but not all of my affiliate links are being tracked with the filter you can configure to track internal links as external links.
I came here to find a workaround, so thanks for the comment. I’ll give it a try.
Matthew,
When I add event tracking code in WP text editor and switch back to visual editor, WP automatically strips out that code. Do you know why that’s happening? My wp is up to date.
I never use the visual editor
That’s strange! But then what do you do if you need to add a shortcode or something using the navigation that we see in visual editor?
I just write the code
Great video Matt,
Do you know if it’s possible to add an event to an embedded youtube video, to track how many people press play?
I’m going to look into this now, but figured I’d ask here too.
Thanks
Oooo hadn’t thought of that but take a look at https://megalytic.com/blog/tracking-youtube-videos-using-google-analytics
Thanks Matt,
Appreciate you taking the time to locate that. Seems relatively easy to setup.
No problem
WOW! Thanks for showing us how to use Google Analytics like a pro!
This is exactly what I need to do on my blog, your email happened to pop up at the right time, too.
Hahaha funny how that works out sometimes!
Hi Matt,
Awesome tutorial. This cleared up a few things from the Analytics front.
We have our own landing page which we drive ppc traffic, and the thing that I’m pretty stuck on at the moment is how to track conversions (postback/pixel fire on affiliate link LP) and attributing them back to the keywords that generated the conversions in the first place from adwords.
Lets say we are using our own affiliate tracking platform such as HasOffers, how can I dynamically populate the keywords into the affiliate links and postbacks/pixels?
Do you have any suggestions on this?
Hi Matt, awesome guide, is it possible to use the affiliate tracking code for image clicks (banners) (in wordpress that go to custom urls) that redirect to the affiliate page?
Thanks for your help dude.
Will
You sure can – you can add the code to pretty much anything!
Hi Matt,
Is it possible to track Contact Form Submission as the last step in a funnel WITHOUT a thank you page? That is, I have 2 Google AdWords Campaigns, each with their own landing page. I set up the goal to track from AdWords to the landing page to the Contact page but I cannot tell if the contact form page was submitted as there is no subsequent thank you page – only text that pops up on the contact page. If I set up an event I can’t add it to the end of the previously described funnel, cany I?
Hmmm I think if you got the submit button to fire off an event, you can set that up as a goal
Hi Matt,
Whats the best way to add events to a wordpress website. Everytime i change it in my posts it gets reset by the WYSIWYG editor. The only solution I came up with is use a plugin like Google Analytic Events or using RawHTML to prevent it from changing. Thoughts?
I don’t use the WYSIWYG editor personally =/
Hey Matthew,
I had this tutorial bookmarked. Went back to into implemented the tactics. Then realized after 2 weeks of not checking. This is the old way and this doesnt work with Universal Analytics. Would you mind doing an update with the new version?
Ahhh I haven’t moved to universal myself yet sorry, but I will update it when I do :)
What is the plugin you are using for the popup that comes to subscribe to your blog? I really like it..
Hi,
That is https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/get/optinmonster/
Hello Matthew,
I find your video is really helpful to me. But still got one more question. I want to track the click events of my “Submit Form Button” which I used a third-party service like MachForm.
How am I going to track that or simply how am I going to paste the tracking code inside the webpage?
Please help me and thank you very much for the help.
Cheers,
– Felix
You will have to ask MachForm devs about that if you cant control the code
After the creation of the form, their form editor will then generate the codes for me to paste it in my webpage. I am thinking what part of script I will paste the tracking code.
You need a developers/coders help for that
Hi Matthew,
Very good your video about tracking anything with Google Analytics… What’s about google “no provided” issue.
thanks
Nothing we can do about that – keywords are so 2012 anyway :P
Glad you mentioned that as I was wondering the same thing.
I’m new to GA, so I don’t want to assume, but the way I’m interpreting it this is the “old” (ga.js) code:
ga(‘send’, ‘event’, ‘category’, ‘action’);
…and this would be the “new” Universal Analytics (analytics.js) code:
onclick=”_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’, ‘category’, ‘action’, ‘label’]);”
Please correct me if I’m wrong. :) Thanks in advance!
Sorry, swap the two lines of code so top is new and bottom is old (changed the wording/structure of the post midway through).
Hi Mathew sorry just wondering how come you mention affiliates wouldn’t have thought it would be as relevant…
I’m a full time affiliate ^^
Hi,
Yes I will do at some point
Hi, Matthew.
How can one get in contact with you? what’s the best way
I have some questions regarding ‘How To Track Anything With Google Analytics’.
I;m new to GA and so my questions would be elementary and possibly boring for you so you obviously don’t have to answer them if you don’t want to although it would really help me with conquering the learning curve
Hi,
Start here – https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/forums/ or ask in the comments
I didn’t found custom report
Try reading the post properly
Interesting stuff matthew however I got confused why you have mentioned you put affiliate links as event AND goals. ?
An event is basically just a fabricated pageview.
If you want to measure conversion rates/conversion value etc then you need to map an event as a goal
Thats what we are doing :)
Hi matt. I left a comment on the youtube video, but I’m reposting here in case you miss it. I’d really like to know the answer to this!
How would this work with an iframe Amazon affiliate link that looks like the one below? There’s no html outbound link as such to which the analytics code can be attached.
YouTube really made a mess with the comment management/moderation with the Google+ integration so its likely I missed it sorry.
Why would you use an iframe?
That’s the format that Amazon uses for its enhanaced links. The specific ones I want to track are like those on this page
http://gopaintshoppro.co.uk/paintshop-pro-x6-for-photographers.html
Thanks for the quick response :)
Ahhh I see – I don’t think so, perhaps you could add the onclick event to the java easy enoguh but im not a coder. I bet someone on fiverr could drop it in though.
Thanks, It’s the one piece of info I could really do with, so I’ll try and find a way. I’ll leave a comment if I manage to find anything worthwhile.
Just outsource it – anyone that knows code thats like a 30 second job
Hay Matthew ,
I am doing each and every step as you mentioned , can you please take a look on my Download button and verify it if i have put right code .
Site is http://goo.gl/cmvZrw
One more thing what i have to do to track event for different page , i mean if i have multiple page and i want to tack my download button then on every page i have to put the same code or i need to change something in tracking code. Should i have to create different Events and setup different Goal for every page.
Please guide
Regards
Looks ok to me, just check the data comes into analytics tomorrow.
I’m not a coder by any stretch!
You should read the official documentation regarding the best way to implement it.
Hey thanks a lot , Lots of info provided you, Its a great help . But you didn’t mention about the downloads .
Is it right that i will track a download by puting the event code on my Download Button and then set up a goal for thank you page.
I mean when anybody download my software if fire a event and for the successful installation we have thank you page. So should i have to do that.
I m still very confused ..
Hi,
Just tag them the same as an affiliate link.
Tnx nice video, works perfect for me the affiliate clicks. I have one question, at the 3.56 in the video what is the Event Category number 5. Page Exit do? Is the moment when the visitor hit the x button in the browser?
This is how many people left the site at that page.
If you want to add call tracking for free (so you can see call events), you can add a tel: anchor tag round your number and add the event trigger to that – this will only work on smart phones or Skype, but on some the sites I’m involved with that can be as many as 30% of the visitors, so with a little judicious analysis you can pick out the key phrases that have generated telephone calls (along with everything else)
Now that is a sweet tip :)
Just set up your custom report with my analytics. This is something I’ve been wanted to learn but never got around to actually taking the time to learn how to do it.
Thanks for sharing, Matt!
Casey
No worrys glad it helped you out :)
Hi Matt,
Thanks for an awesome article. I tried to implement the tracking code, but the links I want to track come from shortcoded buttons (example: [large_button color: red link:xxx] ). Do you know how I could manage that without having to lose the shortcodes of my wp theme? Btw, I tried to put the code in the shortcode, but obviously it doesn’t works.
Thanks!
You would need to edit the plugin that you are using for the shortcode
The best video I’ve watch when it comes to this specific topic Goals, Events and funnels.
I wish I could find a video about how to insert the onclick=”_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’, ‘Affiliate’, ‘Ahrefs’, ‘/tools-of-the-trade/’]);” code in the actual page.
Do you know one?
And thanks again.
The video explains that?
But i think it a little bit different depending on the theme you are using for your site. Right?
Nothing to do with theme, just use the post editor that we all have in the back end of worpdress.
Hi matt,
How can I set this up to show if my clients SEO is working. They are confused with PPC and SEO and he is spending 4200 a month on PPC also. It has its own landing page and phone number. But, her Analytics report is the standard mess that Google gives you.
What are the goals of the campaign?
Hey Matt, what did you eat in the morning?? Gallo pinto?? Share your secret please, how can you be so smart?? I have to stop reading your blog, because it make me fill i miss something every day. Thx for your share buddy!!
Hahah hopefully in a couple more weeks I will be =D
Thank you for this tutorial. I don’t really track much in general, just use statcounter to see what queries or where the traffic come from.
But now you convince me to us GA and it’s free. Can’t beat that.
Question: What is the plugin you use to display the “Subscribe to my award winning blog now” ? I like how it goes down when you scroll.
( I subscribed btw : )
Thanks!
Hi,
That is http://wordpress.org/plugins/q2w3-fixed-widget/
Thanks
Hi Matt
I have tried to something like this in the past but failed miserably!
All my affiliate links end “/exit.php’ so I set up a goal in G.A. to record all clicks on URLs containing ‘exit.php’… It’s never recorded a thing.
Any tips as to how to fix this?
Cheers
Hi,
Did you put the analytics tracking code within the exit.php file itself?
If not it can’t register that page was viewed, you need to setup event tracking as per the tutorial here
Ah ok, I didn’t know that.
That might be one I’ll have to get my developer to try and look at that, unfortunately I am not so technical as to be amending that type of file!
Thank you
Let me know if you get stuck!
Are you okay with Google analytics? A lot of people stay away from it now. I found Piwik and it’s fantastic.
Hi,
Yeah have used it for years, why wouldn’t you use it?
I love this tutorial.
It something so simple and yet people often forget to do it.
I mean there was even a part that you forgot to do.
Goal tracking. It’s so important.
Which part did I forget to do?
Hey matt, great post!
How do you lock your contet with social signals like that?
Could you please give me a search query or something to start with? :)
Thanks
Hi,
I use https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/get/viraldownloadplugin/
Hi Matthew,
I left this question on Google+ but I’ll also ask it here.
First off, thanks for the tutorial. I’d like to set up event tracking for when a podcast is played. I have 5 audio podcasts files on one page and I’d like to know which one is being played the most and where the traffic is coming from who actually listen to the podcast. How will I use the event tracking code with the HTML5 iFrame embed?
Very nice guideline on to have full access one Google analytics report
Cheers Ade!
I’m sorry Matt. I cant write php code here. It’s SERVER[REQUEST_URI]
I know what you are getting at, but within posts you can execute PHP by default ^^ I use this trick in my siderbar for the RSS link thoguh
Another top post by Matt. It’s always worth being able to track as much as you can on Analytics.
Then you can make awesome posts like the one I’m going to write this afternoon :P
Hello Matt
That is AWESOME. I was waiting for this
Thank you so much
Batu
Cheers Batu
I want to share something for Wordpress (aka Php) sites.
You can use this code for Label .
onclick=”_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’, ‘Affiliate’, ‘Amazon’, ”]);”
onclick=”_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’, ‘Affiliate’, ‘Amazon’, ”]);”
Hi Matt,
Isn’t this easier with Google’s URL Builder tool? Or is not the same thing?
Hi,
That is for custom campaign tracking like when you send out an email or buy banner advertising etc
Just seen the full video – Like to point out that in the Email Signups Dashboard, your #5 referer was my other site – SerpChirp xD
Winning =D Thanks for the traffickz!
Matt, good post, one thing you should do is track your email links… I noticed you are not doing it… just a suggestion.
How are you creating the tracking events? Manually or with Yoast SEO plugin?
Thanks!
Hi,
Yeah my email tracking sucks, I have an old aweber account that doesnt even tell me open rates ^^
I’m setting it all up manually, Yoast tracks outbound links – but mine redirect through an internal link first
Better if you can show How to set up Google Analytics account for web site with video :P
Hi,
Just install http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
dont think the google + share button is working, i shared it and got nothing, the page just reloaded.
cool tutorial though, im looking forward to trying it out, i want to scale my traffic by buying advertsing slots but I am unsure on how to go about it. this may help a lot.
Hi,
Fixed :)