Want to learn how to track button clicks in Google Analytics for your WordPress site?
Google Analytics is an excellent tool for collecting data, but it can be overwhelming for many users. In this article, wie’ll show you an easy way to set up WordPress button click tracking. Best of all, there’s no code required!
Here’s what we’ll cover in this article:
- Why Track Button Clicks in Google Analytics?
- The Easy Way to Set Up Button Click Tracking
- How to Track Button Clicks in Google Analytics
Why Track Button Clicks in Google Analytics?
From eCommerce stores to niche blogs, button click tracking is a valuable tool for every website. Every click is a measure of how well your button is working to increase your site’s performance. Tracking button clicks gives you a clearer picture of how well you’re converting users on your site.
Some of the most commonly tracked buttons are:
- Add to cart buttons
- Form submit buttons
- File download buttons
- Call to action (CTA) buttons
- Contact buttons
By understanding what brings the most engagement and conversions, you’ll know exactly where to make tweaks to improve and optimize your site, which is important for any business or brand.
Boost income by leveraging button click conversions to make deals with the sites you send traffic to, use button click tracking to identify the type of content your audience enjoys and tailor new content to their preferences, easily see conversions, add-to-cart and remove-from-cart events, and the list goes on…
The Easy Way to Set Up Button Click Tracking
To get the most out of your analytics, you have to know how to set up different types of tracking in Google Analytics. For many, this is often easier said than done. Luckily, there’s an easy alternative!
Tracking button clicks in Google Analytics is a breeze with ExactMetrics, the best premium WordPress Analytics plugin.
ExactMetrics allows you to easily set up Google Analytics without editing any code or needing a complicated tool like Google Tag Manager. You get button click tracking and other advanced features right out of the box with an extremely user-friendly interface and Google Analytics reports right inside your WordPress dashboard.
One of the major pros of using ExactMetrics is that it will automatically create custom events and dimensions, so you can view your button clicks in WordPress AND Google Analytics as well, without any extra configuration.
Here are some of ExactMetrics’ most popular features:
- 1-click eCommerce tracking
- Conversion tracking for Google Ads, Microsoft (Bing) Ads, and Meta (Facebook) Ads
- Advanced form tracking and integration with the most popular form builders
- Display your most popular posts or products
- Affiliate and outbound link tracking
- Social media tracking
- Media and video play tracking
- And much more…
The first step to track button clicks in Google Analytics easily is to grab an ExactMetrics license (Pro level or above gives you access to all the button click tracking we’ll go over). Then, just install the plugin on your site and follow the setup wizard to connect your Google Analytics account.
For help getting started, check out How to Add Google Analytics to Your WordPress Site.
Once that’s done, you can view the ExactMetrics Overview Report for your site in your WordPress dashboard.
You can find more detailed reports for your site by navigating to ExactMetrics » Reports from your WordPress dashboard.
Now, let’s find out how to track button clicks in Google Analytics and WordPress, using ExactMetrics.
How to Track Button Clicks in Google Analytics
- Track Form Submit Buttons
- Button Click Tracking for File Downloads
- Track eCommerce Button Clicks
- Track Contact Buttons
- Custom Button Tracking in Google Analytics
- Track Video Buttons
Track Form Submit Buttons
ExactMetrics includes form tracking, which can be used to track submit buttons and automate form conversion tracking. Enabling forms tracking allows you to see which forms are triggering the most views and submissions.
To enable forms tracking, you need to install and activate the Forms addon. In your dashboard menu, navigate to ExactMetrics » Addons and find the Forms one. Then, click the Install button to install and automatically activate the addon.
That’s all there is to the setup process!
To view your form conversions report, go to ExactMetrics » Reports » Forms from your WordPress admin.
The forms report shows you how many impressions and conversions each form has triggered. Conversions are calculated using the number of total clicks on the form’s Submit or Send button.
Since ExactMetrics sets up all the complicated Google Analytics stuff behind the scenes, you can easily track your form button clicks in your Google Analytics account as well. Just navigate to Reports » Engagement » Events and click the new custom event titled generate_lead in the table.
You’ll see each of your forms along with the number of times it was submitted (Event Count) and Total Users.
For our step-by-step Google Analytics instructions, check out How to Track Form Submissions in Google Analytics.
Button Click Tracking for File Downloads
Do you offer downloadable content on your website, such as freebies or digital downloads for sale? Tracking file download buttons helps you determine how users engage with those files.
ExactMetrics automatically tracks file downloads for many common file types, including:
- Documents
- Spreadsheets
- Presentations
- PDFs
- Zip Files
You can add additional file types by going to Exact Metrics » Settings and clicking the Engagement tab at the top. Then, just expand the section for File Downloads to add additional file types.
To view the stats for your file download button links, click ExactMetrics » Reports and click Publishers » Overview from the top menu. Scroll down to your Top Download Links. You can see each of your download buttons and how many times each one was clicked.
To view your top file download button clicks in Google Analytics, go to Reports » Engagement » Events, and click the event titled file_download. Then, you can scroll down to the Link Text card to see your most clicked download links.
Alternatively, you can set up a custom report to see the files that were downloaded along with the button’s link text and the page it was on. You’ll want to set up your custom exploration like this:
Dimensions: File Name, Link Text, Page Location, Event Name / Metrics: Event Count
Rows: File Name, Link Text, and Page Location / Values: Event Count / Filters: Event Name – exactly matches – “file_download”
For help with creating custom explorations in Google Analytics, check out How to Create Google Analytics Custom Exploration Reports.
Track eCommerce Buttons
ExactMetrics can also track eCommerce buttons in Google Analytics and show you your reports in WordPress, which is super helpful for eCommerce businesses using WooCommerce, GiveWP, Easy Digital Downloads, MemberMouse, Restrict Content Pro, MemberPress, or LifterLMS.
The plugin comes with many robust eCommerce tracking features. To get started with eCommerce button click tracking, you first need to install the eCommerce addon.
Go to ExactMetrics » Addons. Find the eCommerce addon and click Install to install and activate it on your site.
ExactMetrics will automatically detect your software and connect it to Google Analytics eCommerce tracking. You’ve successfully set up eCommerce tracking on your site and can begin tracking button performance.
You can see an overview of your eCommerce conversions in the ExactMetrics eCommerce Report. From your WordPress dashboard, select ExactMetrics » Reports and click eCommerce » Overview at the top.
The eCommerce Report shows you lots of metrics, including how many times the Add to Cart and Remove from Cart buttons were clicked. Just scroll down in the report to see how many times these buttons were clicked.
To see which items people purchased the most, just check out the Top Products report.
To learn more about what you can do with eCommerce button click tracking in Google Analytics, check out How to Track Add to Cart in Google Analytics.
Track Contact Button Clicks
Do you use a contact button link for users to email (mailto) or call (tel) your business? If so, you can track how many times visitors click those buttons. ExactMetrics will automatically track these button links at events in Google Analytics.
To find out how many times they’re being clicked, go to your Analytics account and click Reports » Engagement » Events. In the report, find the event titled mailto. The Event count is how many times your email address links were clicked.
Similarly, to see how many times your phone number button or links were clicked, find the event titled tel in the report.
To learn more about phone call tracking, check out How to Track Phone Calls in Google Analytics.
Custom Button Tracking in Google Analytics
ExactMetrics automatically configures button click tracking for the events listed above, but you can also set up tracking for custom links.
You can easily track call-to-action buttons and other important links with ExactMetrics’ custom link attribution feature. Tracking these custom events can provide even more insight into how your site is converting and how visitors engage with your links.
To set up a custom button to track in Google Analytics, using ExactMetrics, you just need to add a little bit of HTML to the link you want to track. Every link that you want to track can include:
- Event Category – This is the category you want to assign to the interaction a user makes. It will be the name of the event in Google Analytics, like “cta” or “donate-button.”
- Event Action – This is what type of interaction was made, like clicking a link. If you don’t specify, Google Analytics will record this as the URL of you page.
- Event Label – Here, you can summarize what the button interaction was, like “Download Now” or “Buy Now.” If you don’t specify, your link text will be recorded here by default.
The only required part is Event Category, so you can leave the others blank if you want to keep it simple!
Here’s what a custom link would look like if you only add the category:
<a href="https://www.yoursite.com" data-vars-ga-category="custom_category">Example</a>
Just replace the URL with your own and custom_category with the category of your choice (leave the quotations). If you wanted to add an event action and event label, it would look something like this:
<a href=”https://www.yoursite.com/pricing” data-vars-ga-category=”cta” data-vars-ga-action=”cta_click” data-vars-ga-label=”blue_cta”>Buy Now</a>
Just use the link with the extra snippets on your site and ExactMetrics will make sure it’s automatically tracking in Google Analytics. You’ll find a new event with the category title you chose in Google Analytics under Reports » Engagement » Events.
To see how you can make a custom report to get more information on your individual custom button links, check out How to Track Google Analytics Custom Events.
Track Video Play/Pause Buttons
ExactMetrics can track how many times your videos are watched, how long each video is watched on average, how often the whole video is watched, and more.
To set up video tracking, head to WordPress and go to ExactMetrics » Addons, then scroll down to the Media Addon and click Install.
That’s it! Video tracking is now enabled.
Now, you’ll have a Media report inside your WordPress dashboard. Head to ExactMetrics » Reports, then navigate to the Media tab.
Then, you’ll see data for each of your videos that have been interacted with in your date range:
For each video, you’ll see plays, average watch time, average percentage watched, and completion rate.
This data will also be sent to your Google Analytics as events.
That’s it for button click tracking! Here are a few more articles that you may want to check out:
- How to Track Affiliate Links in WordPress
- How to Track Outbound Links in Google Analytics
- How to Track Link Clicks in Google Analytics and WordPress
We hope this article helped you to learn how to track button clicks in Google Analytics and WordPress.
Now, are you ready to track button clicks with the best premium WordPress analytics plugin?
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