How To Track Links And Buttons In Google Analytics

There is a general trend on the internet to track what the website users are doing on the page. In order to track activity such as clicks or how the users are moving one page to another on the website, the webmaster normally uses two types of methods called UTM and GTM tracking. 

Another scenario is button click tracking which is very popular and recommended to use if you have a WooCommerce website. However, button click tracking can be used in general websites to track conversions such as buttons containing affiliate links or any specific landing page. 

Now, if you are using a WordPress site you can set up the link and button tracking using plugins. Since configuring Google tag manager or UTM code in Google analytics event is a manual process, so to avoid any mistakes you can take advantage of two great plugins for WordPress.  

Generally, there are multiple plugins available to track links and you are free to choose any of them. Though, the two most recommended plugins with the best features are MonsterInsights and OptinMonster. That being said let’s dive in and see how to track links and buttons with these two plugins.

Track Links And Button With MosnterInsight

MonstarInsight is a powerful analytics tool that offers an in-depth report of user activity on your website. It will let you discover exactly how people came to the website, what are keywords bring them in, which site actually referred the visitors, and most importantly what the visitors are clicking on the website. These reports help the plugin to guide you to improve website performance as well.

MonsterInsights makes it so simple to connect your WordPress site with Google Analytics properly. Simply get your tracking ID from Google analytics and place it inside the settings of MonstarInsight to get the stats inside your WordPress admin. This procedure is much easier than manually adding analytics codes and configuring event tracking etc.

Let’s find out how it works:

#1. Install The Plugin From WordPress Repository

Install MonsterInsights (Google Analytics for WordPress) either via the WordPress.org plugin repository or by uploading the files to your server. Activate the plugin and it will take you to the setup wizard. 

#2. Configure Plugin With Setup Wizard

Proceed by describing your website category and click on continue. Remember these steps are highly recommended if you are using this tool for the first time and help you properly configure the plugin. Additionally, it allows you to avoid any misconfiguration. 

In the next step, MonsterInsights will ask you to connect your Google Analytics account so that all the links and button clicking events can be tracked by analytics.

After successfully connecting to your Analytics account it’s time to configure your plugins settings so that links & button tracking work well. If you have affiliate links on your website you can set the path for those links to get tracked. Also, you can mention the users who can see tracking reports.

After saving the settings MonsterInsights will be ready to use and it will deploy tracking and start collecting data which you can either view in Analytics events or the WordPress dashboard. Depending on your website size it will take 30 minutes to 24 hours to display data in Google Analytics.

#3. Advance Settings Of MonsterInsight

After finishing with the setup wizard you can take some advanced steps to make your report more appropriate like enabling the demographic and interest report of the links. 

Go to the insights on your WordPress dashboard menu and click on settings. Swap to the “engagement” tab to configure link attribution.

To track eCommerce links and buttons activity you need to look for the eCommerce tab inside the settings window. Enabling this feature requires a premium plan so that you can see click and conversion rate, and purchase button action with revenues.

With MonstarInsights you can bring your website tracking to a whole new level. After setting up this plugin you can go to Google Analytics and check the link & button clicking events under the real-time tab or behavior tab. 

… or you can use the MonsterInsight report inside the WordPress dashboard too. You can detect audience type, device, link categories, and clicks from the countries. 

Moreover, most clicked outbound links, incoming referral links can be found inside the plugin report.

Moving to the next plugin OptinMonster, let’s find out how we can track links and buttons with this plugin.

Track Buttons And Links With OptinMonster

This is another great option for tracking links, increasing leads, increase subscriptions from an all-in-one plugin. More than tracking and it provides you dynamic ability to make personalized engagement campaigns with the help of popup messages, floating bars, lightboxes, and other interactive elements.

In terms of link and button tracking, all you need to do is add the desired links and buttons into the optinmonster elements and let it track everything automatically. Most of the engaging part of this plugin is not only the interactive elements it has, instead the ability to track and predict visitor behavior makes this plugin a perfect choice for many professionals.

So let’s dive in and see how you can configure this plugin for link tracking.

#1. Install The Plugin From WordPress.org Repository

First of all search for the plugin OptinMonster – Best WordPress Pop-up Plugin and install/upload it to the website server. Activate the plugin.

#2. Configure The Plugin With OptinMonster Account

Now a new window will appear which will ask you to either create a new account or connect to your OptinMonster account using an API key.

Remember that OptinMonster is a premium plugin and you should have a plan before connecting your WordPress website. There are four plans which offer different types of features are called basic, plus, pro and growth. 

The UTM link tracking features are available only in Pro and Growth plans which costs around $29 and $49 per month accordingly. 

After creating your account go to the Optinmonster account and create a new API key inside the API dashboard.

In the next step copy your API key and paste it inside the API credentials settings of the WordPress plugin and click on connect.

When your website is successfully connected with the OptinMonster account you will see a new tab called Optin above the “API credentials”. Go there and click on refresh to appear all your Optins in the WordPress plugin.

#3. Creating Optin And Track It With Analytics

With conversion elements like lightbox subscription, floating bar, and closing popups OptinMonster does a great job to get more returning traffic and convert them to leads & customers. At the same time, it allows you to track all the activity on these elements with Google analytics or optinmonster report. 

Setting up the conversion analytics with optinmonster is pretty easy. Craft your elements, publish them, connect to Google analytics then track all your growth. 

Create any pop-up or buttons in the OptinMonster account and then go to the analytics. To configure your Google Analytics account click on add new account and generate the authorization code. This process is simple and should not give you any headache while setting it up. 

You can also set an account label to quickly identify it inside your Analytics account. 

In the Optin monster site report you can track the highest conversion pages with their URL, Leads, and click conversion percentage. The graphical presentation makes it easier to determine where you need to improve and where everything is going very well. 

Moreover, you can track email subscription buttons click by integrating your account with popular email marketing tools like Aweber, MailChimp, Getresponse, and much more. So optinmonster is a great tool if you really want to scale your business depending on live and practical stats.

Final Words:

Though there are a number of great WordPress plugins for creating and tracking your website activities OptinMonster and MonsterInsight have done the best job which really improves your site performance. While this post just scratches the exterior of these two plugins, it’s got the decision point you need to take for advancing towards a perfect tracking campaigning and taking your initial strategy to the next level.

With the link and button tracking, you see your site internally and visualize your next decision perfectly which would not be possible without tracking and getting the reports. And in my sight, Optinmonster and MonsterInsigt have done everything right for a WordPress site owner to save lots of time understanding the things of Google analytics so that they can focus more on the outcome.