Track file downloads wordpress

Do you want to use Google Analytics to track link clicks and button clicks in WordPress?

Google Analytics can help you track the performance of your link clicks, but you’d have to manually add in a bunch of event tracking code because it doesn’t track links and button clicks by default.

Or, you can use the smartest Google Analytics WordPress plugin on the market, MonsterInsights, to easily automate your link click tracking.

In this article, we’ll show you how to track link clicks in Google Analytics for your WordPress site step-by-step.

Start Tracking Your Link Clicks Today!

Why Track Link Clicks and Button Clicks in WordPress?

Links and buttons are major points of user interaction on your site. Most often, you’ll use links and buttons as the call-to-action elements that you want your users to click.

Let’s see a few examples:

• Affiliate links will lead your users to buy your referred products and let you earn some referral income.
• Add to Cartbuttons will lead your customers to buy a product from your store.
• Form Submitbuttons will help your users to send a message using your online contact form.
• File downloadbuttons will help your users to download files from your site.
• Outbound links will redirect your readers to other websites (resources) you want them to go to.
• Call-to-actionbuttons will take your users to your product landing pages, and other important conversion pages.
• Click to call buttons are great for generating leads.

As you place these links and buttons for users to engage with on your site, tracking them can help you understand how exactly your users are interacting with them.

For instance, if you track link clicks and button clicks, you can find out which type of links are getting the most clicks, which buttons are the most popular, and much more. Then, you can analyze the reports and make improvements.

After you’ve optimized your links and buttons, they’re sure to get more visibility and more clicks. The more clicks, the more interaction, and engagement. When users are more engaged on your site, your site conversions will increase significantly.

In a nutshell, tracking events like links and button clicks can help you to understand exactly how your users interact on your site so that you can make informed strategies for your business growth.

Using MonsterInsights to Track Link Clicks and Button Clicks

Google Analytics can provide you with your entire website’s metrics but it tracks only page views by default. If you want to track events such as links and button clicks,  or transactions like eCommerce purchases, you’ll need to manually set up tracking for each event or transaction.

Unfortunately, setting up event tracking in Google Analytics is somewhat tricky, so newbies can get lost quickly. If you lack experience, you’ll need to hire an expert to help you to get Google Analytics to track link clicks.

That’s why we recommend you use MonsterInsights to track your Google Analytics metrics with ease.

MonsterInsights makes the entire process of using Google Analytics in WordPress super simple. So anyone can easily set up Google Analytics and configure advanced trackings such as events and transactions.

To get started, you’ll need to download MonsterInsights, install it on WordPress, and then connect your site with your Google Analytics account. You can then easily use Google Analytics to track button clicks in WordPress.

For detailed instructions, here’s our guide on how to properly set up Google Analytics in WordPress.

Once it’s set up, you can view the overview report for your site on your WordPress dashboard from the MonsterInsights Dashboard Widget.

To view detailed reports for your site, you’ll need to go to Insights » Reports from your WordPress dashboard.

Now, let’s go ahead and check how to track link clicks and button clicks in WordPress using MonsterInsights.

1. Tracking Affiliate Links in WordPress

MonsterInsights makes affiliate links tracking effortless in WordPress. If you’re using ThirstyAffiliates to manage your affiliate links, now you don’t need to configure anything to track your affiliate links.

MonsterInsights automatically detects your affiliate links and starts tracking them. It doesn’t matter which link prefixes you use, the plugin will automatically handle the whole setup process.

The automatic affiliate links tracking lets you save plenty of your time which you can use to increase your website traffic. Also, it reduces the chances of configuration errors which can skew your analytics reports.

You can view your affiliate links tracking reports by visiting Insights » Reports » Publishers from your WordPress dashboard.

You can always click the View All Affiliate Links Report to view more reports in Google Analytics.

If you want detailed instructions, here’s our complete guide on setting up affiliate links tracking.

2. eCommerce Tracking in WordPress

MonsterInsights eCommerce tracking helps you to track all the data you need for your WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads store. The eCommerce report will show a total Add to Cart button clicks, total Remove from the Cart button clicks, and total Buy button clicks for your online store.

To get started, you’ll need to enable eCommerce tracking in Google Analytics first. If you don’t know how to do that, here’s our step-by-step guide to enable eCommerce tracking.

After that, you’ll need to install MonsterInsights eCommerce Addon on your WordPress site. Then, navigate to Insights » Settings and click on the eCommerce tab on the top.

Now you can see the eCommerce tracking options for your site. Scroll to enable Use Enhanced eCommerce option first.

If WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads is enabled, it will be detected by MonsterInsights and the tracking will automatically be enabled.

That’s it!

Now, you can view your eCommerce reports by going to Insights » Reports » eCommerce.

As you scroll down, you’ll see how many times the Add to Cart button was clicked and also the Remove from the Cart button.

3. Form Submit Button Tracking in WordPress

MonsterInsights comes with a powerful Forms Tracking addon to automate forms conversion tracking.

By enabling forms tracking, you can view which forms are triggering the most views and submissions. The number of total submissions for forms are counted when a user clicks the Submit or Send for a form.

To enable forms tracking, you’ll need to install and activate the Forms addon in your site. Navigate to Insights » Addons and find the Forms Addon. Then, click the Install button.

You’ll see the button changed into the Activate option. Simply click the button to activate the addon.

That’s it. You’ve completed the setup process. Now you can view your form conversion reports by going to Insights » Reports » Forms from your WordPress dashboard.

As you can see above in the screenshot, it’ll show you how many impressions and conversions each of your forms triggered. The number of conversions refers to the total clicks on the Submit or Send button in your forms.

4. Tracking File Download Button Clicks in WordPress

If you’ve added downloadable resources on your WordPress site, tracking the downloads can help you discover your most popular resources and help to make better resources.

MonsterInsights makes file downloads tracking very easy for WordPress users. You can set up this feature in just a few clicks.

First, you’ll need to go to Insights » Settings » Engagement. Next, scroll down to the File Downloads tab.

You can see the file extensions that MonsterInsights tracks by default. To track downloads of more file extensions, you just need to add them to the field, separated by a comma.

That’s it! The plugin will now track all the clicks users will perform to download your resources.

Now, you can see your download reports by going to Insights » Reports » Publishers.

As you can see in the screenshot above, you can view the total clicks each of your downloadable resources has triggered.

5. Tracking Outbound Links in WordPress

MonsterInsights tracks your outbound links clicks automatically and shows you the reports in Publishers. But you’ll need to purchase at least the Plus plan to view the Publishers report.

Once you’ve set up MonsterInsights properly, you can go to Insights » Reports » Publishers from your WordPress dashboard to view your outbound links reports.

As you can see in the screenshot above, you can view your top outbound links with total clicks in MonsterInsights’ Publishers report.

6. Tracking Custom Links in WordPress

In addition to the automated options to track link clicks and button clicks discussed above, MonsterInsights now lets you track your custom links such as call-to-action buttons, your site subdomains, and other important links easily.

The latest MonsterInsights version 7.3 has introduced a new Custom Link Attribution feature to allow you easily add custom event tracking to your custom links. So, make sure that you’ve got the latest version of the plugin on your site.

With this new Custom Link Attribution Feature, you can track your call-to-action (CTA) buttons and find out how important they’re for your site conversions. Similarly, you can add event tracking to other important links such as your subdomains and see how users interact with those links.

It’s easy to add custom event tracking to your custom WordPress links with MonsterInsights. All you need to do is to add the following data-variable tags to the HTML of your link:

Once you add the tags, WordPress link tracking will be automatically done by MonsterInsights, which will provide you with detailed reports.

The Custom Link Attribution feature also supports Google AMP pages, so you can precisely track your AMP optimized custom links.

Start Tracking Your Link Clicks Today!

We hope this article helped you to learn how to track link clicks in Google Analytics for your WordPress site step-by-step.

You might also want to check out our guide on how to track Google Analytics customer events and 4 ways to boost your SEO rankings with Google Analytics.

Now, are you ready to try the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress? Get started with MonsterInsights Pro today! Enjoy advanced tracking features and a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more Google Analytics tutorials.