How to Easily Track User Engagement in WordPress (Step-by-Step)

Want to track your website’s user engagement in WordPress?

Measuring user engagement is crucial as it provides valuable insights into your audience’s preferences and interests. Google Analytics enables you to observe how individuals engage with your website conveniently, which can help you increase your conversions and sales.

In this article, we will show you how to track your user engagement in WordPress with Google Analytics.

Why it’s Important to Track User Engagement in WordPress

User engagement is a key factor in determining the success of a website.

By paying attention to user engagement, website owners can gain valuable insights into how their audience interacts with their content. This knowledge can then be leveraged to optimize the user experience, leading to higher conversion rates and sales.

Tracking user engagement goes beyond merely focusing on traffic and page views. While these metrics are essential, they don’t provide a complete picture of a website’s performance.

Instead, tracking user engagement allows you to understand better how users behave once they land on your website.

One of the unique benefits of monitoring user engagement is the ability to identify highly engaged user behavior patterns.

For instance, you might discover that visitors who access a particular page are significantly more likely to purchase than other users. With this information, you can strategically direct users’ attention to that high-converting page, increasing the likelihood of sales.

Additionally, analyzing user engagement can reveal which affiliate links or banner advertisements garner the most clicks from your audience.

By understanding which elements of your content are most effective in driving conversions, you can optimize your website to maximize click-through rates and ultimately boost revenue.

Now let’s look at how to start tracking your user engagement in WordPress using Google Analytics.

Steps to Track User Engagement in WordPress

Utilising MonsterInsights is the optimal approach for tracking user engagement tracking within WordPress. It facilitates the configuration of Google Analytics without requiring any coding expertise.

MonsterInsights facilitates the automatic configuration of advanced tracking features in Google Analytics, such as outbound link tracking, form conversion tracking, scroll depth, and affiliate link clicks, without requiring additional setup.

This tutorial will use the MonsterInsights Pro version, which offers advanced tracking features and an expanded range of dashboard reports.

Alternatively, a no-cost option for tracking user engagement is available by utilizing MonsterInsights Lite.

Let’s begin!

Step 1: Installing MonsterInsights

The first step in setting up user engagement tracking in WordPress is to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin.

MonsterInsights is the best Analytics plugin for WordPress, as it helps you configure Google Analytics without writing any code.

With MonsterInsights, you can automatically set up outbound link tracking, form conversion tracking, scroll depth, affiliate link clicks, and other advanced tracking features in Google Analytics.

To install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin, follow our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Step 2: Configuring MonsterInsights

After installing and activating MonsterInsights, you will see the MonsterInsights welcome screen.

Click on the Launch the Wizard button to begin the configuration process.

MonsterInsights also helps set up Google Analytics 4 (GA4) in WordPress with its dual tracking feature. This allows you to use Universal Analytics and GA4 together.

Google Analytics 4, the latest version of Analytics, will replace Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023. After this date, you won’t be able to track data in Universal Data.

To protect your tracking data, we highly recommend creating a GA4 property.

Step 3: Tracking The Most Popular Pages On Your Site

Once you have installed and configured MonsterInsights, it’s time to start tracking user engagement.

The first metric you want to track in which posts and pages on your WordPress blog are popular amongst your users.

These important pages and posts on your website get the most traffic. Identifying popular content can help you plan a content strategy that expands on what’s already working.

To find your most popular content, visit the Insights » Reports page in your WordPress admin area and go to the Overview report.

Scroll down to see other reports with different data. Your most popular content will be listed under the Top Posts/Pages section.

Step 4: Start Tracking How Users Engage with Forms on Your WordPress Website

Forms are essential for collecting user leads and feedback, but most WordPress contact form plugins don’t provide accurate tracking and conversion data.

MonsterInsights allows you to leverage the events tracking feature in Google Analytics to see how often your forms are viewed and submitted.

To enable form tracking, visit the Insights » Addons page and install and activate the Forms addon.

MonsterInsights will then automatically start tracking all forms on your website. This includes popular contact forms plugins like WPForms, Formidable Forms, and others, as well as your website comment form, user registration forms, and more.

You can check the settings by going to Insights » Settings from your WordPress dashboard and then clicking on the Conversions tab.

Next, MonsterInsights shows the performance of your WordPress forms inside your dashboard.

Go to Insights » Reports from the admin panel and click on the Forms tab.

The report shows the number of impressions, conversions, and conversion rate for your different WordPress forms.

Step 5: Track eCommerce Stores Performance

Google Analytics offers many features for eCommerce websites, but these are not turned on by default.

E-commerce tracking lets you see shopping behavior, checkout behavior, product performance, sales performance, and more.

With MonsterInsights, you can easily set up Enhanced eCommerce on your website without editing code.

Once you’ve configured tracking, you can view the eCommerce report by going to Insights » Reports from your WordPress admin menu and clicking the eCommerce tab.

This report shows the conversion rate, number of transactions, revenue, and average order value.

It also helps identify products that users engage with the most and where they’re coming from.

The eCommerce report can also be accessed within your Universal Analytics property.

eCommerce report Universal Analytics property

To access the E-commerce page, please navigate to your Google Analytics account and select the Conversions tab.

Step 6: Tracking Your Affiliate Links in Google Analytics

MonsterInsights allows you to track affiliate links in Google Analytics, helping you figure out which affiliate products are doing well and which pages generate more affiliate revenue.

To enable affiliate link tracking, visit the Insights » Settings page, switch to the Publisher tab, and head to the Affiliate Links section. Enter the prefix for your link under the Path field and provide a Label for those links in your Google Analytics reports.

You can view your top affiliate link clicks in MonsterInsights reports by going to the Publishers tab and scrolling down to the Top Affiliate Links section.

Step 7: Tracking Video Engagement in Google Analytics

With the MonsterInsights Media addon, you can automatically track video engagements from YouTube, Vimeo, and other HTML5 embedded on your website without editing code.

All you need to do is install the Media addon in MonsterInsights and enable video tracking by going to Insights » Settings » Publisher.

Then, scroll down to the box labeled Media Tracking, and click the button next to each type of video you want to track.

View the data inside your WordPress dashboard by going to Insights » Reports and clicking the Media tab.

The report will show stats about your top videos, such as how many people played the video, the average watch time, and the completion rate.

Step 8: Tracking Bounce Rate in Google Analytics

The bounce rate is the percentage of users who land on your website and decide to leave without going to a second page.

With MonsterInsights, you can see the overall bounce rate of your website inside the WordPress dashboard by going to Insights » Reports and clicking on the Overview tab.

The plugin also shows the bounce rate for your essential pages in the Publishers report under the Top Landing Pages section.

Step 9: Track Pageviews Per Visit with Google Analytics

Pageviews Per Visit is an excellent indicator of how engaged your users are. Higher pageviews per session mean people visit multiple landing pages and articles on your site.

This, in return, helps increase the time users spend on your site and decreases bounce rates.

In Universal Analytics, you can view the total page views for a given period on the Audience » Overview page. However, to track engagement, you want to see Pageviews per session.

You can also break down page views per session by source and channel. To do this, go to the Acquisition » All Traffic » Channels page.

In Google Analytics 4, you can view the sessions per user metric based on different traffic sources and see how many pages users view in a single session.

Head to Reports » Acquisition » User acquisition from your GA4 property to access this.

This helps you see which traffic channels convert best for your website.

You can then focus your content marketing efforts on areas that drive results.

Ready to Track Your User Engagement in WordPress

By leveraging the insights provided by Google Analytics, you can take informed steps toward enhancing user engagement and maximizing the potential of your WordPress website.

MonsterInsights empowers you to seamlessly set up Google Analytics and unlock advanced tracking features without coding hassle.

To further optimize your website’s performance and revenue generation, consider exploring the following resources:

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