Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Google Analytics Goals - Button Tracking
-
Does anyone know if there is a really easy way to track a button in Google Analytics yourself?
It seems that most button click goal setups involve some use of tricky code and I'm wondering if there is a much easier way to do this that will allow us to simply setup and track certain button clicks as goal conversions in Analytics.
Your help here is much appreciated!
-
Hi,
If you use GTM to do it its a piece of cake. Really. I use that regularly. A click on a button its normally the same as clicking on a link. Here is the GTM help to set that up: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6164470?hl=en
By using GTM to set up conversion tracking goals you gain a lot of flexibility and speed. The first time you use GTM it might take some time to learn it, but its definitely worth the time investment. By the way its the method of choice for conversion tracking if you use it regularly.
I use to track all kind of conversions, A/B testing, add all kind of scripts, etc. with GTM for ourselves and all my clients.
You have to set up the GTM container on your website only once then you can add conversions, scripts, etc. without having to touch your websites code anymore, just by using the GTM backend, its as easy as publishing new versions of a website on Wordpress.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Cesare
-
Hi,
As Zee said, GTM is great once set up.
<address>This video was useful when I was setting up auto event tracking in GTM Auto-Event Tracking with Google Tag Manager | Lesson 5 - GTM for Beginners and his other posts are good for learning other bits of GTM if you are new to it.</address>
-
I've never used Autotrack, but that sounds really interesting! GTM has a similar "auto event tracking" function.
I second mememax's answer (from a DIY, "right-now" standpoint). However, you might want to consider implementing Google Tag Manager (GTM): GTM has a great interface that's easy to use to set up new events, so regardless of what you add to your site (new campaign, landing page, content, form, etc.), you can just log into your GTM to set this up without needing to code.
-
It requires a bit more knowledge on coding, but if you want to make things easier over time for a small site and a small team you might want to look into using Autotrack, a feature that the Google team build to make tracking certain interactions easier: https://github.com/googleanalytics/autotrack/
-
well it's easy to explain it here without reading a full article.
you have to use Javascript onclick event tracking, which is essentially a way to say to GA to register data overtime your event is triggered.
on the button action code you can add the following onclick event:
ga('send','event','category','action','opt_label', opt_value,{'nonInteraction':1})
You have to change the category, action, opt_label and opt_value as you wish, considering that the last two are optional. For example you want something like this:
ga('send','event','form sent','click','[URL]', 5)
more info here on the official GA site: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/events it's really clear, if it is not, it means you may want to double check with your dev, or further study Ga documentation about events tracking.
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
We have a client that wants to apply UTM URL tagging to track local organic traffic in Google Analytics. Is there any benefit in doing this?
One of our clients requested that we apply UTM URL tagging to better track organic traffic in Google Analytics. We found this to be an odd request because we are most familiar with UTM tracking for special campaigns (referral tracking, PPC, email tracking, etc). Is there any benefit of applying UTM tags to urls to analyze local organic traffic in Google Analytics? Are there any resources out there about this? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB0 -
Set Up of Goal Tracking with Google Analytics-$750 a Fair Price????
Greetings Moz Community! My firm operates commercial real estate website that contains 3-4 forms. Each form represents a goals. Google Analytics has been set up for years, but it does not track these form completions/goals properly. My SEO firm has offered to configure Goals on Google Analytics for $750. Is this a fair price? If the set up takes one hour, I am really over paying. But if this is a complex project that may take 7-9 hours the pricing seems OK. Also, the SEO firm will require an additional $750 in the future to set up event tracking. Is this excessive? I might add that my developer will need to add code to my web site. My SEO company has proven reliable and accurate. I can go to sleep at night knowing they are doing a good job. Where as my Argentinian developers really try their best, but perhaps because of the language barrier, they can make mistakes from time to time. I am willing to pay a premium to ensure that the job is done correctly domestically, however I don't appreciate over paying. Is the $750 payment for setting up Google Analytics reasonable assuming the job is done well??? Thanks,
Reporting & Analytics | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Is it possible to use Google Tag Manager to pass a user’s text input into a form field to Google analytics?
Hey Everyone, I finally figured out how to use auto event tracking with Google Tag Manager, but didn't get the data I wanted. I want to see what users are typing into the search field on my site (the URL structure of my site isn't set up properly to use GA's built-in site search tracking). So, I set up the form submit event tracking in Google Tag Manager and used the following as my event tracking parameters: Category: Search Action: Search Value When I test and look in Google Analytics I just see: "search" and "search value." I wanted to see the text that I searched on my site. Not just the Action and Category of the event.... Is what I'm trying to do even possible? Do I need to set up a different event tracking parameter? Thanks everyone!
Reporting & Analytics | | DaveGuyMan0 -
Google Analytics and DNS change
Our new alumni application is going be tested at domain uva.imodules.com . We are going to collect traffic data with a Google analytics account number UA-884652-XX. So going to uva.imodules.com/myPage.html would send its data to Google Analytics with that account number. Then when it is ready for production we are going to just change the domain name of the application and switch the DNS over to dardencommunity.darden.virginia.edu . So going to dardencommunity.darden.virginia.edu /myPage.html would send its data to Google Analtics with that SAME account number. Aside from having the testing domain data in the same profile are there any other issues/problems we may run into?
Reporting & Analytics | | Darden0 -
Comparing % Change, Google Analytics
Hey Mozzers, Is there a simple way to compare the "% Change" in traffic when comparing two separate time periods in a single Google Analytics report? When comparing data from two separate time periods, an exported CSV doesn't include the % Change (booo!), and there's no option to sort by % Change within the GA report, essentially forcing you to scroll through all the results to pinpoint the major movers and shakers. I'm not averse to using spreadsheets to sort this data, but I'm thinking that I'd likely need a macro to make this work, something like this. However, none of the macros on that page are working (possibly because they were designed for a previous version of Analytics). All suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | dangaul0 -
Setting up Google Analytics default URL
If someone has set: the default url in Google Analytics to a non-www address (http://mysite.com) then placed the UA tracking script from that GA account within the CMS framework of the website... ... and then set the permanent 301 redirect in the htaccess file to redirect to the www address (http://www.mysite.com). How less accurrate will my GA analytics measurements be considering the default url within GA is non-www and the permanent 301 redirect in htacess is to the www-address? Anyone know how reliable GA reports are until the default url in GA analytics is changed to match what is the redirected url in htaccess file? _Cindy
Reporting & Analytics | | CeCeBar0 -
Custom Variables to track Vimeo plays on website with Google Analytics?
Hello Everyone, I'm trying to track how many times a Vimeo video is played on my site via GA. Does any of you have any knowledge of how can this be achieved? I've read the documentation and came up with this: After the iframe embed i insert this: Of course the GA is loaded in the header. Does not work, at least i cant see anything in analytics. I have set up the segment as per the attached image. Thanks in advance! Alex E6XnO.png
Reporting & Analytics | | pwpaneuro0 -
Google Analytics: how many visits from country Google domains?
Hello, I manage a site with visitors from many different countries. With Google Analytics, it is normal to see the number of visitors from each search engine. However, I would like to identify the number of visitors from each Google-search contry domain. How many visitors from Google.com? How many from Google.co.uk. And from Google.co.zm? And so on. Anybody knows if this is possible and if yes, how can it be done? Thank you in advance, Dario
Reporting & Analytics | | Darioz0