As a website owner, it is really important for you to know how people are using your website. One way you can collect all this data is by using Google Analytics – a free web analytics tool from Google. It is fast, highly reliable and trusted by large publishers and companies on the web.
Apart from providing in-depth details about the visitors on your website, Google Analytics can help you track how far people are scrolling on your website. Thanks to its scroll depth trigger feature, you can now measure scroll events on your website.
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What is Google Analytics scroll depth tracking
As the name suggests, scroll depth tracking is one of the many tracking features offered by Google Analytics. It helps you track the scroll depth of your website visitors. That is, you can see how far they are scrolling through your web pages.
Earlier, setting up scroll depth tracking in WordPress was a bit complicated. But now, with MonsterInsights, it has become very easy.
MonsterInsights is one of the best Google Analytics dashboard plugins for WordPress. Using MonsterInsights, you can track file downloads, forms submissions, eCommerce stats, and more. You can learn more about its capabilities from my detailed MonsterInsights review.
Why is it important
Scroll depth tracking can give you more insights into how people are using your website. It can help you decide where you need to display your important call to action buttons, advertisements, email sign up forms, and more.
- If people are bouncing off your landing page after scrolling down halfway, you are boring them with unwanted information.
- If people quit as soon as they land on your page, it must be due to poor readability or your web page looks unattractive.
- If people scroll through your landing page (more than 75%) but don’t reach the end, your footer area isn’t getting enough views. You need to stop displaying important information on your footer.
Using this information, you can find which areas of your website are performing poorly and are leading to higher bounce rates. Once you start fixing these issues, you can expect an increase in your revenue through improved conversions and sales.
Nowadays, many publishers are using the scroll tracking feature to find if people are really reading their content. And if they so, till which extent.
These are just some of the immediate benefits. You can benefit a lot from this feature when you are optimizing your website for conversion rate (CRO).
Now, let’s see how you can enable scroll depth tracking on WordPress using Google Analytics and MonsterInsights.
How to use scroll depth tracking in WordPress with Google Analytics
Now, let’s move to the tutorial.
Total Time: 15 minutes
Sign up for a MonsterInsights plan
Go to MonsterInsights.com and sign up for one of their paid plans to unlock scroll depth tracking. You can start with the Plus plan.
Grab your license key
Copy your license key from the MonsterInsights account dashboard.
Install and activate MonsterInsights
Now, install and activate the free MonsterInsights plugin from your WordPress dashboard.
Verify your license key
Go to MonsterInsights Settings page and paste your license key under the License Key section. Once you have entered a valid license key, you can unlock Pro features by clicking on the Unlock PRO Features Now button. Note that this button will be displayed only if you enter a valid license key.
Authenticate Google Analytics With MonsterInsights
Scroll down to the Google Authentication section, click on the Connect MonsterInsights button, and follow the on-screen instructions to connect your Google Analytics property with MonsterInsights.
Enable Scroll Tracking
Once you have done that, go to the MonsterInsights Engagement settings page, scroll down to the bottom, and enable the Scroll Tracking module.
By default, MonsterInsights will trigger scroll depth as events for scroll depths up to 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% scrolling.
View scroll tracking depth results
With MonsterInsights premium, you can view all the stats right from your WordPress dashboard. You can find the scroll tracking stats at the bottom of the MonsterInsights Publishers Report, next to the Interests section.
As you can see from the above image, MonsterInsights will display the average scroll depth and the visitors’ interest. You can use this data to further improve your content marketing efforts by writing targeted content.
How to view scroll tracking depth results in real-time on Google Analytics
You can also view the scroll depth tracking data in real-time from your Google Analytics account. Just log in to your Google Analytics account and navigate to Real-Time –> Events.
If people are actively scrolling through pages on your website, all the events triggered through scrolling will be displayed over there. To test if this is really working, you can try visiting your website from an incognito tab and scrolling down till the end.
How to view scroll tracking results from Behavior area in Google Analytics
To view the scroll tracking results from Behavior area in Google Analytics, log in to your Google Analytics dashboard, navigate to Behavior –> Events –> Overview, and click on Scroll Depth from the Event Category.
If you need more detailed information on how many events are triggered for each percentage of scroll tracking, click on the ‘Event Label’ item.
That’s it. You have now learned how to set up and view scroll tracking events right from your WordPress dashboard using MonsterInsights and from your Google Analytics account.
Get MonsterInsights Now
So, what are you waiting for? Get MonsterInsights Pro from the below link. Apart from the above features, you can use MonsterInsights to enable enhanced link attribution, track AMP pages, and make your Google Analytics code compliant with the GDPR in the European Union.
Get Started With MonsterInsights
I hope you found this post helpful and enjoyed the read. If you did, please consider sharing this post with your friends and fellow bloggers on social media. Maybe someone who needs it will stumble upon this article one day and discover this cool Google Analytics feature.