Do you want to track user scrolling behavior on your WordPress site with Google Analytics? Want to know how far down are users scrolling on your blog articles and landing pages?
Tracking user scroll activity helps you understand how well your users are engaged with your content, and lets you optimize your pages for more engagement.
However, scroll depth tracking isn’t available as a native feature in Google Analytics. You’ll need to set up scroll depth trigger in Google Tag Manager manually, and it’s not simple.
But thankfully, there’re smart tools like MonsterInsights to help you use Google Analytics in a simple manner.
In this article, we’ll show you how to use scroll tracking with Google Analytics easily.
Video Tutorial
You can also follow our written setup tutorial. Just continue reading…
Best Way to Set Up Scroll Depth Tracking with Google Analytics
Google Analytics tracks some of your essential website metrics automatically, whereas you’ll need to set up tracking for advanced metrics like events and eCommerce manually.
Since Google Analytics views scrolling activities as events, you’ll need to set up scroll depth tracking on your own.
If you’re using WordPress as your website platform, there’re mainly two ways to set up scroll depth tracking in Google Analytics.
- Manually, with Scroll Depth Trigger in Google Tag Manager
- Automatically, with MonsterInsights plugin
If you want to track user scrolling manually, you’ll need to set up scroll depth trigger in Google Tag Manager. This means that you’ll need to install both Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager on your website, and then set up scroll tracking.
However, this process is not simple for beginners. It involves many steps of configuration.
But you don’t need to worry about those steps if you choose the second option – MonsterInsights plugin method.
MonsterInsights is the most user-friendly Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It helps you to install Google Analytics in WordPress quickly and lets you track your site’s most important stats easily and quickly without touching any code.
MonsterInsights makes scroll depth tracking in WordPress effortless – no setup or configuration required. If you’ve installed Google Analytics using MonsterInsights, scroll depth tracking will be automatically enabled.
We’ll explain more on how MonsterInsights helps to set up scroll tracking in Google Analytics below. Keep reading.
Tracking User Scrolling Data in WordPress with Google Analytics
First thing you need to do is to install and activate MonsterInsights plugin on your website. Make sure to use MonsterInsights Plus or a higher plan.
Next, you need to connect your WordPress website with your Google Analytics account using MonsterInsights. For more details, see our guide on how to set up Google Analytics in WordPress with MonsterInsights.
If you’ve already installed the plugin, make sure to upgrade it to the latest version because scroll tracking feature is a new feature added in the MonsterInsights version 7.6.0 update.
Once the setup process is complete, the scroll depth tracking will be automatically enabled on your site. You can reconfirm that by going to Insights » Settings » Engagement.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the scroll tracking option will be enabled by default. It means that scroll activity on your website is being measured.
Now MonsterInsights will trigger events in Google Analytics as your website visitors scroll down the page by 25%, 50%, 75% or 100%.
You can view your scroll tracking stats in the MonsterInsights Publishers Report page by going to Insights » Reports » Publishers from your WordPress dashboard. The report appears at the bottom of the page, next to the Interests section.
As shown in the above screenshot, scroll depth data lets you see the average scroll depth percentage for your entire website. This helps you to understand how your visitors are interacting with your content, and also lets you optimize your pages for more engagement and conversions.
Similarly, scroll tracking data also helps you to decide where to add important call to action buttons, ads, and more.
View Your Scroll Tracking Stats in Google Analytics
Once you’ve set up scroll tracking with MonsterInsights, you can view your scroll tracking stats also in your Google Analytics account.
First, open the Google Analytics website on your browser and login to your account. After that, navigate to Behavior » Events » Overview from your Analytics dashboard.
You can click on the ‘Scroll Depth’ link in your report to get a more extended report.
Once done, you can see the event action data on your screen. Click on the ‘Event Label’ option to see the total events triggered for each percentage of scrolling.
You can also view the real-time user scrolling data in Google Analytics. Go to Real-Time » Events from your Google Analytics dashboard and then you’ll see real-time scrolling data within the last 30 minutes.
We hope this article helped you to learn how to use scroll tracking with Google Analytics easily. You may also want to see our guide on how to track your AMP traffic using Google Analytics.
And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more helpful Google Analytics tips.
How do you turn off scroll tracking or set it to be a non-interactive event?
Hey Vic,
Scroll tracking should already be set as a non-interactive event. If you’re finding otherwise or have more questions about it, please contact support either through our Lite Support form or through your account if you use a paid version of MonsterInsights.