How to Track User Engagement in WordPress with Google Analytics

October 31. 2022

Tracking of user engagement on your WordPress website is one of the best ways to gauge its success. Nonetheless, it may be difficult to determine and collect the information that is most relevant to your website. The most popular content, the bounce rate, and the average number of pages viewed in a session are just a few of the metrics that may tell you a lot about how engaged your users are. The data will show you the strengths and weaknesses of your website. But how can you track user engagement in WordPress with Google Analytics? Continue reading as we’ve asked WordPress pros why it’s a good idea to track user interaction in WordPress, what kinds of metrics are useful, and how to read them. Now let’s begin!

Why should you track user engagement in WordPress with Google Analytics?

Tracking user engagement on your WordPress website can be very useful and can help you boost traffic on your website. To quantify the level of interest in and participation in your website among its visitors, you can look at their actions while they are there. You may use this data to find trends and learn which parts of your website are the most popular with visitors. That’s one of the most important user engagement KPIs to measure.

With this data at your disposal, you’ll have a far clearer picture of the steps potential customers take to convert on your site. Therefore, you’ll be able to make adjustments to your website or highlight your most successful content to increase your traffic and conversion rates.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you do discover some content that proves to be successful. You could make changes to your site to boost traffic to these (and related) pages. You may learn what kinds of material are popular with your target demographic and focus your efforts there. Now let’s find out how to track user engagement in WordPress with Google Analytics.

Simple ways to track user engagement in WordPress with Google Analytics

An all-encompassing analytics solution, such as , is a must if you want your website to succeed. Seeing how many people are visiting your site and what pages they’re viewing can give you a good idea of how well it’s doing overall and how engaged your audience is with your content. You can find a wealth of information and new perspectives within the Google Analytics interface. It’s definitely worth it to add Google Analytics on your website.

But how can you use Google Analytics to track user engagement? Let’s find out!

#1 Find out what’s your most popular content

As we’ve discussed, knowing which of your posts are the most read might help you better tailor future material to your audience’s interests. This can help you plan a better content strategy and know exactly what to focus on to boost traffic as well as user experience on your WordPress website.

Your traffic numbers will be crucial in determining which of your sites and posts are read the most by your audience. This is now really easy thanks to Google Analytics’ Behavior > Site Content. Here, you’ll be able to examine the total number of times each page on your site has been visited. Once you identify your most successful pages, you can use content enhancements to further boost their conversion rates.

#2 Keep track of your bounce rates

Your website’s bounce rate is another key indicator to keep an eye on. You may measure how effective your website is by looking at the percentage of visits that consist of only one pageview. A “bounce” occurs when a visitor leaves your site without interacting with any of its features (such as by hitting the “back” button) or by visiting an external link (such as a link to an affiliate product that you’re promoting).

A high bounce rate is a sign that the page isn’t engaging visitors enough and could use some improvement. Of course, there are some pages where a high bounce rate is to be expected. A high bounce rate is not necessarily a bad thing if the page’s purpose is to encourage visitors to click on an affiliate link, for instance.

But if you want them to stick around and check out your other posts, a high bounce rate indicates you’re failing to do so. Google Analytics Audience > Overview tab is where you should look to analyze your site’s bounce rates.

#3 Analyze the time users spend on your website

Once you’ve got your website’s bounce rates under control, you can start digging into how long visitors stick around. “Session Duration” is the term used for this metric in Google Analytics. There may be room for improvement if visitors aren’t sticking around your site for very long.

If you navigate to Audience > Overview in Google Analytics, you’ll see both your bounce rates and the average time users spend on your site during a session side by side. For more detailed information regarding each page, visit Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.

Experts in WordPress advise targeting sessions of at least three minutes in length. To make yours better, try using efficient linking and breaking up the text with interesting photos or videos. Aside from the main point, pages with a high bounce rate will have a low time on page since Google rates bounce as 0:00, even if the user spent a minute reading your content before they bounced.

#4 Consider page views per visit

Page views per visit is yet another fantastic engagement measure. Someone who explores more than one page on your site is probably interested in what you have to say and is spending more time there. To make sure your results are not affected by people quickly navigating through your site, you should qualify this metric with others.

Keep an eye on each of these metrics to make sure you’re making good use of the information. Go to Audience > Overview in Google Analytics to learn more about your target audience. This is a great way to compare conversion rates for various traffic sources, too. With this information, you can put your efforts where they will have the greatest impact.

The bottom line

We hope our article helped you learn how to track user engagement in WordPress with Google Analytics. You can use it to learn what needs fixing on your website and how to fix it. By analyzing this data, you will be able to learn about the habits of your site’s visitors and the factors that lead your most engaged users to make a purchase. You can then use what you’ve learned to boost participation everywhere. However, we do understand that running a WordPress website takes much more than this so why not reach out to WordPress experts who’ll ensure your website is running smoothly while you focus on attracting more people to it? It’s a win-win!