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Are you looking for ways to keep track of how many times visitors download files on your website? Plugins such as MonsterInsights, allows you to identify your most downloaded PDFs, Doc and more files with Google Analytics.
Don’t give up yet, this is a step by step guide. We’ll show you how to set up and properly track file downloads in Google Analytics.
Why Should You Set Up File Downloads Tracking?
When you have downloadable eBooks or other files on your WordPress website, setting up download tracking helps you to identify files being downloaded by your users.
You can set Google Analytics to track downloads automatically. However, Google Analytics doesn’t log download activities for these files out of the box.
But there is an easier solution you can use. For this we recommend using the MonsterInsights plugin.
It’s the best WordPress analytics solution, and helps you track the file downloads easily. Get it here.
How to Easily Set Up Google Analytics in WordPress
The MonsterInsights plugin allows you to track file downloads automatically. And gives you the option to use events or virtual page views.
With that said, let’s get started. First thing, Install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin.
After activation and properly setting up Monsterinsights with Analytics, file downloads tracking will be enabled automatically without any further configuration. Your File downloads will be tracked as events or page views.
How to Add File Extensions to Track as Downloads
This plugin also allows you to choose the type of file extension you want to track. By default, MonsterInsights lets you track downloads of the following file extensions: doc, exe, js, pdf, ppt, tgz, zip, xls.
But if you want to track more file extensions, you just need to add them to the “Extensions of files to track as downloads” field.
Please Note: you should separated each extension in the list by a comma.
How to View the File Downloads in WordPress
To view the report of your downloaded files in WordPress dashboard, navigate to Insights » Report » Publishers Report.
On that page, scroll down to the Top Download Links section to view your downloads.
Note: To view file downloads in WordPress, you’ll need to have the Plus level tier or higher of MonsterInsights. Checkout MonsterInsights pricing.
How to View the File Downloads in Google Analytics
MonsterInsights allows you to view file downloads in Google Analytics.
Log into your Google Analytics account and click on your website’s link where you’re tracking the downloads.
If you’ve enabled downloads tracking as pageviews, you can find out the downloads report in the All Pages report along with other blog posts and pages.
This report can be accessed by navigating to Behaviour » Site Content » All Pages.
However, if you’ve enabled downloads tracking as events, you can see the downloads data in your events report.
In your event reports, navigate to Behavior » Events in the left panel. You’ll now see four different options.
- Overview: It gives you a summary of top events data of your site
- Top Events: It shows you a list of events that keep your visitors engaged on your site
- Pages: It shows you a list of pages in which your downloadable resource is hosted. In other words, it is a list of posts and pages where the events occur on your site.
- Events Flow: The events flow report helps you discover which events keep your visitors engaged with your site. It also visualizes the path users take from one popular event to another.
To get a detailed report, click on Top Events.
Then, click downloads to get a detailed report.
Benefits of Using MonsterInsights Plugin
if you’re new to the Analytics platform, it may be difficult for you to view your reports on the Analytics website.
So, Monsterinsights enables you to implement and view various analytics data such as page views, downloads, traffic sources, devices and more. This is archived without touching any code.
We hope now you know how to set up and view your file downloads data through page or events tracking on your WordPress site using Monsterinsights with Google Analytics.
Want to Add Google Analytics?
By far MonsterInsights has been our number one Google Analytics plugin for. for WordPress
MonsterInsights offers an unconditional money back guarantee of up to 14 days.
