About time I got round to getting the Google Analytics Individual Qualification Certificate. The test is pretty easy providing you read / watch all the video’s over at the Google analytic conversion university which is a must for anyone wanting to use Google Analytics.

What else is there to do on a Bank Holiday Monday when it’s raining!

Enhanced WP-ContactForm is a popular Wordpress plugin which adds a neat contact form to your WordPress blog. This can be completed with two small changes to you contact page.

1. Add the tracking code to the form.

On line 185 of wp-contactform.php

$results = '<div style="font-weight: bold;">' . $success_msg . '</div>';

change to

$results = '<div style="font-weight: bold;">' . $success_msg . '</div><script type="text/javascript">pageTracker._trackPageview("/contact-sent/")</script>';

All you are doing is adding the track page view which throws a page view into Analytics after the success message is displayed.

2. Move the tracking code

The original Google Analytics tracking code needs to be placed before the line you just added to the contact form. In WordPress I have placed the tracking code on the footer so I just copy & past the footer and header into the page template. The move the code from the footer into the header. If you use a WordPress plug in to manage your tracking you might need to use a plugin that places the tracking code in the head of your template or have a little play around.

All done sent a test contact and in Google Analytics this will appear as a page view.

Now just add that page as a goal and then Google Analytics will start to track conversion rates.

If you want you can add similar tracking when the contact form fails, this will track if the user enters an invalid field. This is useful to track if you think people may be having problems filling out the form. Although the above method applies to Enhanced WP-ContactForm the same concept should be applied to forms that just refresh the page, add the page view just after the confirmation statement and move the tracking to the top of the page.

Tracking conversions on a site is essential, most of the time you track on the completion of forms on the “thank you” page. Some sites have mailto links which open up blank e-mails, so how do you track clicks on such links?

Well take your standard link

<a href="mailto:info@domain.com">E-mail John</a>

Then add in the JavaScript tracking and ?subject=E-mail John to set a subject for the message (not essential but see later on).

<a href="mailto:info@domain.com?subject=E-mail John" onClick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview("/mailto/john");">E-mail John</a>

That page view “mailto/john” will start to appear as a page view on the top content section on Google Analytics

Next add that into a goal.

So at the end of the month you’ll be able to get a total of times the link has been clicked. Then check your inbox / ask the client how many e-mails they have received with the subject specified in the mailto link, in the example “E-mail John”. You then have the data work out of the conversion of clicks to e-mails received. E.g. 100 clicks 60 e-mails = 60% conversion.

If the conversion is low then you might want to change the link to go to a contact form, often people are more likely to fill out forms and some users won’t have their e-mail set up on Outlook which opens on the click of mailto links.