SaaS App Click Tracking 101: How to Track User Engagement With Your WebApp

Click tracking is an essential method for uncovering weak spots in the product UX and the user flow by analyzing how users engage with your UI.

You first have to understand the basics of click tracking and work with different tools that track in-app engagement.

This article will equip you with all the necessary knowledge about:

• types of data can be tracked
• what to do with the data you collect
• tools to use to capture user clicks

Let’s begin our journey and unlock product growth opportunities with click tracking!

TL;DR

• If simplified, click tracking is an act of observing and measuring user behavior in-app by counting mouse clicks, moves, and taps on different website UI elements.
• The main idea of click tracking is watching how users interact with your product to discover friction points. This can be a broken link, poor onboarding, confusing UX, etc.
• The product team utilizes click data for making data-driven decisions on product development.
• The marketing team uses collected data to optimize CTA placements and tailor marketing messages on the website to increase the website’s conversion.
• The most valuable types of data to track are email click tracking, link click tracking, and UX click tracking.
• Use these four tools to collect click data: session recordings and heat maps using Hotjar, Google Analytics for link tracking, and Userpilot for UX click tracking.
• All together, these three data types help you identify features customers interact with the most to refine the onboarding flow and get users to the “Aha!” moment and Activation faster.
• Additionally, you will understand where users might need help and so you can build helpful and contextual walkthrough guides and other end-user training.

What is click tracking?

Click tracking refers to the number of buttons, links, or text clicks on the web interface users perform during a session.

However, you can also track email click (below, we will go through it in detail).

To gather user click data, you have to work with click tracking tools that record all the mouse moves, taps (on mobile devices), and clicks made by users while engaging with your product.

The collected data can be visualized in charts, heatmaps, or screen recordings.

The importance of tracking user clicks

Here are three main points why the product, UI/UX designers, and marketing teams should implement click tracking:

• Product managers: to understand product usage and in-app engagement and make informed decisions on the product development process
• Product marketers: to understand how marketing campaigns work by tracking the numbers of clicks on links and CTA.
• UX designers: to grasp how users engage with the product and identify friction points in the user flow to improve the conversion rate through better in-product design

Types of user click data you can collect

Click tracking is an umbrella term for:

• email click tracking (gathering data from email campaigns)
• link clicks tracking
• UX clicks tracking (collecting data directly from the website)

Let’s get more granular with each method and discover what value each brings.

Email click tracking

When running email marketing, we often track metrics like open rate (how many recipients opened our email), CTR (click-through rate), unsubscribed rate, etc., to evaluate how successful our campaign was.

Usually, these metrics are provided by default by email marketing tools. But how do they get that data?

In most cases, email senders incorporate a pixel into each email before sending so that they can track when an email is open.

The same works with in-email link tracking — when inserting our link in the email body, the email services apply the mask to this link getting people to the redirecting page first and then to the destination page.

It happens within milliseconds, so recipients can’t notice this.

For example, you inserted the link https://userpilot.com/blog/ux-analytics-saas/ in the email body. To catch clicks on this link, an email service provider will address people to https://b2bfamily.com/?=exemple3212 instead and record this session.

Next, the email provider will match the attribute example3212 with your initial link and show a user the correct link.

Another way for link tracking in emails is to add a URL string.

Link tracking

Link tracking is used for identifying the source of traffic (which link the user clicked on to get there) in Google Analytics (GA) from different marketing campaigns.

For instance, we run Google Ads, and we want to know exactly which campaign performs better to double down on what’s working.

To differentiate ads from each other and collect unique metrics, marketers add UTM codes to the destination page. Thus GA can generate a super detailed report on performance for each campaign.

Image source: buffer.com

UX click tracking using heatmaps

UX click tracking helps you understand how users engage with your web app — what UX elements they find enticing, what part of a feature seems challenging to interact with, etc.

In a nutshell, UX analytics gives you data on user experience to recognize obstacles in the user flow and fix them.

Let’s look at the most popular click trackers for gathering data from a web app.

Hotjar’s heat maps highlight what UI elements visitors click on often and what is scrolled through.

The tool records any interactions with your site, from mouse movements to white space clicking, and creates a snapshot of the landing page, marking hot and cold areas.

Red spots mean users constantly engage with these elements while cold areas are the ones they avoid.

UX click tracking using feature tagging

But there’s another way to analyze user behavior in web apps.

UI tagging or feature tagging is a popular way to track feature engagement inside your app.

If your goal is to gauge the number of clicks on specific buttons or links inside your SaaS, go to the Growth Insights section in Userpilot and tag the feature you’re willing to track.

As a result, you will get detailed reports for each UI element describing how often users interact with your features by tracking UI engagement.

Other methods of user behavior analysis will give you a complete picture of the health of the user experience:

• User feedback widget tools
• User journey and funnel analytics tools
• Session recordings analytics tools
• Usability testing tools

Use them to understand the nature of user behavior and refine your product accordingly.

How can click tracking help you understand user behavior in SaaS

UX click tracking analysis is the most actionable and insightful method to spot product friction in SaaS, as you can track how users engage with each feature separately and in real-time.

Now, let’s focus on how click tracking helps you understand user behavior and how to act on these insights.

Understand what features different user segments engage with the most

In other words, these features are crucial to the users and help them get the job done.

To illustrate, let’s say you are tracking engagement with your key 2-3 features.

Understanding how many clicks each feature gets provides you insights on whether or not your users are interacting with your core product features that they need to to get value.

You can then use Userpilot’s product adoption tool and create specific goals that track when a user has reached a milestone in their journey. This could be engaging with 3 specific features for example.

If those are also your key features, this will tell you which users reach the activation point.

Create more goals to understand where users are in their journey and what holds them back from product adoption.

Identify friction and bugs and fix them faster

Using heatmaps, you can identify friction points at each step in the user journey.

Pair them with screen recordings (session replays), and you’ll have a great understanding of what and why causes bugs or lags in the user flow.

Use takeaways and recordings to create detailed bug reports that help developers reproduce issues and fix them faster.

Improve user engagement and product adoption

Once you’ve discovered where users get stuck, you identified where your in-app guidance is most needed to facilitate onboarding and get customers faster to activation.

Unfortunately, it’s pretty common when customers use only part of the product functionality, and cool, relevant features to their tasks stay off the radar.

For fixing this, use interactive walkthroughs to guide users through the product and help them discover new features related to their goals.

What are the best click tracking tools?

How do you track these clicks, you might ask.

Here are the best tools that enable product teams to capture users’ clicks at the different steps of the user journey:

• Userpilot — for tracking UI feature engagement using feature tagging
• Hotjar — for tracking where users click using heatmaps
• Google Analytics — for tracking links using UTMs

Userpilot — for tracking feature engagement using feature tagging

Userpilot is a product adoption tool that you can use to build in-app guidance using tooltips, modals, checklists, etc.

To understand which features users are not engaging with you can set up feature tagging and track engagement across the UI.

Once you’ve got click tracking data from feature tags, set up Goals and track when users reach certain milestones. For example, a goal completion could be when the user has engaged with feature A and feature B.

Knowing which features users are not engaging with enables you to design highly relevant in-app tutorials to get them to reach product milestones.

Use the checklists to create personalized onboarding and help customers get started. Customize its look & feel and content to make the onboarding flow enticing and seamless.

Request a Userpilot demo and get personalized recommendations on crafting your first onboarding checklist.

Hotjar — for tracking where users click using heatmaps

Do you know how often visitors interact with your Get a demo button or other crucial elements on the website that drive conversions and new signups? Start using Hotjar’s heatmaps and session replays to track clicks and measure user experiences.

With Hotjar heatmaps you can track how users engage with your product’s interface and what are the most used elements. You can then optimize the user experience by rearranging your dashboard in a way that provides the best usability.

Google Analytics — for tracking links

Google Analytics not only tracks what links a user clicks but also helps you attribute traffic from different marketing channels by assigning credits for conversions across the customer journey.

Thus you will know what traffic source impacts the most on attracting new customers and what channel/campaign prompts them to buy the product.

How to set up SaaS click tracking with Userpilot

Here’s how to get started with Userpilot to collect click data and unlock all benefits of using this product.

1. Go to the Userpilot dashboard

First, log in and navigate to Growth Insights. Click on Features.

You will land on the click tracking dashboard.

If you don’t have an account yet, I highly recommend getting a demo to see the Growth Insights tools in action.

2. Tag new feature

Click on Tag new feature on the top right corner and add the URL of the webpage you want to tag. This action defines the webpage you want to measure the number of clicks from.

3. Select the UI element you want to tag

Next, you will be offered to choose the UI element of the web page you want to track.

Use your mouse to select the element you want to track.

4. Configure settings

Add any relevant notes to the tag using the Name field.

And don’t forget that you can select specific pages and domains where the activity of the feature is tracked.

5. Track click data analytics directly inside the dashboard

Click data will start being tracked automatically.

…And voila! Analyze feature engagement inside the dashboard and use the goals menu to track how users progress through the journey.

Conclusion

These days we have to create an outstanding user experience to win the competition and get customers to stick with us for good.

UX analytics and click-tracking greatly increase customer retention because both methods inform us where users meet obstacles in real-time.

We just have to draw conclusions based on collected insights and make data-driven product updates.

Ready to work on user satisfaction and seamless user experience? Get a Userpilot Demo and start collecting actionable insights right away.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][/vc_section]