Click tracking is the measurement of which elements on your website visitors click, buttons, links, images, navigation items, and how often.
Most analytics tools tell you what pages people visited. Click tracking tells you what they did on those pages. It answers questions like: are visitors clicking the main CTA? Are they ignoring the navigation link you assume they’re using? Are they clicking on something that isn’t actually a link, thinking it should be?
Key takeaways
- Click tracking records which elements on a page receive clicks, and how often
- It’s more granular than pageview analytics, it shows behaviour within a page, not just visits
- Click data is most useful on pages with a clear desired action (CTAs, checkout, forms)
- In Burst, click tracking is done by setting up a click-based goal using a CSS selector
- Click maps and heatmaps are related tools that visualise click distribution across a page
How click tracking works
The standard approach uses JavaScript. A tracking script watches for click events on your page and records when a visitor interacts with specific elements.
There are two common implementations:
Selector-based tracking. You specify which elements to track by their CSS selector, for example, a button with the class .cta-button or a link with the ID #checkout. Every time that element is clicked, the analytics tool records it. This is surgical, you track exactly what you defined.
Universal click capture. Some tools record all clicks on a page and display them in an aggregate heat map or click map. This is broader and requires no upfront configuration but produces a lot of data that can be hard to act on.
For most WordPress site owners, selector-based tracking tied to specific goals is the more useful approach.
What click tracking tells you
Click data becomes useful when you’re trying to answer a specific question about a specific page.
Is the primary CTA being clicked? If your homepage hero has a “Get started” button and you’re not tracking its click rate, you don’t know whether visitors are engaging with the most important element on the page or ignoring it.
Which of two CTAs performs better? If you have a primary and secondary button and want to know which gets more clicks, click tracking gives you a definitive answer without needing a formal A/B test setup.
Are visitors clicking on non-interactive elements? A common finding in click analysis is visitors clicking on images, headings or text that look like they should be clickable but aren’t. This points to a UX issue, visitor expectation doesn’t match the design.
Where in a flow are visitors dropping off? Combining click tracking with goal tracking shows you not just that visitors are leaving a funnel but at which clickable decision point they’re stopping.
Click tracking vs heatmaps
These are related but serve different purposes:
Click tracking records the number of times specific defined elements are clicked. It produces countable data: “the checkout button was clicked 340 times this month.”
Heatmaps visualise click distribution across an entire page, showing density, where most visitors are clicking overall, using a colour overlay. They’re exploratory: useful for discovering unexpected patterns rather than tracking defined outcomes.
For WordPress sites without large traffic volumes, heatmaps can be noisy. Click tracking on specific goals is more actionable because you’re measuring what matters to you rather than discovering what visitors happen to do.
Click tracking and conversion goals
In Burst Statistics, click tracking is implemented through goal tracking. You set up a goal with a click trigger, specifying the CSS selector of the element you want to measure, and Burst records every time a visitor clicks it.
This means your click data is tied directly to conversion tracking:
- Button click = goal completion
- Goal completion rate = the percentage of sessions where that button was clicked
- You can see which traffic sources and pages are driving those clicks
Example: you set up a goal for clicks on your “Start free trial” button. After two weeks, you can see that visitors from your email newsletter click it at 8% of sessions, while visitors from paid social click it at 1.2%. That gap tells you something concrete about audience intent and guides where to invest next.
Setting up click tracking in WordPress
In Burst, setting up a click goal requires identifying the CSS selector of the element you want to track. You can find this using your browser’s developer tools (right-click any element → Inspect) or by looking at your theme’s HTML.
Common selectors for WooCommerce:
- Add to cart button:
.single_add_to_cart_button - Checkout button:
.checkout-button - Apply coupon:
#apply_coupon
Once you enter the selector in Burst’s goal configuration, every click on that element records as a goal completion. No additional code changes required.
For custom elements not in WooCommerce, you’ll need to identify the right selector for your specific theme. Most are straightforward.
FAQs
No. The tracking script runs asynchronously and doesn’t block page rendering. Recording a click adds a small background request that has no visible impact on page load or responsiveness.
Yes. If an outbound link has a stable selector or ID, you can track clicks on it as a goal. This is useful for measuring how often visitors click affiliate links, partner referrals or download buttons that point to external files.
Click tracking counts clicks on specific elements. Session recording (sometimes called session replay) captures a full video-like playback of a visitor’s interaction with a page, including mouse movements, scrolls and all clicks. Session recording is much more detailed but also more privacy-sensitive and heavier on performance. For GDPR-compliant sites, session recording typically requires explicit consent.
The most common cause is a CSS selector mismatch. The selector you entered doesn’t match the element your visitors are actually clicking. Use browser developer tools to verify the selector is correct and unique. Also check whether the button appears multiple times on the same page (which can affect how selectors match).
Know what visitors are clicking
Click tracking turns page activity into measurable outcomes. Burst Statistics lets you track specific clicks as conversion goals directly inside WordPress, with no code changes and no data leaving your server.
Analytics that tell you what actually matters
Track button clicks, goal completions and the interactions that drive your business. All inside WordPress.
Related definitions: what is goal tracking, what is a conversion and what is conversion rate. For the broader context, see the how to track conversions in WordPress..
