Web Analytics
Implementing code to schedule events in Google Analytics is more or less similar to the implementation of Google Analytics’ traditional tracking code. The goal of events on Google Analytics is to provide you with more information about your visitors’ actions (average time per page, clicks, percentage of pages browsed, downloaded files, etc.). Implementing this code will not affect the loading time of your pages. In this article, we will see different scenarios for the programming of events.
Table of content
Questions to ask beforehand
Before throwing yourself into the depths of your website to implement your code, you first need to review the following three points that will help you build your analysis reports:
● Determine which elements you want to track: Even if your first event represents only one interaction (page view, clicks, etc.) to familiarize yourself with the tool, establishing a list of future events in advance will help you to define the structure of your reports. Thus, you will have no difficulty increasing the number of traced interactions (events) as you go further in the analysis of your data.
Tip: It is better to tackle one item/event at a time while taking the time to consider its relevance rather than trying to establish long/complicated reports that you will eventually no longer want to consult.
● Define the structure of your reports: Knowing the structure of your reports in advance will influence how you set them up. For example, if your goal is to analyze the interaction of your visitors in regards to your video content, the way you organize your different event categories will be different from the event you will set up if your goal is to analyze the time spent on each page or menu interactions for example.
● Define explicit event names: In the process of implementing events on Google Analytics, each name assigned to the event categorized, or actions analyzed will appear in the interface, which helps you generate your reports. In addition, each interaction is considered by the tool as a unique element of your statistics report. So you have to think about how you want your metrics to calculate the different actions of the same category.
The different settings to include in your events reports
When you set events, you can include up to five different components:
Categories: They allow you to sort your different events. There is no rule to define your categories. For example, you can create a "Videos" category to include all of your visitors' interactions with your video content, or "Downloads" to identify the most downloaded file on your site. Just be careful not to mix everything up, if for example you host downloadable videos. In that case; You may see several actions in different categories and this can quickly become a headache.
Actions: They describe the interactions your visitors have with your content in a given category. This isn’t clear? Ok: Suppose you created a "Videos" category, an example of actions might be "Play" or "Pause". You can also set a more precise level of actions such as: "90% of Video Played". The event will be triggered when the playback slider of the video reaches 90% of the duration. The number of actions and their level of precision depend entirely on your needs.
Labels: No suspense here. These are just the descriptions you can add to the various settings that make up your reports. Note that their use is sometimes not excessive when it comes to generating complex relationships, or putting relations in several different metrics.
Values: These are numeric variables that you can enter if you want to trigger an event at a specific time. You can also set values based on other values defined elsewhere such as "Download Time" (but it gets a bit complicated).
Implicit counts: Here we have access to another level of analysis. You may need a specialist to help you set up your reports because implicit statements do not appear in Google Analytics standard reports. In your reports, the title of your events corresponds to the names of its components. For example, an event in the "Videos" category associated with the "Play" action and the "Funny" label will appear as "Videos + Read + Funny" in your reports.
Conclusion
The purpose of this article is therefore to show you all the possibilities offered by the implementation of Google Analytics events. As you can see, the possibilities are very numerous and you can really analyze anything and everything on your site. Do not hesitate to contact us if you wish to go further in the analysis of your data and set up these types of events. Our teams will help you define your needs and put in place the analytical reports adapted to your strategy.
Do not hesitate to contact us at 514 572 7758 or via our contact form if you wish to speak with an expert who will answer all your questions.
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