Google Analytics Tag Implementation
- Track Type, Variables and Settings
Track Type: You will probably need to implement more than 1 GA tag depending on what you want to track – pageviews, events, etc.
Variables: When setting up, you can implement variables so you can have the same settings across multiple GA tags.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJos0AQiTAE&ab_channel=AnalyticsMania-GoogleTagManager%26Analytics
Click the override feature if you need to add in something custom to the variable. \
Trigger: When do you want this tag to be fired?
Since this is for pageviews, we want this trigger fired on all pages
2. Testing and Submitting
Before pushing the tag live, test it with the preview mode.
You can see the different layers of when tags are fired, you want GA to fire on the first layer (container loaded)
Also, even though its not “published” you still have an instance of a page with the tag implemented, so it WILL send information over to the Analytics console.
You can check analytics before pushing it live
Protip: the UTM test! Append the utm to the test tab and see that traffic is indeed coming in from the tag:
https://seanlum.com/?utm_source=test&utm_medium=test&utm_campaign=test
*double pageviews – when you have two tags on, it will report 2x the pageviews since the tags being fired off twice.
*real time sessions – you can check with real time sessions, note that after 5 minutes of user inactivity the user drops off the real time sessions chart.
Event Tracking Google Analytics
Event Tracking = Interactivity Tracking
Google analytics without event tracking is pretty vanilla = gives you insights into whos coming to your site, from where, how long they’re staying, etc. If you want to get more information on their behaviour on your site, you have to set up event tracking.
Implementing Events and Conversions requires us to Add snippets of code within our site so GA can track these as events/conversions <
For the actions we want to track, we have to assign a tracking code to each one of them i.e. button click, click to play, contact us form, link click, navigation click, etc.
For each conversion/event we are tracking, there are also parameters we are to set so we can collect more data about the action:
- Category – video plays, social shares, buy clicks
- Action – action user took, clicked play, add to cart, product clicks, etc
- Label – optional – gives more data, like name of the video, page that action was clicked from
- Value – optional – how much an event action is worth
To set up Event Tracking, we can use Google Tag Manager
Naming Events:
You must have an intuitive naming convention system in place for events on your site, so that you can analyze the data once collected. Ideally, you’d like to name your stuff so that you can drill down and get more and more insights.
Naming Hierarchy:
- Category
- Action
- Labels (Optional)
There are different strategies for naming stuff.
- Go by page – Category: Page, Action: what was done, etc etc –
- Go by Action – Category: Button Clicks, Action:Directions / Number, etc etc
Variables – When setting up category/action/labels, we can use variables to track specifically what was done for the event e.x. page paths to see what page a button was clicked
Resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQNA8itUXOk – Good overall Event Tracking implementation video, also goes over Non Impact interactions
REAL WORLD IMPLEMENTATION
Renaming Event Data
A NOTE ON CHANGING NAMING CONVENTIONS ONCE IMPLEMENTED:
So I initially screwed up my naming conventions and did it with little organization in mind.
I changed this and renamed the categories.NOTE WHEN YOU DO THIS a totally different category is born; the data from the previous category will not transfer over into the new cateogry.
Not Capturing All Clicks – Adding Multiple Triggers
So I was checking out the pages that I was tracking button clicks on… turns out i was missing tracking clicks! I was tracking text and #s, but not symbols as well, and variations of those names/numbers!
For example, I was tracking “CALL NOW”, but not the phone symbol and the # at the footer of the page…
You can add extra events for the triggers on Tag Manager
