I’m very excited right now guys. I just set up an event tracking script on one of my sites, and this is a major upgrade of my analytics arsenal.
Event tracking is a way for you to know how did visitors interact with your site. You can see how many times a file’s been downloaded, a button pressed or a document opened. No more guesswork.
I knew it was available with third-party providers, such as Crazy Egg, which btw does a whole lot more than that, but now event tracking is on my fingertips at the good old Google Analytics.
The setup is fairly easy and I will give you a plain-english overview of setting this up. Let’s assume you have all sorts of buttons on your page and you want to track which ones were pressed. Those could be download buttons, link buttons, whatever.
First, you need to add this line to your Google Analytics code:
var mapEventTracker = pageTracker._createEventTracker(’Buttons’);
Then, on each button’s link, (after or before the href=”www.yourlink.com”) you add the following:
onClick="pageTracker._trackEvent('Buttons', 'Download', 'Name of one of the Files');"
When you do this, GA will record the events and display statistics in GA --> Content --> Event Tracking.
You might want to consult Google's guide to have full control and flexibility with this. But, if you just put everything the way I described you should have a basic event tracking setup.
So, here you go. Just an exciting quickie.
- Alex
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that sure does look pretty useful, will have a look into it and try it out myself, thanks!
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Alex.
What does Crazy Egg do that Google Analytics doesn’t?
Thanks.
Well, there’s the confetti feature http://crazyegg.com/overview#confetti
But other than that, don’t know
btw… you mention having to add code to your theme (something I always try to avoid as much as possible LOL) and I just noticed that the latest version of the google analytics plugin actually lets you track a lot more than before, including downloads etc …. so maybe there is no need to add the code you gave here
Mirjam’s last blog post..Earn More Money with Clickbank – Clickbank Affiliate Tools You Have to Know
Really? I never used the plugins for this, so I wouldn’t know.
So, do you need to tag your links somehow? (i.e. the “onClick..” stuff?)
hey Alex!
ehmmmmmmm you don´t need to tag your links, just set the settings of the plugin the way you want it to work for you.
Advantage of this is not having to touch your core files and if you ever decide to change the theme, your settings stay in place
LOL not that i ever see you changing your theme in the near future
:P:P
Ha! Yea, this theme is here to stay.
Are you planning to test this out? OR are we gong to be in the dark?
LOL I´d never leave you in the dark without a good reason
I have set up the plugin to my likings but must admit I haven´t been testing it yet, cause I have been working on other things these past days that have been taking a big part of my attention. Trying to combine the owm and put it on high speed
have a great weekend!
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Very interesting, I didn’t even knew that this option exists. Until now I have set up a goal for each button I wanted to track… like this onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’/outgoing/example.com’);”
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Well there you go. This is a great way to track events without setting up goals… brrr.
Thanks for this info,I’ve tried to install google analitic directly from google but link doest work in my site and I’ll try again using tip from your article
Thanks for sharing this, but what I’m working on is to track usage of a widget, or plug-in on third-party sites.
For example, if we develop a SharePoint webpart, or WordPress plug-in, we want to be able to track it’s usage when installed on a third party website …
Anyone with ideas on how this could be done?? Other thank simply including a tracking pixel img reference within the webpart or plugin code… ?
Rob
Hey Rob,
I’d say use a pixel. But you can also make people register before using the plugin (to get a key).
That way you can mail them upcoming plugins and useful offers