One person downloaded a pdf on your website, another person clicked to call you, a third person wanted to get directions to your store and a fourth person signed up for your newsletter. Congrats! Google Analytics is tracking none of that by default. That’s right my friends, in order to track any of the actions I listed above you have to dive into the deep dark world of Google Analytics event tracking.
The Definition of Event Tracking in Google Analytics
Google defines events as “user interactions with content that can be tracked independently from a web page or a screen load.” Google uses a really vague definition because the types of things you can track with Google Analytics event tracking is almost endless. A good rule of thumb is that whenever you interact with a website but your URL doesn’t change, assume that your interaction isn’t going to be tracked and you’re going to need to implement event tracking. I listed a number of examples at the beginning of this article, but other examples include a click to email you, a visit to your social profiles, or scroll depth on a particular page.
Since Google Analytics event tracking is a different dimension from a pageview, it’s stored in a different location from a pageview. Any Google Analytics event tracking is stored in the behavior tab on the left-hand side of your Google Analytics screen. While you can technically track flows between events and pageviews in Google Analytics, the reports you can pull are limited.
Each event in Google Analytics must consist of three parameters – a category, an action, and a label. Additionally, a value can be added as an optional parameter in your event tracking. For example, if someone clicks to call your company and you know that every call is worth $5 to you, you can add in a value of “5.”
Naming these parameters correctly will help keep your analytics organized and easily understandable by anyone else who looks at your Google Analytics. How to properly name your event tracking will be discussed in a later blog, so just hold tight for now.
Summary
Learning about the ins and outs of event tracking is a large undertaking. Now that you know what exactly event tracking is, read about the implementation of event tracking, the effects event tracking has on your data, how to name your event tracking, what to track with event tracking and what not to track with event tracking.