When setting up event tracking, the first thing you’ll need to decide is what you’re tracking on your website. I’ve dedicated two whole blog posts to this, so I won’t take the time to talk about them here. Instead I’ll start with what you shouldn’t track in Google Analytics.
Don’t Track Every Button
You may be compelled to track every button click on your website. After all, it’s free data. I don’t recommend doing this for a number of reasons. Mainly, it’s not wise to collect data for data’s sake. Collecting data for data’s sake makes it harder to drill down into the actual dimensions you need. It’s like going shoe shopping and having mens shoes mixed in with womens shoes when you’re looking for a simple black high heel. I’m frustrated just thinking about it.
Don’t Use Google Analytics As a Substitute for UX Programs
If you’re tracking all non-pageview interactions, you might be trying to shoehorn Google Analytics into something it’s not, like a UX analysis tool. Google Analytics is great at tracking many things, but user behavior and user flow within forms and between pages is not one of them. Sure, there are reports called behavior flow and event flow, but neither of them is worth their weight in salt. Take the time to look for free UX tools like Hotjar before you muddy up your Google Analytics data.
The one caveat I will add is that it is okay to add event tracking to certain features on your website to see whether or not they’re actually used. Great examples of this include a carousel, an accordion, or even a CTA that’s caused great debate in the office. In this case, you’re not trying to track a user journey, every item in the navigation or every button on a page. Instead, you’re strategically trying to collect data. For example, out of the 100 users who landed on your website this past month, only .2% of them clicked on the questionable CTA in the top right corner.
Don’t Go Over 10 Million Hits
Even though you think the data you’re collecting with Google Analytics event tracking is free, if you collect enough data you may be violating Google Analytics’ service level agreement (SLA). When you joined Google Analytics, you agreed to an SLA limiting you to 10 million hits per month per property. A hit is defined as “an interaction that results in data being sent to Analytics” where a hit could include “page tracking hits, event tracking hits, and e-commerce hits.”
If you do go over the 10 million hits, you’ve got two things to worry about. First, you’ll experience an increase in the amount of sampling of your data, meaning less accuracy for you to make decisions from. Secondly, if Google catches you, they might force you to upgrade to Google Analytics 360, which runs $150,000 per year.
Don’t Track Personally Identifiable Information
As tempting as it may be to record the names of people submitting a form, you should probably stop, collaborate and listen. Storing personally identifiable information (PII), such as names, phone numbers, or street addresses in Google Analytics is strictly forbidden.
Summary
Knowing what not to track in Google Analytics is just as important as what to track in Google Analytics. It leads to clean data for better decisions. View my other blogs for what you should track in Google Analytics (part one and part two) and how to name your event tracking.