Introduction
You must’ve heard all the hype about Google and its marketing tools helping businesses grow and even set it up for your business on the internet. Event Tracking on Google Analytics would definitely be one of the features that lured you in.
There are chances that you might feel confused since there are literally endless features that you can make use of. However, not all of these features will be useful for the niche your business is operating in.
One thing that I can assure you, setting up Event Tracking on Google Analytics will help your business, regardless of the niche.
In this blog, we will be learning
- What is Event Tracking and What are the Advantages of Google Analytics?
- The Structure of Event Tracking on GA
- How to Set Up Event Tracking on Google Analytics?
- Tips for Tracking Events on GA
What is Event Tracking and What are the Advantages?
Let’s basically have an understanding of what an ‘Event’ on GA means before we get into the details.
An Event is any action that is performed by the user on your website or webpage. It could be anything from clicking on a certain button or a purchase of your product.
You must be starting to develop a vague idea now, let me clear it out for you.
Event Tracking is basically tracking an individual’s interactions with your business online. A wide range of metrics that can be counted as an Event is tracked by Google Analytics.
Those metrics include – Clicks on a button, clicks on an outbound link, Number of file downloads, how much time a user spent watching a video, and much more.
Using the Event Tracking option on Google Analytics can give your precise information and data that may be useful to develop your business on the internet and drive more revenue or leads.
There are two ways to set up Event Tracking, we will be looking into both these processes later on.
Clear? Let’s Proceed.
The Structure of Event Tracking on Google Analytics
Before we get into the steps for Event Tracking on GA, it’s a good thing if we understand the working of Event Tracking on Google Analytics.
Having a proper understanding of the same will increase your Digital Marketing game by miles.
Let’s cut to the chase.
As soon as you’ve decided to start tracking events on GA, you will be asked to enter the values for four different options. On completing this, you will be given a unique snippet code.
This code will have to be embedded onto a webpage to make use of the Event Tracking feature on GA.
The 4 options that you have to enter values for are:-
- Category – The name that you wish to give the elements that you’re going to track.
- Action – The type of interaction (event) that you wish to record.
- Label – Additional info about the event that you’re tracking.
- Value – This feature allows you to add a numerical value to the element being tracked.
Note that only the first two options (Category and Action) are mandatory to fill, the last two ( Label and Value ) are only optional.
Now that you’ve picked the element you want to track and also attached the tracking code to your website, Google Analytics will record the event for you, every time a user performs an event that you have specified.
We’ve gone through what Event Tracking is and how it works, let’s now jump into learning how to set up Event Tracking on Google Analytics.
How to Set up Event Tracking on Google Analytics
Just like I mentioned earlier, there are two ways to set up Event Tracking on GA. They can either be manually set up on Google Analytics or through Google Tag Manager.
Setting Up Event Tracking manually may be slightly difficult than setting up with GTM. However, it’s not impossible.
Setting Up Event Tracking Manually
The first thing to do before setting up Event Tracking Manually is to set up Google Analytics. Read our detailed guide to set up Google Analytics for your Business.
Once you’ve got that done, you can go ahead and set up Event Tracking.
Step 1 – Linking your Website with Google Analytics
After you finish setting up Google Analytics, head to the Admin section of your account and look for your Google Analytics Tracking ID. This code will help you link your Website with Google Analytics.
The function of this tracking ID is also to ask Google Analytics to send data to you, specifically. Yes, this code is a personal one, so it’s better you don’t share it with anyone else.
The code will typically have a format that looks something like this: GA-33333-6. The first set of numbers (33333) is your account number and the second set (6) is your property number.
Once you’ve got your tracking ID, you can proceed by adding the snippet after the <head> tag of each page on your website.
Step 2 – Adding Event Tracking code
As we discussed earlier, in the structure of Event Tracking, you will be given a snippet code that you will have to attach to every webpage on the website.
Making the code is quite simple, all you have to do is replace the tags Category, Action, Label, and Value with your versions of those options that you wish to track.
On generating this code, you can place the code snippet after the href tag on your web page.
Step 3 – Learning from Event Reports on GA
This feature is something that can be of crucial use after setting up Event Tracking. In the main dashboard for your Website’s Google Analytics, you will find the option ‘Events’ which is under the option “Behavior. Click on that.
As soon as you’re done with it, you will be given 4 options to choose and retrieve data from.
- Overview – This report gives you a broad overview of all the events running on your website. You’ll also be able to see the total number of users and the total value of the events.
- Top Events – Using this report, you will be able to see the popularity of certain events with the top categories, actions, and labels shown.
- Pages – You will be able to make good use of this report when you want to locate the pages that have the events that you’re tracking.
- Events Flow – This feature will help you see your user’s journey through the website or web page. You will be also able to see how the user ended up triggering the event that you wanted to record.
The tough bit is down, let’s move on to a lighter space now.
Setting Up Event Tracking through Google Tag Manager
Tracking Events through Google Tag Manager is not even half as hard as manually setting up events.
Here’s the difference.
If you decide to track the number of ebook downloads manually, you will have to do the programming for the code and attach it to every webpage that has an ebook that can be downloaded.
On the other hand, Google Tag Manager changes the game for you. You will be able to simply add a new tag to track the downloads.
It further sends your data to Facebook and Google Analytics, talk about efficiency huh?
I’m sure you’re excited to find out and use the simpler method, so let’s get going.
Step 1 – Set Up Google Tag Manager
This is the most obvious and easiest step of all. Creating an account on Google Tag Manager is pretty easy.
After setting up your account, you will be asked to make a container. Quite literally, it is like a storage place where all your tags will be saved.
Name your container and specify the kind of device you will be using to operate GTM.
Soon, you will be given a code snippet. Don’t worry though, this is the only code you will have to use, and just once.
You can copy and paste the two snippet codes onto all your web pages.
Step – Use Built-in Variables
To create tags, you must always make sure that Built-in variables are turned on.
- Click on “Variables” from the main screen.
- You will be taken to a different screen where you will have to click “Configure”
- Pick the variables that you wish to track
- After completing the above-mentioned process, you will be able to create tags for the Event Tracking.
Step 3 – Tag Creation
- On the main Google Tag Manager page, click on the option that says “Add a New Tag”.
- After finishing that, you will be taken to a page where you can create your own website tag.
- Two options, Configuration (Where the collected data will be stored) and Triggering (The type of data you wish to collect).
- When you’re taken to the next page, you will have to choose “Universal Analytics”. This will help you create a Tag on Google Analytics.
- Now, you will be able to choose the type of data you want to track.
- Head to “Google Analytics Settings” and click on “New Variable”.
- Here, you must enter your Google Analytics Tracking ID. Enter your ID and you will be able to access your website data.
- After this process, head to “Triggering” and choose the data you’d like to send to Google Analytics.
- Click on “All pages” to send data from each of your web pages. And Voila!
We’ve come to the end, but how can I leave you without giving you a few tips to master Event Tracking on Google Analytics?
Tips for Tracking Events on GA
- It may seem tempting to have a lot of Event Tags set up. In the longer run, it is better to group these tags and have unique names making them for you to locate.
- What works for one event may not work for the other, run endless tests before you’re confident with your event tracking strategy on Google Analytics.
- You can also use the Social Tag Feature in GTM to send information to the Social Report on GA. This will enable you to set up your own Social Plugin. You can also set Goals on Google Analytics and create a successful path for your business.
Conclusion
You can call the highest bid and say that your business is going to achieve heights since you’ve mastered Event Tracking.
I hope this blog helped you find what you were in search of.
We at DigitalVillage.In offer a bunch of other services too, so don’t hesitate to check us out! Let’s grow together.