GTM - Virtual page views & Goals - google-analytics

We have a web site that already has GA page tracking and Goals set up to track conversion based on URLs, and these are working fine via GTM & GA.
We want to introduce a new product and track it via a separate goal/funnel.
Problem is the pages stay the same, so there isn't any change in the URL to differentiate when a customer has selected this product.
Our flow is as follows:
/Price
/Up-sell
/Summary
/Payment
/PaymentComplete
The customer selects the product on the Price page.
In order to get the Goals to track for this new product I've created a series of virtual page views that are triggered when the product is clicked and persist on subsequent pages.
So the URLs within GA now look like:
/Virtual/Price
/Virtual/Up-sell
/Virtual/Summary
/Virtual/Payment
/Virtual/PaymentComplete
I can see the page views within GA fine.
When I create a new goal I base it off the /Virtual/ urls.
However, because GA is firing on each page by default I effectively get two URLs in GA the original URL, e.g. /Price AND /Virtual/Price this then causes issues tracking between pages in the funnel & goal.
What am I doing wrong here?
How does everyone else manage this scenario?

You can add exceptions to the GA trigger in GTM, add the URLs that you don’t want. Or, don’t fire the trigger that sends the virtual page.

Related

How to Track lazy loading product pages in Google Analytics

I am in the process of setting up enhanced Ecommerce for GA and have had a few requests of additional of what else the client would like to see in their reports. Once of which is;
"We no longer have paginated pages,instead, the pages automatically
load more products when a user gets to the bottom of the page. How can I track how many times the does this?"
Is there a way (using event tracking maybe?), that we can track every time a the page reloads new products as the URL is no longer changing. In order to compare with data from before this functionality change, it would be useful to see what the equivalent number of pages a user is seeing, ie, how many times the page adds new products to the page. Any code examples would be really helpful too.
Thanks,
Roxi

Google Analytics - Multipe Visits and Events

Can anyone please help me clarify below queries?
Including GA code two times in a same page cause double visitor counts?
Using below/event code directly on the page, does it creates an events directly in the GA portal? Or first do we have to create 'Video' as event first in the GA portal and then call this so that it will map itself?
Ex: _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Videos', 'Play', 'Gone With the Wind']);
In google chrome extensions, while publishing it will asks for the GA id, and we provide, and if we keep main GA code in the extension pages(popup.html) too, then does it count as twice?
1. Including GA code two times in a same page cause double visitor counts?
If it's the same code pointing to the same account# and you aren't doing anything inbetween like deleting cookies, then no, it will not cause double visitor count. However, it will cause double page view count.
Using below/event code directly on the page, does it creates an events directly in the GA portal? Or first do we have to create 'Video' as event first in the GA portal and then call this so that it will map itself? Ex: _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Videos', 'Play', 'Gone With the Wind']);
Traditional GA does not require you to do anything special in the interface for this. You should see "Video" show up as a value in the Category dimension automatically.
In google chrome extensions, while publishing it will asks for the GA id, and we provide, and if we keep main GA code in the extension pages(popup.html) too, then does it count as twice?
I think you may be confusing your Google Developer Account ID with the Account# associated with your google analytics account, but if your extension outputs GA code and there is also GA code on the page and it points to the same account, then yes, it will count some things twice (see your first question).
To be clear, every time a _trackPageview is invoked, a page view will be tracked. So if you have multiple calls to that then it will count multiple times. If the visitor cookie isn't reset or broken, it will count as the same visit(or).

Google Analytics referral triggered by a bookmarklet

I have a question regarding Google Analytics and unwanted referral stats generated by a bookmarklet.
I have a web service with GA installed. My users are using a bookmarklet to accomplish a certain task while visiting some other web page. Bookmarklet creates an iframe and opens up a page which is also on my domain and that page contains the same GA code.
For some reason GA sees those web sites (pages that bookmarklet was used on) as referral pages. That creates a problem for me since those pages are not real referrals (no actual links to my site). I have no desire to track pages my users marked with the bookmarklet.
It’s important to mention that bookmarklet page must be a part of the same domain as my main page. I can not move it on other domain or subdomain.
This is what I tried so far:
I’ve created a new GA account (subdomain.mydomain.com) and used it only on my bookmarklet page hoping that all stats related with the bookmarklet will appear on that account. This worked only partially. Stats for the bookmarklet started to appear on the new account but my original GA account continued to track referral pages.
We tried to use a pop up window to load a web page instead of the iframe. No difference.
Any help on how to get rid of unwanted referral sites would be appreciated.
See _setReferrerOveride:
_setReferrerOverride()
_setReferrerOverride(newReferrerUrl)
Sets the referrer URL used to determine campaign tracking values. Use this method to allow gadgets within an iFrame to track referrals correctly. By default, campaign tracking uses the document.referrer property to determine the referrer URL, which is passed in the utmr parameter of the GIF request. However, you can over-ride this parameter with your own value. For example, if you set the new referrer to http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hats, the campaign cookie stores a new campaign with source=google, medium=organic, and keyword=hats.
_gaq.push(['_setReferrerOverride', 'URL-YOU-WANT-AS-REFERRER']);
Or, you could try
_addIgnoredRef():
_addIgnoredRef()
_addIgnoredRef(newIgnoredReferrer)
Excludes a source as a referring site. Use this option when you want to set certain referring links as direct traffic, rather than as referring sites. For example, your company might own another domain that you want to track as direct traffic so that it does not show up on the "Referring Sites" reports. Requests from excluded referrals are still counted in your overall page view count.
Async Snippet (recommended)
_gaq.push(['_addIgnoredRef', 'www.sister-site.com']);
You would have to grab the referrer and populate it dynamically. Probably with parent.document.referrer Of course this might make any referrals (non-bookmarklet) from these sites not record in the future. And, at some point you would need to clear them.
The most simple solution, if you don't need to track the hits from the bookmarklet at all, is to simply not include the GA code in the web page when it is opened by the bookmarklet.
Your bookmarklet can open the page like http://yoursite.com/?mode=bookmarklet
And in your server side code you can use something like
if ( mode != "bookmarklet" ) {
outputGaCode()
}

Google analytics to track impressions/views?

I have a site that lists business listings from a database. On each page you can do different things such as forward it to a friend, print the page etc. My question is could I use google analytics to track impressions and views for each listing? So if I showed the top 10 listings on the home page I want to track each listing as an impression since its being showed, then if they click one of the links to view the business listing it tracks it as a view. Then on the business listing details page if they do any of the actions such as forward to a friend or print the page I want to track that as well.
For tracking views/clicks Im assuming I would need to use setPageView passing something like setPageView('/listing/12345') correct? I dont know how to track it for impressions though. Then on the listing details page to track if they printed it etc Im assuming I would track it as an event? Such as trackEvent('listing', 'Print') if that is what I need to do for event how does it associate with the page tracking so that I could see how many times someone printed the listing page for /listings/12345?
No need to create fake page views. Google Analytics has a feature called Event Tracking, which is described in the Event Tracking Guide. The guide has an illustrative example;
A simple example illustrates how you might use the Event Tracking method
to record user interaction with a video Play link on your page. It
assumes that pageTracker is the name used for your tracking object.
Play
In this scenario, the reports for Events would display Videos as the Category,
Play as the Action, and Baby's First Birthday as the Label.
In your case, you would track Views and Clicks using the Event Tracking feature. You'd have to decide on how you'd want Actions, Categories and Labels set up to match your data. You might want package types (Gold, Silver etc) as Categories or Labels, for example.
This question and its answers are similar to your scenario.

tracking users with google analytics after they leave my domain to make a purchase and come back

I would like to track where users originally came from when they make a purchase on my site so I know which keywords are more profitable and which websites are best for advertising.
an example is a user is on my site with my google analytics tracking code which has details of where they came from, and then decides to upgrade. they leave my domain to go to my biller (2checkout) complete the purchase and return to my thank you page.
I have transaction code and analytics code on my thank you page and the transactions are showing up with the correct product/amounts in GA however there is no other data and in my reports the referring url is always my biller or a credit card companies authorisation page.
i can manually connect which customer is which by saving their referring data when they first come to the site and then matching it up after they make a sale, but I would like it to show up in my google adwords / analytics account where it is easier to manipulate the data and see trends.
if anyone can help me with this annoying issue I would be vbery greatful, but I fear I may end up living off reports I create and then matching them up with adwords manually :/
One thing you can do is have a click event trigger a custom variable. When the user clicks on whatever link that takes them to your biller, have the custom variable trigger with the information you want to carry over (like the current page URL, some campaign name, whatever). Specify the custom variable's scope as Session or Visit so that it get associated with the thank you page.
http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/gaTrackingCustomVariables.html
An alternative is to do campaign tracking:
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55540
That is more or less the same principle as the first suggestion, but with using specified URL parameters. Depending on how your pages are actually coded, you may need to push a virtual page view with the campaign code(s):
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55521

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