I would like to measure how long (on average) users are performing certain actions in my app. For example, the time it takes for a user to add an item to the cart till the time to purchase the items. Can Firebase analytics track these time differences? If so, how can I get a report out of it or add it to my dashboard.
I know this can be done using traces in Performance monitoring, but I want to know these time differences not to troubleshoot performance issues but rather behavioral issues for my users.
Related
Question about goal tracking.
I have an application that I can track from Step 1 to Step 10, and the user submits data on step 11.
Pretty standard form.
We then intake the application, evaluate, then send the user and email to log back in and accept our terms and purchase the product, which are steps 12-15.
If I set up a goal funnel, will analytics know the users has come back and completed steps 12-15?
Or do I basically lose all tracking after step 11?
There are some limitations in GA that could be a bit troublesome:
30-min session window: if user comes back later, new session is initiated.
multiple browsers/devices: if finishing the last 3 steps after receiving your email is done on different laptop/mobile device, the user will have different ClientID and so you won't be able to stitch the data together (in GA reporting interface).
There are many more aspects to it - but if the two limitations listed above doesn't seem like relevant, then the implementation shouldn't be tat difficult. For more technical details, I'd consider using MeasurementProtocol (fancy name for server-side tracking).
I'm currently integrating support for google analytics in my c++ project. I'm still learning how to use the analytics interface, but I can foresee a few potential issues that I may have with debugging.
I'm currently only able to see the "Event Category" and "Event Action" fields for any events in real time. Is there a way to see "Event Labels" and "Event Values"?
I've only been using the analytics interface for a few hours. How long does it take for events to transfer from Real Time to archived events that can be found in the "Behavior" panel? Currently, I'm not seeing any events in the "Behavior" panel, but there are events in the "Real-Time" panel.
If you click an entry in the event category column in realtime view it will give you a breakdown to action and label for that category.
Processing latency is documented here:
Data processing latency Processing latency is 24-48 hours. Standard
accounts that send more than 200,000 sessions per day to Analytics
will result in the reports being refreshed only once a day. This can
delay updates to reports and metrics for up to two days. To restore
intra-day processing, reduce the number of sessions your account sends
to < 200,000 per day. For Analytics 360 accounts, this limit is
extended to 2 billion hits per month.
Most of the time the data will show up a lot quicker (in some of my accounts the data turns up within the hour; anecdotally I'd say it depends to some extent on the account size/number of hits. Also for a Premium/360 account guaranteed processing latency is 4 hours). But if you need to rely on it for any business criticall purpose you'd better go for the documented number.
For your title question how to "best" debug, I'd probably start by installing some kind of proxy that allows to inspect the actual request. This will allow you to better track down the cause of the error, if any.
I have two view/profiles linked to my google analytics account. I want to fetch the hourly data for the current day, ie
start date:today
end date: today
with a few filters and dimensions.
Now I am getting the response for one view that means it is possible in google analytics, however for the other view its showing all the values as 0- this applies both to the gui and the api.
Can anyone suggest me how to enable it for the other view as well?
You cannot. Google Analytics needs some processing time. It might be that some data appears immediately, especially on small accounts, but it's not guaranteed and not a thing you can "enable" or count on.
Updated: Okay, that was a dumb answer. Still, there is a processing latency event in GA Premium. It is possible to get realtime data, but that's a different API with limited data (the core reporting API might return data, but no guarantees for that).
But I admit, since your problem is that you do not get data for the whole day yor have a different problem. But with a premium account you should be able to contact your account manager/technical support.
Background:
I have a Google Analytics account using which I am tracking user activity for web and mobile app. After logging into your account and choosing the web property and the corresponding view, you generally see a dashboard with quick stats like Pageviews, Users, Sessions, Pages/Sessions, Avg. Session Duration, Bounce Rate and percentage of new sessions. You can change the time period (from the top right area of the Dashboard) to get the same stats for that period.
Problem:
Last week, I was interested in the three main stats: Page views, Users and Sessions for a particular day - say, day A. The dashboard showed the following stats:
Pageviews - 1,660,137
Users - 496,068
Sessions - 983,549
This report was based on 100% of sessions.
I go back to the dashboard TODAY and check the same stats for the same day A. Here's what I saw:
Pageviews - 1,660,137
Users - 511,071
Sessions - 1,005,517
This report is also based on 100% of sessions.
Nothing was changed in the tracking code for the web and mobile app. Could someone explain why I have this difference in the stats? Is this normal?
They need some time to update the system, otherwise their system would overwhelm
When you first create a profile it can take up to 48 -72 hours for it to start showing data.
After that time data will appear instantly in the Real-time reports.
Standard reports take longer to finish processing. You need to remember the amount of data that is being processed. Some of the data may appear in the standard reports after a few hours. The numbers have not completed processing for at least 24 hours, so anything you look at then will not be accurate.
When checking Google Analytics never look at todays or yesterdays numbers in the standards reports, if you want accurate information. Things get even more confusing when you consider time zones. When exactly is it yesterday? I have noticed numbers changing as far back as 48 hours. But Google Says in there documentation 24 hours. I am looking for the link in the documentation will post it when I find it.
Found it: Data Limits
Data processing latency
Processing latency is 24-48 hours. Standard accounts that send more
than 200,000 sessions per day to Google Analytics will result in the
reports being refreshed only once a day. This can delay updates to
reports and metrics for up to two days. To restore intra-day
processing, reduce the number of sessions you send to < 200,000 per
day. For Premium accounts, this limit is extended to 2 billion hits
per month.
So try doing the same thing again today but check your last day being Monday. When you check again next week the numbers should be correct.
Considering doing some relatively large scale event tracking on my website.
I estimate this would create up to 6 million new events per month in Google Analytics.
My questions are, would all of this extra data that I'm now hanging onto:
a) Slow down GA UI performance
and
b) Increase the amount of data sampling
Notes:
I have noticed that GA seems to be taking longer to retrieve results for longer timelines for my website lately, but I don't know if it has to do with the increased amount of event tracking I've been doing lately or not – it may be that GA is fighting for resources as it matures and as more and more people collect more and more data...
Finally, one might guess that adding events may only slow down reporting on events, but this isn't necessarily so is it?
Drewdavid,
The amount of data being loaded will influence the speed of GA performance, but nothing really dramatic I would say. I am running a website/app with 15+ million events per month and even though all the reporting is automated via API, every now and then we need to find something specific and use the regular GA UI.
More than speed I would be worried about sampling. That's the reason we automated the reporting in the first place as there are some ways how you can eliminate it (with some limitations. See this post for instance that describes using Analytics Canvas, one my of favorite tools (am not affiliated in any way :-).
Also, let me ask what would be the purpose of your events? Think twice if you would actually use them later on...
Slow down GA UI performance
Standard Reports are precompiled and will display as usual. Reports that are generated ad hoc (because you apply filters, segments etc.) will take a little longer, but not so much that it hurts.
Increase the amount of data sampling
If by "sampling" you mean throwing away raw data, Google does not do that (I actually have that in writing from a Google representative). However the reports might not be able to resolve all data points (e.g. you get Top 10 Keywords and everything else is lumped under "other").
However those events will count towards you data limit which is ten million interaction hits (pageviews, events, transactions, any single product in a transaction, user timings and possibly others). Google will not drop data or close your account without warning (again, I have that in writing from a Google Sales Manager) but they reserve to right to either force you to collect less interaction hits or to close your account some time after they issued a warning (actually they will ask you to upgrade to Premium first, but chances are you don't want to spend that much money).
Google is pretty lenient when it comes to violations of the data limit but other peoples leniency is not a good basis for a reliable service, so you want to make sure that you stay withing the limits.