I'm capturing the date of a product installation when user extends a trial, and pass it to a thank you page as a parameter. Then I capture it and want to retroactively trigger event in the past.
From docs the code looks like:
ga('send', 'event', [eventCategory], [eventAction], [eventLabel], [eventValue], [fieldsObject]);
And nothing is said about ability to set any dates.
Is there a way to do it?
You can not push any events retroactively in Google Analytics.
All data is connected to the time that they were sent on.
Related
Currently I'm using the following analytics.js method to track different funnels/goals and these get triggered on each specific page.
ga('send', 'pageview', '/ConversionEvents/Step1_MembershipPlan');
ga('send', 'pageview', '/ConversionEvents/Step2_AccountInformation');
ga('send', 'pageview', '/ConversionEvents/Step3_PaymentInformation');
ga('send', 'pageview', '/ConversionEvents/Step4_AccountConfirmation');
ga('send', 'pageview', '/ConversionEvents/Step5_ThankYou');
However, now that I switched to gtag.js I'm seeing what the best method would be to set these up. I came up with the following 3 options.
Option 1:
gtag('event', 'sign_up', {'step_name': 'step1_membership_plan'});
Option 2:
gtag('event', 'pageview', {'step_name': 'step1_membership_plan'});
Option 3:
gtag('event', 'step1_membership_plan');
I'm leaning towards using option 3 because it would be easier to view these events in GA4 since it will be listed as a different event name and it would be easier to create funnels.
From reading online, they say it's better to use the recommended/automatic events like sign_up and pageview for this but I'm not sure if then I can set up events to track the different parameters (e.g. step_name) that I set up for each step.
Which option would be the best to go with?
Thank you!
Personally, I would not clutter my GA4 with too many distinct event names.
But that's a matter of taste: If I understand Google's limits page correctly, web properties do not currently have a limit on distinctly named events, whereas app properties are limited to 500.
Ref.: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9267744?hl=en)
Instead, I would send the following events:
sign_up, when a user has completed the registration, aka visits the thank you page.
sign_up_step_complete, when a user has completed a step in the registration process. Sending the custom dimension step_name for each step.
(That is assuming that each step is just a virtual page view and does not actually send a page_view event to Google. If it does send a page_view, you can create the sign_up_step_complete event server-side based on the URL or not create an event at all and just use the page_view.)
This way, you're using the dafault sign_up event which might show up in a default GA report while also tracking intermediate steps in a separate custom event.
Finally, I would visualize the data in a free-form exploration funnel analysis.
I have a bunch of mp3s and an audio player on my site. In GA3 (UA) I had an event that fired every time I hit the play button on a specific track. The event name was jPlayer, the track in question is the variable 'mediaName', which is the name of the mp3 file which is derived when I click play. In my code, mediaName is a string that gets sent out to GA. i.e. mediaName might be 'mycooltrack.mp3', or 'anothergoodtrack.mp3'
ga ('send', 'event', 'jPlayer', mediaName);
After reading the GA4 docs, I guessed that I needed to make a custom dimension, called "Track" which took the User Property/Parameter: mediaName.
So the new code in my function looked like:
gtag('event', 'jPlayer', {
'Track': mediaName
});
But after several days this hasn't been working either.
I guess I don't really understand what dimensions are and how to send an event with an 'on-the-fly' name variable to GA4, like I've been doing with UA for years.
You need to first create the event in GA4 interface. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10085872?hl=en&ref_topic=9756175#zippy=%2Cin-this-article%2Creserved-prefixes-and-event-names%2Cweb
It is under "Configure" on the left-hand side. Then go through the steps.
Your configuration will look something like this, if you really like the "jPlayer" event name, then just replace "audio_play" with "jPlayer"
The code you used is still relevant and can stay the same, I'd just write "track" in lowercase.
I wanted to create a Sign up goal in Google Analytics. Adding an event for signup is simple enough:
gtag('event', 'sign_up', { method: 'Direct' });
This successfully created events
However when I try to configure the goal as such:
Nothing happens, the Goal conversion is not counted for the events shown above.
I am trying to follow instructions from here https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gtagjs/events
However I found very little documentation on tracking events as goals.
How do I configure a goal based on the standard engagement events in Google Analytics?
Try to set only Action equal to sign_up without value in Category.
I figured this out. The "Use the Event value as the Goal Value for the conversion" is the problem. Because my event is not sending a value, GA assumes it has zero value and zero value goals are not counted as a conversion.
I fixed this by choosing No for the option and entering 2.5 as the value. Now anyone sending the event counts as a conversion worth $2.5.
I want to get the usage data of my customer out of google analytics, to make some usability analysis with it. For this, I need something that I can determine, which event was done by which user. Is there a possibility in a google analytics api to get this two parts linked?
You could add a user ID as a custom dimension, you'd probably want to set the scope to user.
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2709828?hl=en
This would allow you to connect up which users performed which actions.
Of course you can! :) I have used it in a lot of projects.
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/sending-hits
Example:
ga('send', {
hitType: 'event',
eventCategory: 'Video',
eventAction: 'play',
eventLabel: 'cats.mp4'
});
Since clientId has been made available through the API as ga:clientId you can use this value.
I would recommend using a custom User Id though - setting you own generated User Id in the script using the Universal Analytics User ID feature and in your backend db.
Also add the id to any link you send to your clients via email/sms/etc. that lands on your homepage to follow up on marketing performance.
You would need to have some javascript that grab the id and set it on the pageview. (like Linker, but adjusted for user id)
Note to anyone using the Universal Analytics User ID feature The values returned in ga:clientId is actually the userId Even more interessting. (As of time of writing) GA fails if you request clientId from a User ID view. So you should use a non-User ID view to get the User ID. :)
I'm a newbie in analytics.
I want to track a record-created event every time someone creates a time-record in a web application for time-tracking. But the user can also copy a time record to multiple dates which should yield one record-created event for each new record.
Would a simple loop work or does google think my events are coming to them too fast? Should I add a setTimeout?
_.each(dates, function() {
ga('send', 'event', 'record-created');
// maybe wrap the line above in a setTimeout ?
});
As per documentation:
Each analytics.js tracker object starts with 20 hits that are
replenished at a rate of 2 hit per second. Applies to All hits except
for ecommerce (item or transaction).
Plus you have "only" 500 interaction hits per session, so you should not send too many events or GA will drop data.