I've build links with correct UTM parameters for advertising campaigns. On the landing page, there is a download button. When the download button is clicked, the next page that loads does not retain the UTM parameters (e.g. http://example.com?utm-params-here -> http://example.com/download).
When the UTM parameters are lost as described above, does GA stop associating the user with the UTM campaign / source? Or is GA smart enough to continue associating the user with the UTM campaign / source even after the parameters are lost, as long as their initial page view on the website contains the parameters?
UTM parameters for source, medium, etc. are all session-level dimensions, meaning they apply to all hits in that same session.
The only way a click on your download button wouldn't be associated with the UTM campaign / source is if a new sessions had started (for whatever reason).
You can read more about how sessions are defined here:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2731565?hl=en
Related
Is it possible to reference an e-commerce order in WooCommerce with info about if cookie consent was given from the customer who made the order?
My idea is the following:
Let's say a user comes from an Ad, so the URL already contains UTM parameters.
The user then sees the cookie banner and clicks on "accept".
The "accept" button appends another custom UTM parameter (e.g &consent=1) and opts-in
There are a few plugins that make it possible to see the UTM data for a specific order (e.g "handl utm grabber"). I was wondering if this way I could get insights for a specific order if the customer gave cookie consent or not.
Also, would appending the custom UTM parameter cause any problems (e.g double counting) in Google Analytics in this scenario?
Parameter "consent=1" is not UTM parameter, so it won't start new session.
I have 2 websites. (Site A and SIte B)
I am passing UTM codes From Site A to Site B page. (Site A page 1 to Site B page 2)
Site A with UTM tracking info - https://www.SiteA.com/?utm_source=MYsource&utm_medium=MY_web&utm_campaign=MY_Testing
Destination - https://www.SiteB.com/registernow.aspx
I can see my UTM tracking info (utm_medium,utm_source,utm_campaign) on RealTime Data (on 'Traffic Sources',Conversions) in real-time. All required information are there.
I can see my UTM tracking info (utm_medium,utm_source,utm_campaign) on Acquisition Data (on 'Campaigns',Conversions). Everything that I need is there too.
But I can not see my UTM tracking info on Conversions --> Goals.
(I have set up the Goal and the Goal name and the UTM data are tracking on 'RealTime Data' and 'Acquisition Data'. But not on Goals. I am trying this for a week now and checking after 24 hours. But the tracking info is not there. I think I can see source/medium as (direct) / (none).)
I just added the UTM to site B to test. (Not through Site A. The Site B itself with adding UTM codes in the URL)
If we open the Goal URL just manually on Site B through an email or through a browser, then it is tracking on 'Conversions --> Goals' with the UTM tracking code.
The problem is when we pass UTM through Site A.
I tried these 2 examples.
https://www.analyticsmania.com/post/transfer-utm-parameters-google-tag-manager/
https://www.analyticsmania.com/other-posts/transfer-utms-from-one-page-to-another-with-gtm-version-1/
I am not sure where I have missed it.
I want to get my UTM tracking info to 'Conversions --> Goals' when we pass it through Site A page 1 to Site B page 2.
Please, can you help me to sort this issue out? I really appreciate it if you can support me. It has been more than10 days since to figure out the problem.
Thank you!
UTM parameters are automatically deleted from the URL by Google Analytics (Analytics uses them to record their values as source, medium, campaign, ...). You cannot use them as destination Goal, rather enter another parameter to be taken as a reference for the goal on the landing.
UTMs within the same site must not be entered because they generate inconsistent data.
You can see the values you entered in the UTMs in the source / medium report.
EDIT:
If you want to use a trick, however, you can create a script that if it detects the UTM in the URL sends an event to Google Analytics so you can set a goal on that event.
I have a requirement where I need to track whether a user clicked a link in a PDA email where the link included in the email is >900 characters.
I'm not sure if Google analytics support tracking in PDA.
If anyone has ever done this,please help me out.
Thanks
I seem to have misunderstood the question, so here is an update. Google will usually track any valid Urls. The two exceptions I can think of are more theoretical than a practical concerns.
Some old browsers (I think IE6 and similar vintages) have a character limit for GET requests (2048 bytes IIRC), so very long links will not work, and this not be tracked correctly. For all practical purposes these browsers should be extinct by now
A Google Analytics request is limited to 8096 bytes.The request has to transmit the document location as part of the payload, so if your URL is really massively oversizes (technically 8000 characters is ">900") this would not be tracked. Again, this is hardly a practical concern (unless there is a lot of other data, like e.g. Enhanced E-Commerce product impressions in that request).
Old (and probably irrelevant) answer:
Google Analytics does typically not track actions within emails, since email clients do not usually support javascript (there are implementations of email open tracking via "web bugs" linked to a script that does a measurement protocol request, but event that does not work particularly well).
If this is a link that points to your homepage the typical way to track this would be via utm parameters - i.e. you do not track the action within the email itself, but the result (the visit to your homepage).
UTM parameters (or "campaign parameters") are
utm_medium - the kind of traffic (if it's paid advertising, banner ads, or in your case e.mail)
utm_source - the specific vendor (e.g. "google" if the link is from a paid Google Ad, or in your case it could be the name of the department that sent out the mail)
utm_campaign - your advertising campaign; in the case of a periodic newsletter this could be e.g. the number of the newsletter
utm_term - you usually would not use that in an email, that's reserved for when a link is a result of a search (then you would insert the search term)
utm_content - if you have multiple links with the same link target and campaign info you can add additional information (e.g. if you have the same link at the top and the bottom of your mail you could indicate the position here)
You cannot do anything dynamic, though - if you want to mark links with a specific character count you would have to do this within your newsletter programm and insert the number. GA would then be able to pick this up from the campaign parameters.
E.g. for your use case you might construct a target URL like
www.example.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=my_department&utm_campaign=pda_mail&utm_content=<number of characters>
and then get the information from the Aquisition reports in Google Analytics.
If the links do not point to your own homepage you would need to set up an intermediate page that tracks the utm_parameters before it redirects to the intended destination.
I can see sources of visits and other related data on my Google Analytics screen. As I read so far, UTM tracking aims to track where the users come from and some other things like what did they do on website.
But as I said, I can see these kind of things on regular Analytics scrren. So why I need UTM then?
Thanks.
Google recognizes some sources automatically (direct, organic, referral and to some extent SEM). However it does not automatically recognize campaign traffic.
E.g. if somebody clicks on a newsletter link in a webmailer this would be counted as referral traffic. By adding campaign parameters you could instead track this in a custom newsletter channel with e.g. one campaign name per newsletter.
Links from other websites would show up as referral, if these are your affiliates you track them as such via UTM parameters. SEM traffic is organized into campaigns by UTM parameters (or the gclid parameter from adwords autotagging, which is more common).
So if you want to know which of your marketing measures are successful you'd use utm parameters in destination urls. If you do not do marketing campaigns you do not need them.
If the user comes with the utm values to the landing page
http://example.com/landing.php?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Marketing&utm_term=FbAd&utm_content=Fad1&utm_campaign=FBFunnel
In the Landing.php file I can Get the UTM values. and Google analytics will show campaign results and clicks. What if the user navigate to other page
-> http://example.com/contact.php. In the contact.php there is no UTM values in the URL how would Google analytics track that visit from which UTM Campaign? . If I am using PHP api to send utm values to third party tools means How would I fetch UTMs in the contact.php file? I don't have clear idea about this Please help.
Thank you
Google Analytics stores campaign data, including utm parameters, in a session scope. The values are retrieved at the first page of the session (which also means that a new session starts when the campaign attribution changes) and are applied to all subsequent hits.
With the current version of GA - Universal Analytics - attribution happens on the Google servers (used to be different with previous, but now deprecated versions of GA). There is no realistic way to retrieve the Attribution data from Google in realtime. You'd have to create your own solution to store the utm paramaters in a cookie and retrieve them from there.
If you do not need to send the data in realtime I wrote a lengthy tutorial on how to extract attribution data from GA and send it to another application via the respective APIs. The tutorial uses Python as programming language and Salesforce as partner application, but there should be enough background in there to apply the principle to other languages and applications.
Your best option is to write a small piece of javascript to store the UTM values in a cookie and then populate your forms with the stored values.
If you don't want to write one yourself, this blog post helps you do exactly what you need and also provides a javascript that you can add to your website.
Disclosure: I'm the author of the blog post.
Another simpler way is to use Javascript to append the UTM/query parameters to every link. Here's an example in JQuery:
$('a').each(function() {
var querystring = window.location.search.substring(1);
var href = $(this).attr('href');
if (href) {
href += (href.match(/\?/) ? '&' : '?') + querystring;
$(this).attr('href', href);
}
});
Of course you could specify/select a class of links if you only want to keep the parameters on
This makes for uglier URLs throughout your site but may be a quicker/simpler solution than storing and accessing the UTM params in cookies.