Google Analytics events - a neat little trick
By James Chapman on
A simple but handy little technique used for tracking user actions on your website.
What's an "event"?
An event is an action taken by the user on a website. For example, clicking a link or downloading a document.
How can Google Analytics help?
Tracking code can be added to virtually any event on a website. In doing so, when the tracked event occurs, Google will log the event in the Analytics control panel.
Examples of events you could track include:-
- Outbound links to other sites
- Document downloads
- Web apps made with javascript and AJAX
- Pressing play on a flash video or song
- Advertisement clicks
The possibilities are endless.
We recently used this technique on a price comparison site project. Each product had an "apply now" button which included the event tracking code. Really handy for this site whereby success is measured by the number of applications.
How long does an event take to show?
It can take anything from half an hour to 24 hours. There doesn't seem to be a fixed time so I recommend you check your stats once a day.
Example report
Here is an example report overview from Google Analytics.
You can drill down into each event category to view specific information about that event and what was clicked exactly.
Try it yourselves on your next project!
Find out more about setting up Google analytics event tracking.
We're more than happy to help if you have any difficulties.