If you have a website or any online presence, you’ve most likely heard of Google Analytics. You may have even dabbled with overall traffic, page views, demographics, sources, etc. This information is all great and very useful, but more often than not, we’re looking for a way to determine if our campaigns, marketing, and website are working.
Google Analytics is complex, very complex. There is a lot of information you can get from Google Analytics and there’s also a lot of information missing from Google Analytics that you would love to have. But, unless you’re going to purchase an enterprise solution or even a few enterprise solutions, Google Analytics is the best we’ve got and if used consistently, over time we can use trends and its data to make better decisions on our sites.
Besides the basic tracking mechanisms, how do you track specific actions, events, and campaigns in Google Analytics? We’ve compiled 3 ways to better track goals (conversions), events, and campaigns. These three methods can be used in conjunction to better understand if your marketing efforts are indeed working.
Let’s dive in!
1. Tracking Traffic Source Using Campaign URL Builder
This is useful if you are wanting to track clicks through to the site from a particular source. Case in point, you run an ad on Pandora, it’s a beautiful banner ad. You want to track this ad for:
- How many people are coming to the site from the ad?
- The number of leads that came from Pandora that lead to conversions/ goals.
Using Campaign URL Builder from Google, you can create a custom URL that includes a query string that is tracked by Google Analytics as a source. You can then connect this source to your goals/ conversions (and events in fact), see numbers 2 and 3 below.
Building the URL’s is pretty simple:
- Go to https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
- Enter Website URL you are wanting to link to, ie https://mydomain.com/get-started/
- Campaign Source, enter the source, ie Pandora
- Campaign Medium, enter the medium, ie Banner (both this and the Source will display when looking up the data in Google Analytics)
- Don’t worry about the other fields unless you’re so inclined
- Next, under “Share the generated campaign URL” copy the URL to use for your campaign or click “Convert to Short Link” and copy the Shortened URL
- When you use this in your campaign, any clicks to the site from the campaign will be tracked as a Source / Medium with Google Analytics
View Traffic From a Particular Source
- Log into Google Analytics
- Click on left side under Acquisition > Campaigns
- Once you click into the Campaigns or a specific Campaign, you can add a secondary dimension to further understand the user’s interaction with the site. For instance the “Page” or “Landing Page.” Additionally here you can view columns for you goals/ conversions and how many goals/ conversions were completed via the Campaign.
2. Tracking Clicks and Events
Within Google Analytics we can track specific events. An event is an action the user takes with a site. For instance, how often the “Get Started” button on a website is clicked. This could really be any number of actions, i.e. when a user opens/ closes a toggle — essentially any click on the site.
The code looks something like: ga(‘send’, ‘event’, ‘Get Started CTA – Desktop’, ‘Click’, window.location.pathname); and is placed on the anchor tag for instance:
<a href="/get-started/" onclick="ga('send', 'event', 'Get Started CTA - Desktop', 'Click', window.location.pathname);" role="button">Get Started <span class="fa fa-caret-right"></span></a>
In the basic setup:
ga('send', 'event', [eventCategory], [eventAction], [eventLabel], [eventValue]);
- Event Category = The object that was interacted with, ie a video or button (be specific)
- Event Action = The type of interaction
- Event Label = Categorization of events (currently we use this as window.location.pathname which gives the URL of where the event took place
- Event Value = A numeric value associated with the event (we don’t use this in simple implementations)
GA Events Generator by Raven Tools has a great tool for generating specific event tags and information on more complex implementation of tracking events: https://raventools.com/marketing-reports/google-analytics/event-tracking/
Viewing Events in Google Analytics
- Log into Google Analytics
- On the left side find Behavior, then click on “Events” then on “Top Events” — we’ve found this is the best entry point for view by Category.
Similar to Campaigns, you can align events with conversions and goals. We use this often to track conversion funnels, form submissions, call to action, etc.
3. Conversions and Goals
With Google Analytics you can set up Goals/ Conversions. This is the end of the funnel. This could be a thank you page after a form submission, a checkout page, or whatever the end of the funnel is for your website. Goals work best when you set them up in conjunction with Event Tracking and/ or Campaign Tracking because you can see whether your marketing efforts are working or not working.
You set up the goals based on:
- Destination = the last page in a funnel, ie a thankyou.html page after a user submits a contact form.
- Duration = time on site
- Pages/ Screens per session = number of pages visited
- Event = Specific event conditions
Set Up Goals
- Log into Google Analytics
- Click on the property
- Go to the Admin tab
- Click on Goals
- From there you can add or edit goals.
View Goals in Google Analytics
- Log into Google Analytics
- Make sure you’re on the Reporting tab
- On the bottom left of the page click on Conversions, then click on Goals, then Overview
The above are three of the simplest methods we’ve found to better understand what’s working or not working in our campaigns and marketing efforts, but of course, there is much much much more you can do with Google Analytics. If you have other techniques that you use or questions about anything we’ve discussed above, let us know in the comments or shoot us an email, info@mackeycreativelab.com.
Happy tracking!