Category Archives: Analytics

5 Google Analytics posts you don’t want to miss in April (+ 3 extra)

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Here’s again the last post of the month saved for the top 5 interesting Google Analytics related resources I found on other sites. Here are the five (and 3 extra) for April – you may want to bookmark those as they can be very useful:

How to Use GTM Download Redirects to track Links, Downloads and Email Clicks | Measureschool

In this video (9:27 min) Julian shows how to track email links, downloads and other outbound resources sent in an email more precisely with a combination of redirects in Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics. It’s pretty cool!

Tracking Funnels With Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking | Measureschool

In this video (17:04 min) Julian shows how to build you own customized funnel using Enhanced Ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, even if you don’t have an Ecommerce website. This will help you get super actionable insights and segments to help you in your marketing.

Panic Time or False Alarm? A Beginner’s Guide to Traffic Drop Analysis

This step-by-step guide from Distilled will help you understand your client’s traffic drop – is it a real problem, seasonality or broken tracking issue? This post will walk you through the process of confirming what actually happened and understanding why it happened in the first place.

Why Am I Seeing 307 Redirects on My Google Analytics Collect Hits?

Maybe you noticed the duplicated or redirected Google Analytics hits in the network tab of browser’s developer tools. GA didn’t really announced their migration to HTTPS and this post by Analytics Pros was quick to explain the reason. HTTP requests with a status code 307 are not sent to GA and only serve as redirects, so your hits are not double counted.

Google Analytics – Querystring parameter INCLUSION is the new black

As sites grow in scale and complexity, more query string parameters are showing up in page paths that may pollute your data and artificially inflate cardinality in pages reports. This blog explains how to use a series of filters to include only the useful query string parameters we want – all others are excluded.

#GTMTips: The Timer Trigger

Here Simo shows how to create your own timer in GTM which fires after a certain amount of time has passed on the web page. This is especially useful if you want to start a timer based on a user interaction such as a click, but this option is not available in the current GTM version.

Buy-To-Cart Rates by Digging Deep in GA Enhanced Ecommerce

This LunaMetrics post shows how to answer questions like what’s the likelihood that a user put something in their cart and then purchased at some point later, which goes beyond the standard Enhanced Ecommerce reports in GA. You can do this both with the free version and GA 360 and discover metrics like buy-to-cart rate within N days and average purchase lag.

More Accurate Conversion Data with Sequence Segments

Another LunaMetrics post this month showing how to use sequence segments to answer questions like: Is that new page of content driving more lead forms? Is this month’s home page banner driving more free trial sign-ups? You specify conditions for each step, and each step must occur in order.

P.S. Got a Google Analytics question? Send it to me and I’ll try to answer it on the blog.

Pass dynamic data to Google Sheets using Google Tag Manager

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Let’s say you want to use Google Sheets as a simple database to store your incoming inquiries with all details people fill in the form submission. You can’t use Google Analytics for it as it doesn’t allow personal identifiable information like email address to be stored. That’s why we’ll pass the data through Google App scripts to a Google Sheet, for free.

You can do the same with Zapier, where the coding part is hidden behind their beautiful interface, but their free version supports up to 100 tasks / month.

Let’s start by creating a simple sheet – my contact form has several fields I want to capture, like name, email, and subject. And in addition I’ll record a timestamp in GMT. So I’ll have these 4 as column titles:

table columns

Now we need the app script to do the magic. We go to Tools – Script Editor… and a new tab will open to write your script. We’ll remove the placeholder with the code below, courtesy of Martin Hawskey. It’s slightly updated, as his original version wasn’t working for me.

// Usage
// 1. Enter sheet name where data is to be written below
// 1. Enter sheet name and key where data is to be written below
var SHEET_NAME = "Sheet1";
var SHEET_KEY = "insert-sheet-ID-here";

// 2. Run > setup
//
// 3. Publish > Deploy as web app
// - enter Project Version name and click 'Save New Version'
// - set security level and enable service (most likely execute as 'me' and access 'anyone, even anonymously)
//
// 4. Copy the 'Current web app URL' and post this in your form/script action
//
// 5. Insert column names on your destination sheet matching the parameter names of the data you are passing in (exactly matching case)

var SCRIPT_PROP = PropertiesService.getScriptProperties(); // new property service

// If you don't want to expose either GET or POST methods you can comment out the appropriate function
function doGet(e){
return handleResponse(e);
}

function doPost(e){
return handleResponse(e);
}

function handleResponse(e) {
var lock = LockService.getPublicLock();
lock.waitLock(30000); // wait 30 seconds before conceding defeat.

try {
// next set where we write the data - you could write to multiple/alternate destinations
var doc = SpreadsheetApp.openById(SHEET_KEY);
var sheet = doc.getSheetByName(SHEET_NAME);

// we'll assume header is in row 1 but you can override with header_row in GET/POST data
var headRow = e.parameter.header_row || 1;
var headers = sheet.getRange(1, 1, 1, sheet.getLastColumn()).getValues()[0];
var nextRow = sheet.getLastRow()+1; // get next row
var row = [];
// loop through the header columns
for (i in headers){
if (headers[i] == "Timestamp"){ // special case if you include a 'Timestamp' column
row.push(new Date());
} else { // else use header name to get data
row.push(e.parameter[headers[i]]);
}
}
// more efficient to set values as [][] array than individually
sheet.getRange(nextRow, 1, 1, row.length).setValues([row]);
// return json success results
return ContentService
.createTextOutput(JSON.stringify({"result":"success", "row": nextRow}))
.setMimeType(ContentService.MimeType.JSON);
} catch(e){
// if error return this
return ContentService
.createTextOutput(JSON.stringify({"result":"error", "error": e}))
.setMimeType(ContentService.MimeType.JSON);
} finally { //release lock
lock.releaseLock();
}
}

We need to specify our Sheet so we copy the part between /d/ and /edit and paste it in the insert-sheet-ID-here quotes on line 5.

Google-sheets-ID

We can name our project however we like and save our script. As a next step, we select Publish – Deploy as web app, change the Who has access to the app setting to Anyone, even anonymous, and hit Deploy button.

deploy-web-app

The first time it will ask for authorization, click Continue and Allow and you’ll be presented with the web app URL:
web-app-URL

Copy it as we’ll need it to complete our setup.

Now, let’s create the variables in GTM that will pass the data we want. In my case I have 3 text fields and I’ll use their class names coming from Contact Form 7 WordPress plugin.

This is what my button looks like:

<input class="wpcf7-form-control wpcf7-text wpcf7-validates-as-required" name="your-name" size="40" type="text" value="" />

Name custom JS variable:

function() {
var inputField = document.getElementsByClassName("wpcf7-form-control wpcf7-text wpcf7-validates-as-required")[0];
return inputField.value || "";
}

Email custom JS variable:

function() {
var inputField = document.getElementsByClassName("wpcf7-form-control wpcf7-text wpcf7-email wpcf7-validates-as-required wpcf7-validates-as-email")[0];
return inputField.value || "";
}

Subject custom JS variable:

function() {
var inputField = document.getElementsByClassName("wpcf7-form-control wpcf7-text")[0];
return inputField.value || "";
}

You can quickly test them in the Console of Chrome Developer tools: custom-JS-variables-test

Timestamp custom JS variable:

function(){
var today = new Date();
var str = today.toUTCString();
return str;
}

Now we have all our variables and we’ll contruct our GET call:

https://script.google.com/macros/s/<replace with your web app URL>/exec?Name={{Name}}&Email={{Email}}&Subject={{Subject}}&Date={{Timestamp}}

Be careful to use exactly the same words as it’s case sensitive.

You can test how this works if you open the link in a new tab – you should get a success result {“result”:”success”,”row”:2} and if you check your sheet, it’s automatically populated:

Google-Sheet-populatedWe can remove the dummy data later.

Now let’s create the tag that will fire this in GTM, I’ll use a Custom Image tag. Give it a name, paste your string in the Image URL field and select your trigger (the form submission in my case):

GTM-tag
Create the tag, enter Preview and Debug mode and let’s see what happens. Go to your form, make a submission and we’ll see our tag being fired:

GTM-debug-mode-test

Also, when we check our sheet, it’s already there: Google-Sheets-final

Like magic! 🙂

5 Google Analytics posts you don’t want to miss in March (+ 3 extra)

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Here’s again the last post of the month saved for the top 5 interesting Google Analytics related resources I found on other sites. Here are the five (and 3 extra) for March – you may want to bookmark those as they can be very useful:

Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager Debugging Tools

LunaMetrics shares a variety of built-in tools and Google Chrome Extensions. These tools enhance visibility into the mechanics of the inner workings of GA/GTM and help with the configuring and debugging as well as previewing. The list includes: the JavaScript Console, Google Tag Manager Preview Mode, Google Analytics Debugger, Google Tag Assistant, Injector, Tag Manager Injector, Code Editor for GTM, EditThisCookie.

Track Content Engagement Via GTM (Part 1 and Part 2)

In this two-part series Simo shows how to track how much time users are actually spending engaged with your content. Interaction is counted as clicks, mouse movements, keyboard presses, and scrolls. And it’s important to check both articles as in the first he uses User Timings and in the second they’re replaced with a Custom Metric.

Introducing the Google Analytics 360 Suite

Google Analytics announced the introduction of the Google Analytics 360 Suite – a new collection of products targeting enterprises. It includes Google Audience Center 360 (beta), Google Optimize 360 (beta), Google Data Studio 360 (beta), Google Tag Manager 360, Google Analytics 360 (GA Premium), and Google Attribution 360 (Adometry). Although not all products are launched yet, they promise to solve the issues to see the complete customer journey, get useful insights, enable better sharing within the organization and deliver engaging experiences.

Getting Started with Google Optimize 360

This is an overview of the new Google Optimize 360 that’s still in beta and only selected companies have access to the product. It allows for integration with Google Analytics for both targeting and analysis. You can very quickly create audiences from GA that provide personalization and targeting that would require complex integrations in other tools. It looks great, and I’m waiting to hear the price!

Instantiating & Using The Google Tag Manager dataLayer – Data Layer Best Practices Pt 1 (Part 2, Part 3, Part4)

Here’s a 4-part series of posts from LunaMetrics showing the technical best practices designed to help you successfully interoperate with the Google Tag Manager Data Layer. You’ll learn the proper way to instantiate and work with the dataLayer, pushing to the dataLayer from within Custom HTML Tags, when and how to reference the dataLayer within Custom JavaScript Variables, and how to reset or purge values in the Data Layer properly.

Mapping User Constituencies to Google Analytics Segments

This is a practical example of creating segments that map to a user constituency.

Find Related Products Purchased Together in Google Analytics

If you use Enhanced Ecommerce, don’t miss to enable this feature.

Pull More than 10k rows Unsampled using Google Analytics Sheets Add-on

I found this older post just now, but it’s great when you need to export thousands of rows in a report.

P.S. Got a Google Analytics question? Send it to me and I’ll try to answer it on the blog.

5 Google Analytics posts you don’t want to miss in February

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Here’s again the last post of the month saved for the top 5 interesting Google Analytics related resources I found on other sites. Here are the five for February – you may want to bookmark those as they can be very useful:

GA Snippet And GA (GTM) Tag On The Same Page

In this article, Simo answers one of the most frequently asked questions: Can you run Google Analytics using the snippet AND using a Google Tag Manager Tag on the same page? He explains how tracking works across the Google Analytics snippet and Google Tag Manager’s Tag templates. If you do want to combine tracking across the two methods, you need to make sure that tracker settings match across the board.

Guide to Call Tracking and Analytics for Dental Offices

This article focuses on dentists but it’s equally valid for all businesses that want to track phone calls. Which is basically all of them (unless you don’t have a phone number on your site). You’ll learn why call tracking is important, what it can tell you about your incoming callers, and how to use the data from call tracking to increase your marketing ROI.

What’s Premium About Google Analytics Custom Funnels

There are tools in the Google Analytics interface to help understand behavior like the Navigation Summary and Entrance Paths, but both are limited in terms of the scope of steps and stages. Even the Behavior Flow report, showing a complex map of user navigation, really just scratches the surface of behavior analyses. Using the funnel visualization or sequences with advanced segments are also options, but a new feature in Google Analytics Premium may prove to be one of the most powerful (and easiest) tools yet – Custom Funnel Reports. It is a custom reporting template that allows you to experiment and create funnels out of nearly any user behavior and action on your site.

Introducing Autotrack for analytics.js

Google Analytics announced Autotrack for analytics.js as a new solution to the problem of tracking the majority of relevant user interactions. It attempts to leverage as many Google Analytics features as possible while requiring minimal manual implementation and gives developers a foundation for tracking data like outbound link and form tracking, URL change tracking for single page applications, declarative event tracking (clicks), and media query tracking (for responsive design).

Tracking Customer Lifetime Value In Google Analytics

Customer lifetime value (CLV or LTV) is a prediction of the value a customer will have over there lifetime with your company or brand. This article shows how to record the actual lifetime value of each and every customer using custom dimensions and custom metrics. The metric here only includes revenue that occurred during the date range selected, so if a user purchased prior to that period (or after) it won’t be included.

P.S. Got a Google Analytics question? Send it to me and I’ll try to answer it on the blog.

5 Google Analytics posts you don’t want to miss in January

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Here’s again the last post of the month saved for the top 5 interesting Google Analytics related resources I found on other sites. Here are the five for January – you may want to bookmark those as they can be very useful:

Excellent Analytics Tip #27: Chase Smart Calculated Metrics!

Avinash Kaushik starts the new year with another great blog post focused on calculated metrics, how to use the feature and some of the important calculated metrics you can create, based on the user, not on the session.

New Google Analytics Feature: Browser Size

This post introduces the new dimension in Google Analytics called Browser Size. It tells you just how large the user’s browser viewport actually is and you can use it for above the fold analysis, for page scroll analysis, and even for fraud detection.

Cookie Settings And Subdomain Tracking In Universal Analytics

Simo explains why you should always add the ‘cookieDomain’ : ‘auto’ field to all your tags and trackers when working with subdomain tracking. This will ensure the Client ID is copied and passed across the domains.

Google Analytics Health Check: Is Your Configuration Broken?

Here’s a nice summary by Shanelle Mullin at ConversionXL containing an extensive list of questions and common issues related to Google Analytics tracking and Google Tag Manager. Use it as a guide to check your implementation.

How I track banner impressions using Google Tag Manager and Universal Analytics

You show banners on your own website and want to track impressions? This post will walk you step-by-step how to do it with Google Tag Manager.

P.S. Got a Google Analytics question? Send it to me and I’ll try to answer it on the blog.