Google Analytics can’t track everything. Sometimes you’re going to need to give it a little extra attention to help it along. Event tracking is one of the premiere ways to capture visitor behavior when they use content that can’t have Google Analytics tracking code. With a little planning, and event tracking code, you can learn more ways about how your customers are using your website. This hard data will give you what you need to make informed decisions on optimization and automation down the road.
Ways to use Event Tracking
Track RSS Downloads
Do you know how often someone is clicking on that RSS icon on your site? Do you know your subscriber to RSS click ratio? Create an event to track each time your RSS feed is clicked. Multiple RSS feeds can be easy to separate by using the “opt_label” parameter in the event code.
<a href="http://yourdomain.com/rss" onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'RSS', 'Download', 'http://yourdomain.com/rss']);">RSS</a>
Track Outbound Link Clicks
Referencing work from outside your blog or website is important, but it can also be important to know if people are clicking on the links and getting additional information. The WordPress SEO plugin comes equipped with a feature to do this automatically for you, but if you’re one who would like to get into the code this can be easily accomplished.
<a href="http://www.anotherwebsite.com/article" onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound', 'http://www.anotherwebsite.com']);" target="_blank">anchor text</a>
Track Carousel Slideshow Clicks
Carousel slideshows are a mixed bag of opinions. They are sleek and look great, but many are in the belief that slideshows don’t perform well when you’re looking for conversions. You still need to know if your slideshow is performing to the standards you set for your site. You’ll want to track each slide’s link individually. This calls for a little bit more creativity in the creation of your event tracking code. Each slide will need a different event tracking call in order to gauge the performance of each slide.
<a href="http://yourdomain.com/article" onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'slideshow', 'click', 'Slide Name Here']);"><img src="http://yourdomain.com/images/image.jpg" alt="Alternate Text"></a>
You are ready to set up goals and dashboards to monitor the performance of your site once event tracking is in place.
Please share your comments and questions below.