How to Make Use of Event Tracking to Reduce the Bounce Rate
One of the issues we’ve discussed before has been that bounces of the site isn’t inherently exact within Google analytics. The issue is that it needs two visits to a page to register a website visit as something other than an unintentional bounce. The user who comes to your website, reads the material, is pleased but then leaves the site doesn’t make a subsequent interactionand is considered a bounce, rather than a contented user. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
It is a sign that the bounce rate of your site is higher than what it really could be. If you find ways to record other interactions on your page other than simply loading a new page, you can track the session details of users who browse your blog but do not proceed to another page. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
Google offers a method by which to record any the other interactions on your site in the event that they’re specifically arranged. This is known as event tracking. There are a variety of implementations for event tracking based upon whether your using modern analytics.js or the older obsolete ga.js variant that is part of Google Analytics. I’ll cover both, however I’ll begin with the older version. If you’ve updated , and you ought to – you can skip the first section and proceed to the next. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
Legacy GA.JS Event Tracking
Event tracking is the process of assigning a trackable code to different pieces of content on your site that generally aren’t considered to be interactions and therefore are not monitored by Google. Some examples include: – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
- The AJAX elements on pages allow for interactivity, without requiring page load.
- Anything that is developed using Adobe Flash, including website navigation, or a Flash-based movie player. *
- Special script-based widgets or page gadgets. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
- The download of a file directly from the webpage such as an ebook, on the landing page, which does not redirect users when the opt-in form is completed. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
*I strongly recommend removing from Flash. Flash is a well-exploited plugin that opens the majority of websites to security vulnerabilities. It’s among the most popular vectors of spread of malware through ads. It is prone to crash which requires restarting the browser. It’s not working on some mobile devices. Chrome as well as Firefox have been blocking it in default and require user’s interaction in order to access Flash media. This could be fatal for navigation using Flash. Video players can be accomplished using HTML5. If that was not enough Adobe plans to cease supporting Flash in any way before the end of 2020. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
It is possible to monitor anything you want so you are able to connect a specific tracking code to an event that you wish to monitor. But, you must ensure you’re tracking an event that’s only tracked when it’s actually used. It’s not helpful to track something during pages that isn’t the data that Google tracks already. it’s not adding any information. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
A tip straight taken directly from Google is to think deeply about your website and create an effective reporting structure prior to you begin to start implementing events tracking. It isn’t a good idea to add an event for tracking only to discover that it isn’t integrating well with your other information. Being aware of what kind of actions you’d like to monitor in the near future is useful. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
Also, ensure that whenever you record events, that you label the event with a specific name. It isn’t a good idea to find yourself wondering what the differences are in between the two events, EventA1 and EventB1 and how they’re relate in relation to EventAB as well as Event1. It’s far better to use events such as NavButtonHome or VideoPause. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
The first step you’ll need to do to setup event tracking is establish general tracking on your website. It’s already set up if you’ve been using Google Analytics up to now. If you haven’t, you’ll need to do the whole paste-code-verify-ownership rigmarole you need to set up Google Analytics. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
If you’ve got GA installed it is then necessary to alter the code of any thing you wish to record as an event. You’ll need to include the event_tracker() method to a method within the code. If you aren’t sure what that means, inform your developer to implement it. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
The track Event() method uses specific formatting that is also known as a signature. It looks like this: _track Event(category, action, opt _label, opt _value, opt_ noninteraction). – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
What is this all about?
- category is the term used to describe an object group you wish to monitor. For instance, if you were recording the play/pause, controls for volume, skip time and the play button of an audio player and the category in general will be something like VideoInteractions. This is the only way to do it.
- Action is the unique identifier of the particular action being utilized. Each video interaction above would be given an Action label, for example, PlayPause, Volumeand Skip and Next. This is mandatory.
- Opt_label is a string that can be used as an option that provides more details regarding the specific interaction within Google Analytics, giving it additional dimensions that you can use into your reports in the future. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
- Opt_value is a different value that can be used which is this time an integer, that could provide numerical information on the event you’re monitoring. Google’s illustration of how this could be used is to measure the loading time of an online video, between when the play event takes place before the video starts to play. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
- Opt_noninteraction is an additional value that is optional that is, this time, it is a Boolean true or false. In general, this value can be removed by setting it to false. If set to True it is not included in the bounce rate. A good example of when you may need to set one of your interactions to True would be when you have an autoplaying video on the page that you are landing on. The initial pause isn’t a signal that the user did not bounce, it’s merely an indication of their desire to prevent it from distracting the user. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
It is important to note that actions could be called the same in various categories. It is possible to have two distinct Play actions within two categories. If you’re looking at Google Analytics later and you’d like to see the individual performance metrics of each action, they will be considered to be the same action unless you’re separating them by category. It’s a good idea to give each category and each action a distinct name. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
Labels can be useful in separating the same actions within the same category across different objects. As an example, suppose you have a website with three videos, each one of which is an advertisement for an upcoming Star Wars film. Each of them would be in the category Video and all include the play button to play the video. What’s the difference between each one? This is where the label comes in. Thus, you’d be able to have 3 entries – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
- Category: “Videos”, Action: “Play”, Label: “Episode 1”
- Category: “Videos”, Action: “Play”, Label: “Episode 2”
- Category: “Videos”, Action: “Play”, Label: “Episode 3”
A word to be cautious. There is a limit of 10 event hits that can be sent to Analytics immediately. When those 10 hits are exhausted Analytics will accept only one event hit every second. If let an online video that sends one event each second it is played and that could use the quota, and outweigh other actions you could wish to keep track of. If you’re tracking several simultaneous actions, ensure there isn’t many other activities being tracked before it. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
migration. Google has already transferred all Analytics properties to their new Universal Analytics. I’m sure some haven’t taken the time to completely upgrade their websites or are hesitant because a feature they like has been removed. I strongly recommend that you update regardless. As time passes you’ll encounter increasing issues with old code. To maximize the benefits of the event-tracking feature, switch from Analytics.JS to Analytics.JS and set up tracking the way you want to. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
Analytics.JS Event Tracking
Event Tracking Lower Bounce – If you’ve read all of the above and it does not apply to you I apologize for any information I have covered in a subsequent post, for example, the cautionary tale about the reasons why Flash is a bad thing.
Event tracking using the latest analytics code functions in similarly to the earlier code. It connects a piece of trackable code to run whenever a user triggers an incident, and is then added into Google Analytics as an interaction. The same examples are still in use to the AJAX elements and the Flash elements as well as the scripts, the widgets, and the downloads.
It’s important to reiterate that Flash should be eliminated from your website if any point. If it’s not not indexed, and it’s an unfavorable performance and load time hit. And it’s not the last time. Adobe will drop it in a matter of a couple of years. – Event Tracking Lower Bounce
Analytics.JS events function differently. They are based on the latest Google Analytics way of parsing events into hit types. Learn more about the different types of hit comprise on this page. In essence, different types of hit are recorded as distinct types of events within Analytics. Modern Analytics supports a few different types of hit on its own, including pageviews, and other types of informational.
Similar to similar to GA.JS Version, the GA.JS version will need specific formatting of the event command you need to make. This format is as follows:
ga(‘send’, ‘event’, [eventCategory], [eventAction], [ even t Label ], [eventValue], [fieldsObject]);
- EventCategory is the term used to describe the object that is being manipulated such as “video” for video interaction. It’s the same thing as category described in the prior section, and it’s mandatory.
- The EventAction is the action that takes place on the object like the previous action. For instance, “play” would be an action that falls under”video” category “video” section. It’s also required.
- EventLabel is a term used to describe the activity that takes place. It’s a method to define kinds of events within context. Google makes use of an example “fall campaign” to allow you to differentiate events that are similar across various dates.
- EventValue can be described as an integer which is a number, connected to an event. Similar to previously.
A great way to utilize events is to create an event that monitors clicks that occur outside of your site. If a user clicks on an external link on your site to a different website typically, it doesn’t count as an interaction , and consequently doesn’t prolong your user’s experience. It’s recorded as a bounce even when it’s not an actual bounce. It is possible to use event tracking to track outbound clicks. Make sure you don’t use it with internal links as you’ll be doubling both the outbound click and internal pageview.
If you’d like to keep the event from being counted towards your users who are not bouncing but you’ll still need an attribute that is non-interactive you can put in an event’s flag. In this scenario you only need to include the “nonInteraction in the true” line in the area where I’ve set “fieldsObject” over. This will mark the event as not an interactive event, which will prevent recording it as an user interaction.
I’ve not really discussed this topic here, but new analytics has additional methods to monitor user interactions So you don’t have to include a specific events tracking codes in the event that there are already pre-designed solutions.
- Social activities. Google Analytics has special variants of the event tracker that are set specially in order to handle social events. It operates the same way but in place of Send Event, it’s Send Social. It then specifies which social platform, the type of action the user is taking, as well as the goal of the interaction, whether it’s your own page or social profile. Learn more about the particular method of implementation on this page.
- Screen and App monitoring. This is tracking that you can do through an application that connects to your site, such as Facebook’s app or Reddit application. If you’ve got a website application, it allows you to monitor the traffic, which would otherwise be less obvious to you. It is possible to share the screen’s name and your app’s name, its ID, version, as well as other important information. More details are available available here.
Between these three the three, you should be able to have no trouble cutting down the bounce rate. Of course, the bounce rate actually isn’t declining even a bit. You’re simply getting more precise data on the people you thought bounced but really didn’t.
