Disqus - Latest Comments for blastam

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 23:26:24 -0000

Hi Nicole & Kevin,

You may be receiving a syntax error if you are not using jQuery on your site.

Regarding your question about where to place the UA-#. This script is in addition to your existing GA tagging. Multiple tracking objects refers to multiple UA-#'s in your code, which is not common.

Let me know if that helps!

Thanks,.
Joe

Re: How to Set a Client-Side Sample Rate in Google Analytics

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 13:27:13 -0000

Hi Brian,

Great; I'm glad this article was helpful for you.

I would recommend setting the sample rate as high as possible while keeping within the GA ToS (which is 10 million pageviews/month now and was previously 5 million pageviews). Of course, selecting a percentage that is easy to multiply makes things quicker to calculate. For example, instead of sampling at 23%, do 25%. That way, you can easily multiply by 4 to get the approximate totals.

Any time you sample, you run the risk of losing important data (ecommerce transactions for example). It is a decision that should not be made lightly. If you'd like to send me an email at joe at blastam dot/com, I'd be happy to continue this conversation and provide you some other options/ideas to consider.

Thanks,
Joe

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 13:07:59 -0000

Hi Christian,

No it does not handle context-menu clicks. It could certainly be extended to do so though.

Thanks,
Joe

Re: How To Use Events as Goals in Google Analytics (V5)

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 11:05:24 -0000

Hi Jeremy,

Great question. For each goal, GA only counts the first conversion per visit/session. Any additional outbound events in the same user session, in this case, would not increase the number of total conversions.

If you do want to track the aggregate outbound clicks, you won't be able to do this via the goal tracking functionality in GA. Instead, you should rely on the event reports to grab the total event completions.

Thanks,
Joe

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 17:11:51 -0000

Hi Jason,

Great; glad we could help you out!

In the GA v5 (new version), you'll want to go to Reports > Content > Events > Top Events. You'll see your event category listed there and you drill down into the action and label to view the number of events recorded for that file.

Thanks,
Joe

Re: How To Use Events as Goals in Google Analytics (V5)

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:47:53 -0000

Hi Jeff,

You'll want to select 'that matches' from the dropdown to use a regular expression.

Thanks,
Joe

Re: Website Optimizer Tips for Tracking Complex Conversions

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:42:23 -0000

Sorry about that. Take another look at the comment. For some reason, the code adjusted itself and it wasn't showing the 'a' tag code (but instead rendering it as a link).

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 12:20:59 -0000

If you are using the automated tagging method, you'll want to have your GA tag above that script tag. If you are using the manual method, it is highly recommended to move your GA tag into the head of the html. Additionally, please ensure you are using the asynchronous GA tracking script. Placing it in the top of the source code is recommended for the async version.

Thanks,
Joe

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 12:18:10 -0000

This code is not specific to PDF tracking and can be extended or easily accomplished using the automated method I mentioned. If you want to share more details about your implementation, I can provide additional input on getting it to work.

Thanks,
Joe

Re: Website Optimizer Tips for Tracking Complex Conversions

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 10:49:44 -0000

Hi Jan,

The .pdf file was just an example of a link and the syntax of using an onclick to track it; not an actual file. :)

Re: Website Optimizer Tips for Tracking Complex Conversions

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:51:38 -0000

Hi Jan,

It is important to note that this article was written 2.5 years ago. As such, the syntax used in this document is now outdated. When you setup a new experiment in GWO, it will provide the most current, asynchronous version, of the code.

1) You can track as many link clicks as you like, if they satisfy your definition of a conversion. Each of those links should have an onclick attribute added to the 'a' tag that fires the GWO conversion/goal _trackPageview. In the NEW version of the code, it would look something like:
<a href="my-file.pdf" target="_blank" onclick="_gaq.push(['gwo._trackPageview', '/xxxxxxxxxx/goal']);">Download My File</a>

Note: Replace those x's with your actual experiment ID.

In this case, you would use this same /goal URL on the gwo Tracker to track the conversion. A helpful article to read is http://www.blastam.com/blog... which explains more on how to track file downloads or other links via the onclick attribute. If you are not opening your links in a new window/tab, some browsers will fail to track properly.

2) In the setup of GWO, you can put in anything. It doesn't matter. You will, however have to perform an offline validation in order to start your test. The same is true for any other URL. It doesn't matter what you put into the GWO setup. It all works based on cookies and _trackPageview's

3) Yes, see example above in #1. To make things easy, add a target="_blank" to the 'a' tag.

Hope that helps!

Joe

Re: Google Analytics V5 Custom Reports: What’s New?

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:00:18 -0000

Hi Brandon,

You are correct. The new metrics collected via _trackSocial() are not yet available in custom reports. The v5 interface does not yet have the ability to schedule emailed reports. I expect both will eventually be available.

Thanks,
Joe

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 23:17:13 -0000

The script I've provided will not trigger a download event on a URL that matches your provided structure. The script only grabs the last extension of '.aspx' in your example. You can certainly extend this script to work in your unique environment though.

You'd have to rewrite the line that contains the following code:
href.match(filetypes)

and then also the line that has the following code:var extension = (/[.]/.exec(href)) ? /[^.]+$/.exec(href) : undefined;

Hope that helps!
Joe

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 12:50:58 -0000

You won't be able to directly track PDF downloads when linked from an email (since an email can't execute JS and a PDF itself can't execute JS). The optimal way to handle this is to bring the user to a regular page URL (and use campaign tags from the email) and then offer a download link/button.

Thanks,
Joe

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Tue, 17 May 2011 20:07:11 -0000

Hi Chris, the "this.href" references the a tag's href attribute value. So instead of manually passing in the href value inside the _gaq.push() call, I find it easier to just reference it this way (less work and you can easily copy/paste). You can of course take that out and specify what you want inside the _trackEvent call.

Thanks,
Joe

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Tue, 10 May 2011 21:51:23 -0000

Hi Kevin,

There is an issue with the new release of jQuery v1.6 and the code I've provided. Specifically, they've changed the .attr() to return undefined if the value is not set, where in previous versions, this was not an issue.

I've updated the code in this post to reflect this change. You need to change the two lines that reference .attr('target') to the following:

(jQuery(this).attr('target') != undefined && jQuery(
this
).attr(
'target'
).toLowerCase() !=
'_blank'
) {

Thanks,

Joe

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Mon, 09 May 2011 16:00:55 -0000

You'll notice that I use setTimeout() to delay the click by 200ms. Certain browsers, like Chrome for example, will interrupt the GA tracking pixel request when you click the link (AKA a race condition). In my code, I check to see if target="_blank" is being used and if not, then I delay the request.

Thanks,

Joe

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:47:20 -0000

@Joey Baker

Thanks for sharing your code! You've provided much simpler code for the specific purpose of tracking PDFs. It looks like it would work fine with the following caveats:

-It only works with PDF file types.

-It does not automate the delay click if you do not have your link opening in a new tab/window.

Additionally, I personally like to use event tracking for PDFs (easy to change in your code above of course).

Thanks,

Joe

Re: How to Use Filters In Google Analytics to Analyze Ecommerce Sites

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Mon, 02 May 2011 12:05:38 -0000

Thanks for the feedback and suggestion Tim! Agreed!

Joe

Re: Cross Domain Tracking in Google Analytics

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 19:51:57 -0000

Hi Keith,

Change _setAllowLInker to _setAllowLinker (lowercase i).

If you reply with your URL or email joe at blastam.com with the URL, I will be happy to take a look at your implementation and advise further.

If you use the onclick="_gaq.push(['_link',this.href]);return false;" and there is an href value on the link tag that surrounds the image, it should correctly pass the parameters.

Thanks,
Joe

Re: Cross Domain Tracking in Google Analytics

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 19:07:59 -0000

Great; glad you enjoyed the article! Yes, the GA UA-# should be the same for both the primary and secondary domain.

Re: Campaign Tracking in Google Analytics

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:16:26 -0000

Google Analytics does not track PDF files themselves. You can track the click to go off to download/view the PDF by using a _trackPageview or _trackEvent in the onclick attribute of the link tag. In your case, it sounds like you would want to have a landing page that has the UTM campaign parameters in the URL and then use the onclick attribute to track the action of downloading/viewing the PDF.

Hope that helps!

Re: Online Holiday Marketing Tips

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 10:25:56 -0000

Here is a pretty good example of building out holiday gift idea content to drive more seasonal traffic to your site: http://www.hayneedle.com/gi...

Re: Free & Fast Google Analytics
iPhone App

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:26:44 -0000

Thank you, Travis, for taking the time to comment and share your thoughts. That's payment in itself!

Re: Comment count not working in blogger - Help please!

Blast Analytics & Marketing — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:48:03 -0000

Hello Daniel, Jason helped us work it out already...

Disqus - Latest Comments for blastam

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Re: How to Set a Client-Side Sample Rate in Google Analytics

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Re: How To Use Events as Goals in Google Analytics (V5)

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Re: How To Use Events as Goals in Google Analytics (V5)

Re: Website Optimizer Tips for Tracking Complex Conversions

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Re: Website Optimizer Tips for Tracking Complex Conversions

Re: Website Optimizer Tips for Tracking Complex Conversions

Re: Google Analytics V5 Custom Reports: What’s New?

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Re: How to Track Downloads in Google Analytics

Re: How to Use Filters In Google Analytics to Analyze Ecommerce Sites

Re: Cross Domain Tracking in Google Analytics

Re: Cross Domain Tracking in Google Analytics

Re: Campaign Tracking in Google Analytics

Re: Online Holiday Marketing Tips

Re: Free & Fast Google Analytics iPhone App

Re: Comment count not working in blogger - Help please!

Re: Free & Fast Google Analytics
iPhone App