What events should we track in Google Analytics?

Google Analytics provides us with a wealth of information about how people find our website, how they interact with it and can even track how engaged they are with our content. The data in our reports is a critical part of being able to evaluate not only how our website performs at converting traffic, but how good our marketing efforts are at driving traffic to our website. We can track any number of actions on our website to gain a bigger picture of how users interact with our business, but just exactly what events should we track in Google Analytics?

Transactions

It goes without saying that sales are the lifeblood of your business, so if you’re selling products through your website, you’ll want to track these. Google Analytics offers extensive tracking for ecommerce websites so you can track sessions that include “add to basket” and “checkout abandonment” events. These ecommerce events can highlight issues with your checkout process or identify bottlenecks in your customer’s journey. If you’re using a platform such as Shopify or WooCommerce, setting up ecommerce tracking is relatively straightforward with the addition of a plugin and a bit of setup.

Form submissions

Leads and enquiries are the obvious form submission to track, but forms can also include newsletter subscriptions, document downloads or registrations for events. Whilst the latter may not have a direct value to you as a business, all form submissions show a level of engagement and interest in your products and services. If you’re asking visitors to opt in to future emails, you’re also growing your email database and audience for your email marketing too, so there’s definitely a value we can apply to these events.

Button and link clicks

Event tracking allows you to track when website visitors click on any button or link on your website, regardless of the function of that button or link. Tracking button clicks can give you insights into your customer’s journey and how they navigate through your website. Your reports may show a high click through rate on a button that you thought was secondary to want users were on your website to do and a low click through rate on buttons that you want visitors to click on, highlighting the need to review your page layout and calls-to-action.

If you have any affiliate links on your website, you’ll want to track if people are clicking on these links. Without event tracking set up, you wouldn’t be able to track visits to the external site and would rely on the vendor’s reports to see visits from your website. Event tracking allows you to see the clicks in your Google Analytics reports and evaluate whether they’re getting the attention they deserve.

Clicks to call

Have a phone number on your website? With Google Analytics you can track when a mobile user clicks on your phone number to call you. You’ll need to ensure your phone number is clickable using a “tel:” link before setting up event tracking for ‘clicks to call’, but once set up, you’ll be able to see and report on this intention to contact your business. Remember that you’re tracking a click on a phone number and not a phone call. There will be occasions where people will click on a phone number, but then, for whatever reason, don’t dial the number, so you’re tracking an intention to call and not a call in itself.

Video engagement

Whilst platforms such as YouTube will give you data on how engaged your viewers are, you need to log in to a separate platform to view this data. With custom events in Google Analytics, you can track video views and engagement in your analytics reports too.

Ready to get this set up? Search Engine Watch has a great article on how to track the untrackable with Google Analytics events here.