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Having a firm grasp on user needs and demands is one of the most resourceful ways to divert organic traffic towards your website. Understanding these crucial aspects is integral in building the User Experience (UX) of your site. 

Google event tracking brings forth an optimal way to gain insight into your user’s needs and demands by tapping into a user’s interactions with various elements on your site. Granular insight into user behavior is paramount to your business strategy, and GA event tracking does just that. Google Analytics event tracking can help you learn a lot about your users. It’s one of the most powerful tools Google Analytics has to offer. However, not many people are aware of its many benefits. 

In this blog, we will cover the basics of GA event tracking, its importance towards your business strategy, and how you can implement Google Analytics Event tracking on your website. Along with that, we will list some bad practices people do when setting up GA event tracking on their site. 

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What Is GA Event Tracking? 

Event tracking is a very useful feature in Google Analytics, it allows you to monitor all kinds of interactions with elements on your site. These interactions include all events that do not trigger a new page to load. 

With this feature, you can gain an insight into how people behave on your site. This invaluable information will be very helpful in improving and optimizing your site to cater to the needs of users and to divert traffic on your site. While other features on Google Analytics can only tell you the basic overview, for instance, the conversion rate and how many visitors reached your blog posts, GA event tracking goes one step further and informs you about the specific interactions such as playing a video, clicking a link or downloading a PDF. One of the major benefits of event tracking is that you can set up events to track micro-interactions. Besides your main goal of eCommerce purchases or ensuring that visitors read your blog posts, you can track micro-interactions that lead to your main goal. 
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You can achieve these micro-interactions by setting up events such as sliders, links, videos, scroll depths, and other events. Here is the list of elements that you can monitor through GA event tracking: 

• Internal and external Link clicks
• PDF and other media downloads 
• Video content interactions
• Fill and submit forms 
• Clicks on call to action section 
• Pop-up views 
• Scrolls 
• Page prints 

And the list goes on. It suffices to say that GA event tracking takes care of all the events on your site with categories, actions, and labels. Now let's move on to how GA event tracking works.‍

Google Analytics Event Tracking: How Does it Work?

Before getting down to the nuts and bolts of event tracking, let’s first briefly touch upon what are events. Events are user interactions with the content on your site, they can be independently measured from a web page. When you want to track user engagement with certain events on your site, you can add snippets of JavaScript code to the link codes of those events. Whenever a user interacts with that event, it is tracked and then displayed in Google Analytics. 

The events on your site include these components: 

• Category - This is the label you can assign to the group of events you want to track. 
• Action - This is the particular action that the assigned object is supposed to perform. 
• Label - This provides some additional information about the event. 
• Value - This can be useful if you want to provide numeric value on your events. 

All of this was a bit abstract, so let's further illustrate this by an example. Consider that you have a PDF download option on your site: 

• Category: “Downloads”
• Action: “PDF” 
• Label: “/printables/orderForm1.pdf” 

Category and action are both required while label and value are optional. The latter two are good to specify your events. Categories, as discussed above, are broad bales that can be assigned to a group of events, e.g., "videos". The event actions specify the action user performs such as "click", "play, "stop", and "pause". Labels are optional but can be a great way to further specify the circumstances of a user action, such as labeling separate pdf downloads events with the pdf titles. Event values help you quantify the events users interact with. You can keep track of the business value of your events by placing numeric values on them. For instance, you can keep track of the number of your file downloads. 

Now let’s look at some ways to implement GA event tracking on your site. 

How You Can Implement  Google Analytics Event Tracking Manually?

Even if you are not tech-savvy yourself, you can easily set up GA event tracking on your site by adding snippets of JavaScript code to your event links. You can customize these event links by adding 'Category', 'Action', 'Label', 'Value' attributes to them. 

The format for an event tracking code snippet looks like this: 

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ga('send', 'event', [eventCategory], [eventAction], [eventLabel], [eventValue], [fieldsObject]);

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All you have to do is to place values in the relevant sections. As discussed above, only eventCategory and eventAction are mandatory, but you may fill the rest as well to layout further specifications for your event interactions. 

Let us give you an example by placing values in the code snippet: 

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ga('send', 'event', ‘Downloads’, ‘PDF’, ‘/printables/orderForm1.pdf’);

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Now you can add this code snippet into the element on your site that you want to track. Whenever a user interacts with an event, the event handler will trigger the above snippet to run and the interaction will be displayed in Google Analytics. 

Take for instance, an onClick event handler that can be put on a button: 

<button onclick="ga('send', 'event', ‘Downloads’, ‘PDF’, ‘/printables/orderForm1.pdf’)">Click To Download</button>

Another thing to keep in mind is how your event interactions affect the bounce rate on your site. There are two types of events: Interaction and nonInteraction. Interaction events affect your bounce rate while nonInteraction events don’t. 

You can simply add nonInteraction property to your code by adding the following in your event code: 

ga('send', 'event', ‘Downloads’, ‘PDF’, ‘/printables/orderForm1.pdf’, {

nonInteraction: true

});

Now, we have covered the basics of the manual implementation of GA event tracking on your site. You can verify whether your code is working by triggering the elements and checking whether they appear in Google Analytics.Now, let's move on to the implementation of Google Analytics event tracking through tag managers. 

How You Can Implement Google Analytics Event Tracking Through Tag Manager? 

Using tag managers is the best way to set up GA event tracking on your site. If you are not used to it, it might be a little complicated. But once you grasp the logic behind tag managers, you will find them easier, faster, and more efficient. 

Another reason to go for tag managers is when you have a large site, it's more sustainable to use Google Tag Managers as they allow for easy scaling when you have too many elements to track. Furthermore, you will be better off learning the fundamentals of GTM rather than spending time hard coding JavaScript snippets. 

Google Analytics Event Tracking comes with many built-in variables, but this does not mean that you do not have some basic practice to do. So without further ado, let’s get right into it. 

Step 1 - Enable The Right Built-In Variables 

Google Tag Managers come with built-in variables that can help you create your triggers and tags. Quickly navigate to the "Variables" section in the Google Tag Manager sidebar and enable all the variables you want to track on the site. 

After navigating to the “Variables” section in the sidebar, click the “Configure” button. There will be options to set up event triggers based on multiple events such as clicks, forms, and other variables. 

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Step 2 - Create A New Tag For Your Element 

Now create a new tag for the event you want to track. Click the tags option on the sidebar. Now click on the “New” button. Here, you can select your tag type, select “Universal Analytics”. Then select the “Event” track type. 

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Step 3 - Configure The Tag 

Now you can specify your tag by placing values for category, action, label, and value. After configuring your tag by filling in relevant information, you can click “Continue”. 

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Step 4 - Specify The Event You Want The Tag To Fire On 

Now you have to specify the event you want the tag to fire on. Such as clicks. There are triggers for measuring clicks on email addresses, phone numbers, PDF downloads, and so on.  

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Step 5 - Save Your Tag 

After you have configured your trigger, it’s time to save it. After saving your trigger, it will show up in the tag. Now just click “Save Tag” and you are done! 

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After following the above steps, you should have successfully implemented Google Analytics event tracking through Google Tag Managers. To ensure that everything is working fine, you can always preview the triggers using the preview feature on Google Tag Managers. 

We have covered all the fundamentals to get you started. You can always practice and gradually improve your event tracking skills. Now let us move on to the common mistakes people make when setting up event tracking on their site. 

Common Mistakes To Avoid While Implementing Google Analytics Event Tracking

You have discovered a powerful way to accumulate tons of data on your users and monitor their behavior when they engage with the various elements on your webpage. To get the most out of event tracking, you need to avoid some common mistakes people make. 

Not Optimizing Event Interactions For Bounce Rate

As discussed above, event interactions have a significant impact on your site’s bounce rate. Not optimizing your event interactions can result in a higher bounce rate. This will leave you with fewer visitors and it is something you must avoid. Determine what events indicate user engagement. Set the nonInteraction value of those events to “False”. Similarly, if you do not find a particular event to be indicative of user interaction, then set the nonInteraction value to “True”. To optimize your event interactions, you can always do a quick audit by using the preview feature in Google Tag Manager or by using the Google Analytics Debugger. 

Not Keeping The Naming Conventions Concise 

Many people do the mistake of not naming their events accurately. By doing this, they incur tons of confusion when they get done with their configuration. You need to pay attention to what names you are assigning to the events. Ensure that all names are concise and on-point. This ensures that you understand what event is performing what action and how you are going to organize them. As discussed above, categories are broad terms that are assigned to a group of events. The best practice is to come up with categories that encompass many other similar events. This makes everything easier to organize and the process becomes more efficient. Plan out the naming conventions so you have a long-term strategy in store for event tracking. 

The Takeaway 

Google Analytics Event Tracking is a powerful tool to tap into granular insight about your user’s behavior and their engagement with your site. With this invaluable information, you can improve your site’s interactive elements to promote a user-friendly interface and a smooth UX. The best method to implement Google Analytics Event Tracking is through Google Tag Managers. While grasping the fundamentals of Google Tag Managers can be fairly complex for a newbie, the practice is worth it! 

With the right approach and strategy, you will be on your way to tapping into the infinite possibilities that Google Analytics Event Tracking Provides.