Google Analytics Tracking - Website Event Triggers

[Miles Olson]

I am trying to compile a somewhat comprehensive list of Google Analytics event triggers for the common dealer website platforms. For example, Dealer.com automatically fires an event trigger (category="mycars-register") for users who provide contact info for "Get Price Alerts". They fire category="mycars-save-vehicle" for the "Save This Car!" feature.

For many website platforms, it is more difficult. We often have to create event listeners in Google Tag Manager to determine class variables that we can use to define GTM triggers, which are then used to fire an event. Struggling with this on CDK right now.

If anyone has already collected this info for any dealer CMS, I encourage you to share your knowledge. If I can pull together event trigger info for enough website vendors, I will publish my list for public access. The website vendors are incredibly unhelpful and won't assist in identifying these triggers. We have to figure them out on our own.

Thanks!

 

[Chris Cachor]

From what I've seen, most vendors aren't really supporting this. I think it's more on a case-by-case basis and nothing is really standardized. Most of these platforms are really shared codebases, so changes to Dealer A's website affects Dealer B's, etc. I suspect that's one of the reasons for not getting much assistance from different vendors.

 

[Alexander Lau]

I am trying to compile a somewhat comprehensive list of Google Analytics event triggers for the common dealer website platforms. For example, Dealer.com automatically fires an event trigger (category="mycars-register") for users who provide contact info for "Get Price Alerts". They fire category="mycars-save-vehicle" for the "Save This Car!" feature.

For many website platforms, it is more difficult. We often have to create event listeners in Google Tag Manager to determine class variables that we can use to define GTM triggers, which are then used to fire an event. Struggling with this on CDK right now.

If anyone has already collected this info for any dealer CMS, I encourage you to share your knowledge. If I can pull together event trigger info for enough website vendors, I will publish my list for public access. The website vendors are incredibly unhelpful and won't assist in identifying these triggers. We have to figure them out on our own.

Thanks!

Interesting enough, I was after the most common goals for each automotive website platform, but no dice. You are completely right in your thinking, IMO with CDK., etc. That list would be HYPER USEFUL!

 

[Alexander Lau]

From what I've seen, most vendors aren't really supporting this. I think it's more on a case-by-case basis and nothing is really standardized. Most of these platforms are really shared codebases, so changes to Dealer A's website affects Dealer B's, etc. I suspect that's one of the reasons for not getting much assistance from different vendors.

They really should be, maybe we get Pasch on this?

 

[Rick Buffkin]

I like the event listener and pushing events into GA. Here's the problem. There's so many events being pumped into GA now from the website that more events would just cause issues without them being filtered correctly. The best advice I could offer would be to create a separate dashboard (I know @Alexander Lau!! I said create another dashboard!! LOL) But... If you create a separate dashboard in GA, you can filter and set up the events sent into the GA account. As far as creating a list of Events to send into GA, why not just send in everything to GA?? Once you have everything meaning every click, you can then filter with your Dashboard widgets. You could use a code similar to this:

window.onclick = function(e) { console.log(e.target)};

and instead of "console.log", insert your GA event info in it. That would pass every click made on the site. All the link URL clicks, Div elements clicked, EVERYTHING!! Go into GA and then on your newly created dashboard set up the widgets to filter everything out based on link info. Pass the link Href info as the lable in the event fired. Or break it up into an array and split up the Href for your eventCat, eventAction,eventLabel.

This wouldn't be a 100% fix to cut out some of the custom stuff like, Length of time a video was played, etc.. but, It will cut down time having to create all the custom events. I'd say this will probably get you about 80 - 90% of the way though!!!

Here's a link that shows how to create a Dashboard in GA.
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1068218?hl=en



THEN... If your feeling friendly, you could share that dashboard

Just an idea!!

 

[Alexander Lau]

I like the event listener and pushing events into GA. Here's the problem. There's so many events being pumped into GA now from the website that more events would just cause issues without them being filtered correctly. The best advice I could offer would be to create a separate dashboard (I know @Alexander Lau!! I said create another dashboard!! LOL) But... If you create a separate dashboard in GA, you can filter and set up the events sent into the GA account. As far as creating a list of Events to send into GA, why not just send in everything to GA?? Once you have everything meaning every click, you can then filter with your Dashboard widgets. You could use a code similar to this:

window.onclick = function(e) { console.log(e.target)};

and instead of "console.log", insert your GA event info in it. That would pass every click made on the site. All the link URL clicks, Div elements clicked, EVERYTHING!! Go into GA and then on your newly created dashboard set up the widgets to filter everything out based on link info. Pass the link Href info as the lable in the event fired. Or break it up into an array and split up the Href for your eventCat, eventAction,eventLabel.

This wouldn't be a 100% fix to cut out some of the custom stuff like, Length of time a video was played, etc.. but, It will cut down time having to create all the custom events. I'd say this will probably get you about 80 - 90% of the way though!!!

Here's a link that shows how to create a Dashboard in GA.
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1068218?hl=en



THEN... If your feeling friendly, you could share that dashboard

Just an idea!!

No, you're on to something. It does become somewhat ridiculous if you don't create a separate dashboard for every event. There are tons of them on automotive websites. This is an excellent post BTW.

 

[Chris Cachor]

Rick, I have a similar approach in my projects. Basically I use custom attributes on the tag I'm clicking, so say a Credit Approval button becomes <button event-label="{label}" event-category="{category}" event-action="{action}" event-value="{value}">Credit Approval</button>

Basically any click you want to measure can be tagged easily in HTML and a simple handler function tracks to GA.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

I had a issue a few months back. I was trying to get vehicle cross model shopping data from GA. Brother... I kept running into major issues and banging my head against a wall because of all the events the website provider was pushing into GA (Tool bar loads, Menu loads, MyCar loads, etc) . Those events kept messing up everything. After a boat load of time researching, I figured out how to eliminate (not see) all the un-wanted events. It was actually quite simple.

(You may want to put this in your toolbox guys)
A dashboard will be nice and it will help but, if you want to have a clean slate with only your events, then simply go over to Admin > View > Create New View in the GA property! Name the view whatever you want. Click Filters > Add New Filter! Here you can specify the exact events you want to show in this view. To make it easier on you, you could add something like, Blah, Blah event in the eventCat and have the same eventCat name on each one of your events and set the filter to that. Now every event with that Category and only that eventCat will populate into that view you created. What nice is all the website site traffic data will still populate into that custom view as well. Sessions, Unique sessions, bounce %, etc.! Just none of the unwanted events. I think you can have up to 20 custom views per GA property. Even if you wanted to create a custom view and filter that view by some of the events the website provider is passing along with yours, you could do that as well! Just include that event name in the filter!!

Here's a link to the post I made on my journey for the Cross Shopping project.
https://forum.dealerrefresh.com/thr...ata-and-usage-question.5085/page-3#post-44107

 

[jscole86]

Does anyone have a way to track xTime service scheduler events within google analytics? Or even using Google Tag Manager? (Since 99% of the time it's iframed in)

 

[Alexander Lau]

Does anyone have a way to track xTime service scheduler events within google analytics? Or even using Google Tag Manager? (Since 99% of the time it's iframed in)

I've seen some hacks and I wish I could remember which client goals this was under. The fact that is this "iframed" in 2017, with no dynamic insertion is mind-boggling.

Pasch wrote something on this failure, not too long ago: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rethinking-xtime-service-scheduler-page-designs-brian-pasch