Sending click events to Google Analytics

Yoeri
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  • Yoeri
  • Gainsight Employee: Golden Ruler
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Google Analytics allows you to track events so that you can analyse what your customers are doing on your platform. Events will tell you how your users are interacting on your pages. All events are displayed in the Behavior → Events section of your Google Analytics reports This article covers the anatomy of events, which events are being sent to Google Analytics and how you can use them to analyse user behavior: Note: Google Analytics should be enabled in the CC to work with events.

Anatomy of Events

An event consists of three components, the values of these components can be viewed in your Google Analytics reports.

  • Event category (name to group objects to analyse. E.g. ‘Homepage’)
  • Event action (the action a user takes that triggers the event. E.g. ‘Quick Link Clicked’)
  • Event label (metadata around the event action. E.g. ‘Position: 1, Title: Getting started’)

81616a2e-3f6b-408b-b457-8e93c71170e3.jpgWhich events can I find in Google Analytics

 

Category: Homepage events1a00875b-a450-4557-8e76-cebfaadccc1c.pngAction: Search clicked Triggered when a user clicks on the search bar

Action: Quick link clicked Triggered when a user clicks on a quick link card

- Label: Title, Position, Link

Action: Category clicked Triggered when a user clicks on any category

- Label: Title, Type, Link

Action: Topic clicked Triggered when a user clicks on any topic in the homepage. This can be done in various positions: on a featured topic card, in the recently active tab, in the help others tab or in the list with topic recommendations

- Label: Type, Position, Link

Action: Menu clicked Triggered when a user clicks on the menu/navigation dropdown

- Label: Link

Action: Widget clicked Triggered when a user clicks on a widget positioned in the general sidebar

 - Label: Type

Action: Create topic clicked Triggered when a user clicks on the create topic button in the navigation bar or when he clicks on the create topic button in the introduction widget (shown below the hero image)

 - Label: Position

Action: Recently active user clicked Triggered when a user clicks on one of the avatars in the list of recently online users

Action: Show more activity clicked Triggered when a user clicks on the ‘Show more activity’ button in the recently active, or help others tab

 

Category: Topic helpfulnessf8efaba8-12e7-4036-b42d-7bed1b99bbd1.pngAction: Topic upvote Triggered when a user clicks on the happy emoticon in a topic page

Action: Topic neutral Triggered when a user clicks on the neutral emoticon in a topic page

Action: Topic downvote Triggered when a user clicks on the sad emoticon in a topic page

 

What is the difference between total events and unique events?

 

Total events are calculated as the total number of interactions with a triggered element. For example, if one user clicks the same category 5 times, the total number of events associated with the category is 5, and the number of unique events is 1.

 

Some possible use cases

 

How are my quick links performing?

 

Analyze how quick links are performing, which are popular and which are not.

  • Go to Behavior → Events → Top Events
  • Click on ‘Homepage’
  • Click on ‘Quick link clicked’

What are popular categories?

Analyze how often categories are visited and find out which categories to promote better.

  • Go to Behavior → Events → Top Events
  • Click on ‘Homepage’
  • Click on ‘Category clicked’

These are all the events that we cover. If you are interested in other events let us know in the comments below.

13 replies

LPortalupi
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It's not clear to me (and I imagine our community members) that a 'happy' emoticon signifies an 'upvote' and a 'sad' emoticon signifies a 'downvote.' I wonder if other inSpired community members agree, or whether it's clear to you.



I just tried to find the inSpired community post that explains the search results algorithm but didn't manage to find it; I was looking to see if upvotes and downvotes determine placement in search results. Do they? Thank you!
Suvi Lehtovaara
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It's not clear to me (and I imagine our community members) that a 'happy' emoticon signifies an 'upvote' and a 'sad' emoticon signifies a 'downvote.' I wonder if other inSpired community members agree, or whether it's clear to you.



I just tried to find the inSpired community post that explains the search results algorithm but didn't manage to find it; I was looking to see if upvotes and downvotes determine placement in search results. Do they? Thank you!



@LPortalupi thanks for bringing this up! Now that I really started thinking about this, I imagine that it's probably not clear to our users either... We've seen that most topics that have several upvotes also have several downvotes...
https://yhteiso.elisa.fi/
LPortalupi
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We have the same situation, @Suvi Lehtovaara. From what I can tell, community members will click the 'sad' emoticon if they don't like the content of the post for whatever reason; I don't really view it as an accurate assessment of whether the content was actually helpful.
LPortalupi
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In Google Analytics, does everything that falls under “Event Category: Homepage” only refer to events that occur from the actual homepage?

For example, does “Action: Menu clicked” only capture menu clicks when the user clicks on the menu from www.coursera.community and NOT when the user clicks on the menu from https://coursera.community/coursera-common-room-1 or https://coursera.community/community-help-questions-40 (for example)?

Thanks!

David T-Mobile
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@LPortalupi

It's the same on our Community as well. People are using it as a button to show they're not pleased with (content of) the topic, not if they found their answer in the topic. If there's a disruption on our network, everyone will be using the sad smileys, since they’re not happy, even though the information is given about what is happening.

As of this moment we're not using the smileys anymore, since we’re not using them in anyway and get our information about topic helpfulness via other ways.

LPortalupi
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Thanks for your contribution here, @David T-Mobile. This is a well-articulated example of what happens with the smileys/sad faces. I would prefer to disable them myself … something I need to think about a bit more. Right now I don’t see a big value in using them, as I’m not making any decisions based on a post’s ‘helpfulness’ as determined by smileys. 

I’d be curious to hear from others – do you find the smileys useful for decision-making around content strategy (or something else)?

Yoeri
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For example, does “Action: Menu clicked” only capture menu clicks when the user clicks on the menu from www.coursera.community and NOT when the user clicks on the menu from https://coursera.community/coursera-common-room-1

Menu clicked event is measured on all pages of your platform. If you click on the Menu clicked event in GA and add a secondary dimension of ‘Page title’ you will see on which pages the Menu is clicked, see the example below:

Apply ‘Page title’ as secondary dimension to see on which pages the ‘Menu clicked’ event is being triggered

 

LPortalupi
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Thank you so much, @Yoeri, this is really helpful.

timcavey
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Top lil guide here, to make sure your homepage is full of stuff people want. And to order your side home page widgets effectively. 

 

Is there a way of seeing what side widgets a user clicks on when on a ‘non specific’ topic page? 

learning, sharing and repeat
Julian
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Hey Tim,

great to hear that you find this valuable as well!

Not sure exactly what you refer to as a “non specific” topic page, however currently we only forward click events that happen on the homepage, so no other pages.

Would you like to get insights on how many clicks you are getting on widgets on other pages than the homepage?

 

I follow my nose, it always knows
timcavey
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Would you like to get insights on how many clicks you are getting on widgets on other pages than the homepage?

 

Thanks J

 

Yep it would be handy to see what side widget is getting clicks on the topic pages, to help us optimise this display for desktop users. 

learning, sharing and repeat
timcavey
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Not sure exactly what you refer to as a “non specific” topic page, however currently we only forward click events that happen on the homepage, so no other pages.

 

 

Hi @Julian is there any change to this? 

 

Is another tool like Mixpanel better placed for this being set up internally? 

learning, sharing and repeat
Suvi Lehtovaara
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Thanks for your contribution here, @David T-Mobile. This is a well-articulated example of what happens with the smileys/sad faces. I would prefer to disable them myself … something I need to think about a bit more. Right now I don’t see a big value in using them, as I’m not making any decisions based on a post’s ‘helpfulness’ as determined by smileys. 

I’d be curious to hear from others – do you find the smileys useful for decision-making around content strategy (or something else)?

@LPortalupi I bumped into your question and realised I’ve missed it earlier.

I’ve actually been following topic helpfulness on a weekly basis for over six months already. We’ve chosen to follow it more closely as we feel that this is one of the only metrics that help us in understanding the value of our content to our community members. 

That being said, I’m still not sure if this is helping us or not. What we’ve learned so far is that the question itself is defining what kind of votes we’ll get.

In our community the question used to be “Did this topic help you in finding an answer to your question?”.
We changed the question to “Was this useful?” → we are receiving more votes. It still seems that if the topic is about something crucial, like @David T-Mobile mentioned network disruptions, people seem to be more likely to vote based on (the content of) the topic. If the matter is not-so-crucial, like “When will I get my PS5), the users are mostly more co-operative and actually vote based on the usefulness :relaxed: (Although, some might argue that getting the PS5 is crucial).

This is something I feel I should analyze a bit more - and I’d be happy to hear thoughts from others as well :slight_smile:

https://yhteiso.elisa.fi/

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