rmurphey

Update: Tracking outbound clicks with Google Analytics and jQuery

A while back I wrote a post about tracking outbound clicks with Google Analytics; way back then (about 6 months ago), the only event that Google Analytics could track was a pageview. Now that they've introduced the _trackEvent method of the pageTracker object, events that aren't pageviews don't need to count as pageviews anymore; instead, they can be counted as "events," and they can be categorized and labeled. Here's an updated example of how to track outbound clicks using Google Analytics and jQuery. You'll of course need to be including the "new" analytics code (ga.js, not urchin.js) for this to work, as well as the jQuery library.

$('a').click(function() {
  var $a = $(this);
  var href = $a.attr('href');

  // see if the link is external
  if ( (href.match(/^http/)) && (! href.match(document.domain)) ) {

    // if so, register an event
    var category = 'outgoing'; // set this to whatever you want
    var event = 'click'; // set this to whatever you want
    var label = href; // set this to whatever you want

    pageTracker._trackEvent(category, event, href);
  }
});

var fileTypes = ['doc','xls','pdf','mp3'];

$('a').click(function() {
  var $a = $(this);
  var href = $a.attr('href');
  var hrefArray = href.split('.');
  var extension = hrefArray[hrefArray.length - 1];

  if ($.inArray(extension,fileTypes) != -1) {
      pageTracker._trackEvent('download', extension, href);
  }

});

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Track user clicks on certain links

We recently added a new feature to dailystrength.org, and there was much debate about whether users would use it as we intended. To find out, I wrote a clicktrack ditty that sends some data to the server when a link is clicked. It was somewhat inspired by a post I wrote a while ago about tracking outbound links with Google Analytics and jQuery, but is actually even simpler. I've retooled my clicktrack script to work as a generic, 2.5k plugin, which you can download here.

Usage

this is a link

this is a link

type="text/javascript">

$(document).ready(function() { $("a.clicktrack").clicktrack("foo.php"); });

• source (string) the URL of the current page
• target (string) the HREF of the clicked link
• classes (array) classes on the link that matched the prefix (default prefix is "ct_")

Optional parameters

var defaults = {
                remote_script: null,
                prefix: 'ct_',
                extraData: null,
                callback: function(){},
                dataType: null,
                sendOnce: true,
                preventDefault: false
        };

• remote_script the remote script that will handle the clicktrack data. this can be passed as a single, string argument to clicktrack(), or it can be passed as part of the configuration object, but it must be specified
• prefix the prefix for classnames that should be passed as part of the clicktrack data. defaults to "ct_".
• extraData additional data that should be passed as part of the clicktrack data.
• callback function to be executed upon successful execution of the remote script. you'll need to set preventDefault to true for this callback to get executed, and then redirect the user using window.location within the callback as required.
• dataType type of data you expect to be returned by the remote script. see the jQuery documentation on $.post() for details.
• sendOnce whether clicktrack data for a given link should be sent just once. defaults to true.
• preventDefault whether clicks on clicktrack links should be prevented from taking the user to the link destination. defaults to false (links will work as expected by default).

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Showcase related content to keep visitors clicking

I've drummed up a lot of visitors by posting links on dzone and StumbleUpon, but the visitors aren't very sticky -- many will visit the single page I linked to and then move on. Looking at my site exits in Google Analytics, I noticed that my category pages had much lower exit rates than my single post pages. This wasn't exactly a surprise, if I thought about it: a visitor to a single-post might see my list of recent posts, but there was no guarantee that any of them would be related to what they came to the blog to read about. Visitors to category pages, on the other hand, would see a collection of related content. I wanted to give visitors an easy way to see other posts that might interest them, so I just installed the Other Posts from Category plugin. The plugin adds links to posts that are in the same category (or categories) as the main post, and it's very configurable via the Wordpress admin. It didn't make sense to me to just have the list at the end of the post -- visitors might never make it there to discover other items that would interest them. A jQuery one-liner copied the list and put it at the top of the post, too:

$('div.ddop').clone().insertAfter('div.post p.byline');

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Track outbound clicks with Google Analytics and jQuery

Update: Make sure you check out the new _trackEvent method of the Google Analytics pageTracker method. If your analytics account offers event tracking, this is the right way to do it if you don't want your events to count as pageviews. I've written a new post about tracking outbound clicks using the new method. -- Sometimes, you may want to know what outbound links a user is clicking on -- say, if you're linking to an affiliate's site and want to be able to count the clicks you're sending. Google Analytics offers this bit of code to accomplish this:

Google Analytics provides an easy way to track clicks on links that lead away from your site. Because these links do not lead to a page on your site containing the UTM JavaScript, you will need to tag the link itself. This piece of JavaScript assigns a pageview to any click on a link - the pageview is attributed to the filename you specify.

$('a').each(function() {
  var $a = $(this);
  var href = $a.attr('href');

  // see if the link is external
  if ( (href.match(/^http/)) && (! href.match(document.domain)) ) {

    // if so, add the GA tracking code
    $a.click(function() { 
      pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/' + href);
    });
  }

});

$('a').each(function() {
  var $a = $(this);
  var href = $a.attr('href');

  if ( (href.match(/^http/)) && (! href.match(document.domain)) ) {
    $a.click(function() { 
      // get the post title if there is one 
      // and add it to the string for tracking
      var postTitle = $a.parents('div.post').find('h2:first');
      href = href.replace('http://',''); // cleanup for nice GA reports
      href = (postTitle.length > 0) ? postTitle.text() + '/' + href : href;

      pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/' + href);
    });
  }

});

var fileTypes = ['doc','xls','pdf','mp3'];

$('a').each(function() {
  var $a = $(this);
  var href = $a.attr('href');
  var hrefArray = href.split('.');
  var extension = hrefArray[href.length - 1];

  if ($.inArray(extension,fileTypes) != -1) {
    $a.click(function() { 
      // get the post title if there is one 
      // and add it to the string for tracking
      pageTracker._trackPageview('/documents/' + href);
    });
  }

});

var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXXX-X");
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();

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Suspicious StumbleUpon Bounce Rates?

I've been promoting some of my blog posts by submitting them to StumbleUpon, and it's been generating a fair bit of traffic -- my post "How I Learned CSS" has done especially well. I've been watching my site using Google Analytics, and I've noticed that visitors from StumbleUpon have a substantially lower bounce rate than, say, visitors from dzone. So I think, "yay, StumbleUpon" and start submitting anything interesting I write to there. But in poking around in my Google Analytics a bit more, I've also noticed that, on pages that I've promoted through SU, I'm seeing strange navigation patterns: for "How I Learned CSS," 40% of visits to the page came from the page itself (and, as it logically follows, 40% of next pages were the page itself). The page was viewed a total of 4,700 times, but a little more than 2,800 of those pageviews were unique. Since bounce rate basically measures whether a new arrival went to another page before leaving the site, I'm not sure it shouldn't count as a bounce if the second page the user visits is the same as the one they were already on.

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Blog Monitoring 101

I've helped set up a couple of corporate blogs, and -- for corporate bloggers especially -- it can take a little bit of doing to understand your place in the great blog-o-sphere. There is lots of advice out there about how to win friends and influence people with your blog, and I don't purport to know better than everything that's already been written. However, I do have one thing to say to people venturing into the blog waters for the first time: Google is your friend.

Google Blogsearch and Google Reader

• Use Google blogsearch to search for terms you care about. Get the URL for the Google Blogsearch feed for each search term (in the left-hand nav of the Google blogsearch page) and add it to Google Reader.
• See what shows up; pay special attention to contributors who are cited by other contributors.
• Comment (meaningfully, not gratuitously!) on posts that relate to what you blog about, and include a link back to your blog. If you have a post that's directly related to what someone is writing about, include a link to it.

Google Analytics

• Set up a Google Analytics account and add the tracking code to your blog per the instructions.
• Watch Traffic Sources > Overview to see how traffic arrives at your blog.
• Watch Traffic Sources > Referring Sites to see which sites are sending traffic to your blog. Consider adding frequent referrers to your blogroll or list of links.
• Watch Content > Overview to see which posts are doing particularly well or poorly.
• If you want to make the most of your blogging efforts, monthly metrics reports won't cut it. You'll need to be paying regular attention to analytics information -- especially to referring sites -- to pounce on opportunities and to put out fires.

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