The 7 Google Analytics events you can't afford to miss!
Google Analytics is a useful program to analyse the behaviour of visitors on your website. Do you use it to its maximum potential or do you just look at your visitor numbers twice a year? We are happy to help you to understand what is happening on your website and Google Analytics is an import tool to do that. One of the things we do while setting up your website or webshop is to enable an enhanced integration with Google Analytics.
An example of the things on Analytics we set up are events. What are events exactly? We'll explain how to use events and where to find them on Analytics in this blog!
What are Events in Google Analytics?
Events are actions on your website that are interesting to measure. Usually, events are clicks on a link. You can find events in Analytics by going to the following page on the menu:
- Behaviour
- Events
- Overview
The events page looks like this:
But what does this information mean and what can you do with it? We are going to explain 7 events below!
1. Product tabs
If you have a webshop, you’ll notice the most popular event category is probably “Product tabs”. These are clicks on tabs on your product page. But “Product tabs” is a bit generic. So click on “Event label” so that you can see exactly which tabs have been clicked:
You can now see exactly which tabs have been viewed. It’s useful to know how many visitors looked at the tab called “Showroom” or “Store”. That is an indication webshop visitors have the intention to visit your garden centre.
You can create tabs yourself via the Garden Connect Platform and all tabs are measured automatically.
2. UX
The second category that is popular with webshops is “UX”. That also requires a little more info, so if you click through and look at the label, you will see that we have attached two labels to this category:
- Add to cart
- Remove from cart
Of course, these labels are self-explaining: you can see exactly how many items are put in the shopping cart and also how often items are taken out. If you click through and combine this event to the “Pages”, you will see exactly which items are often placed in a shopping cart:
In this example, you can see Christmas items are pretty popular. If your Christmas sales still weren't what you expected, it might be best to do some digging. You could, for example, try to order something in your webshop yourself to find out if something is going wrong. Perhaps the shipping costs are too high or maybe the checkout is unclear?
3. Buttons
We use “Buttons” to measure how often visitors click through from a category overview page to a product page.
This is useful to know, because the more people click through to a product page, the greater the chance that they will buy something!
4. Wishlist
Most webshops we design have wishlist options: visitors use wishlists to create a list of items they would like to purchase in the future, just not right now. These wishlists can be linked to your loyalty card and to your garden centre app. How often is this feature used? We measure this with the event “Wishlist”. If you want to know which products are put on the wish list, you can link it to pages via the secondary dimensions:
The wishlist is a useful function and is also often used by customers who "look" online and "buy" offline.
5. Phonecall
We usually put your phone number at the top and bottom of your website, but is your phone number often clicked on? You can check this with the event “Phonecall”.
Please note, this is only measured on the basis of the telephone number that we have placed on your website. If you have entered the telephone number yourself, this will not be measured, because no tags are attached to it.
6. E-mail
The phone number lets you know how many website visitors are calling you and the same goes for the click tag “email”. You can see how often visitors click on the e-mail address that is included in your design:
7. Maps
The last event that is useful to understand is “Maps”. We often place a Google Maps map on a number of places on your website. How many users open that map to check directions to your store? That question can be answered with this event.
This event also gives an indication of how many visitors are interested in visiting your garden centre. After all, why else would they be looking for directions?
Your Google Analytics may contain other events, for example, third-party plugins such as a chat app. If you use these, take a look. Events help you to understand what is happening on your website. And it also shows you what visitors do on your website and what intention they have.
