I'm working on a site where conversions involve sending users to Eventbrite pages, where the users can make a purchase. I am using Facebook, Twitter, and Google ads, but they seem to require my site having a second page with a conversion pixel to track conversions. Since my homepage is sending the user to Eventbrite, where I can't add the pixel since I cannot adjust the pages' code, I am having a hard time figuring out the best way to use a pixel to track conversions. Any help with how to do this would be very appreciated.
I wrote to Eventbrite to ask them this very question, and got the unhappy answer:
"Unfortunately, we currently are not offering the ability to use
conversion pixels on event pages. The closest thing we have would be
using Google Analytics on your event pages."
As I use infusionsoft, I am looking into replacing Eventbrite with a plugin like: http://marketplace.infusionsoft.com/app/dynamicsync which has the App for attendance, the Wordpress plugin for sales, and automatically connects to my CRM, so I don't need to create Zapier Zap for every event I create.
Considering I pay Eventbrite an average of $100 per event in fees, I think the $20 per month is worth it for this type of software, that means I can control the HTML on the pages, and keep people inside my website. I might just have to get HTTPS certs' on my website, or add online purchasing to my system, which apparently Infusionsoft can do, just haven't harnessed that yet.
EventBrite has since added Pixel ID's for Twitter, Adwords and Google Analytics.You can go to 'Manage Event' and scroll down to Tracking Pixel under Analyze.
Unfortunately they don't provide a Facebook Tracking Pixel support by default. The closest thing I have come to is using the Order Confirmation page to insert the pixel JS.
Related
Google has rolled out reCAPTCHA v3. It does away with all the user friction. I wish to use it to secure my site. However, I am unsure about how this is going to protect my site. What if a hacker spams the URLs on my site with an external tool without using the interface I provide? How is reCAPTCHA v3 going to stop that?
How is reCAPTCHA v3 going to stop [Spam] ?
There are various heuristics which can be used to detect automated systems, such as the number of requests coming from a certain IP, browser fingerprinting, Google account cookies, among many others. Google seems to use some of them. If uncertain, a challenge gets shown.
What if a hacker spams the URLs on my site with an external tool without using the interface I provide?
Google generates a token for the client when they pass the checks which you have to validate on the serverside. If someone doesn't pass the CAPTCHA (a robot), they do not have a token.
In addition to the user behavior tracking on your site (as explained by Jonas Wilms), the v3 (and v2) also makes decisions based on your IP, ASN, browser and any kind of information about your system based on the information sent via your HTTP request.
The only difference is that V2 is a complete solution i.e, if it thinks a user may be a bot, it will pose additional challenges until it is convinced the user is a human. On the other hand, V3 is non-intrusive. It generates a score based on the parameters discussed above and passes it onto you. It is then your decision to take appropriate steps (like post challenges, or have two-factor authentication, etc.) based on this score.
IMO, it is better to start with a V2 solution and implement V3 if you want more control or have a better way to challenge the user if they have a low score.
(Here is an interesting article on the differences)
In few simple words google tracks your whole cursor and keyboard movement from moving mouse to select form fields to pressing tab to change fields.
To verify reCAPTCHA is working or not --> Submit a form and then
click refresh; it would ask for re-submission. Click continue. But as
this is a way much similar to Robot activity of submitting a form without any cursor of keyboard movements, reCAPTCHA will prevent
form submission or any other stuff from happenning.
SITUATION
I have a main public Liferay website, that is therefore accessible both by intranet and not-intranet (i.e. public) users.
I also have a Liferay intranet website, which is accessible only to intranet users because is protected via a login page.
The login page to the intranet website is public.
After you successfully login, the intranet website is loaded.
EXPECTED:
In my Google Analytics account for the main website, I want to differentiate intranet users from public users (e.g. in order to understand how the 2 categories behave).
Questions
Can I use a custom dimension to solve this problem, or is there a better way?
Custom dimension data has to be sent via hits (UPDATE: by "hits" I meant either pageview or event hits, I am not referring to the dimension scope, cfr. https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/custom-dims-mets), therefore I should:
load the Google Analytics tracking code of the main website on the intranet website (the site displayed after successfully logging in)
send a pageview hit from this Intranet website to the main website together with a custom dimension, e.g.
ga('send', 'pageview', {
'dimension1': 'I am a intranet user'
});
Is this correct?
Does the above mentioned solution have any impact on my Analytics data in the main website (e.g. more pageviews due to the tracking code added to the intranet website, or strange behaviours in counting user sessions, etc.)?
Thanks a lot.
UPDATE:
Actually, the solutions proposed below would not work because the 2 websites (intranet and not-intranet) are considered different domains.
So, even if I had the following domains
intranet website: http://intranet.mycompany.com
company website: http://www.mycompany.com
and I sent data to the same UA account (i.e. the company website UA account), they would be counted as different visits.
Quoting Google (see https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/gaTrackingSite#profilesKey)
If a user independently visits two sites that are tracking in the same
view (profile), such as through a bookmark, these visits will still be
counted under separate sessions. In this scenario, the linking methods
are not invoked, and thus there is no way to determine the initiating
session for a given user.
So, how could I solve my problem?
Would it be possible to solve it by implementing cross-domain tracking (https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034342?hl=en), and how?
Thanks a lot.
Can I use a custom dimension to solve this problem, or is there a better way?
Yes, custom dimension is perfect for this.
Custom dimension data has to be sent via hits
The User-level scope is more appropriate than the hit-level one for what you want to achieve. The linked document explains in detail why, and gives an example similar to your use case.
Does the above mentioned solution have any impact on my Analytics data in the main website
Yes, impact is mainly that you will have extra data corresponding to the visits to the intranet.
A custom dimension works well for your purpose. You will get additional hits for visits on your intranet site, but you can segment them out via the custom dimension to separate between inter/intranet.
Since the intranet requires a login there is one other way you could try, which would have the additional benefit of allowing for cross-device tracking (if that is beneficial to you).
Google calls this "userID", despite the fact that it must not be used to identify individual users. On login you pass in a unique value per user that is set by your backend system (UUID format is suggest but any unique string would work). Since it is not assigned by the tracking code but set by your system it will be the same id on every device. It is used to de-duplicate users, i.e. persons that log in from multiple devices will be recognized as single users (also useful if people delete their cookies - the userID can be used to aggregate sessions into unique visitors).
To make this work you need to set up a special view that contains only data from visits where the userId is set (so you would have a view for your public site and a view only for your logged-in users). You get a few special reports, for example one to tell you how many users log in from different device categories.
What the userID should not do, and in fact must not do according to Googles terms of service, is to identify individuals. The userId is not exposed in the Interface, and you must not store it as a custom dimension. If you store it on the client side in a cookie you must unset it once the users log out. It is merely there to allow continuous tracking of users independently from cookies (plus you need to amend your privacy policy if you want to use this).
Of course you can combine both approaches to get even more insights.
We're looking to make a little webapp to manage our week-long nerf war (humans vs zombies to be precise), and we're thinking about how easy it would be to have Google Sheets be our only backend, and our frontend be entirely javascript/html/css.
Let's say there's two actions that can be done in this javascript:
Register, which adds a row to a certain sheet.
Report tag, which adds a row to another sheet.
Let's say we have 100 players. We'll have each player sign in using a google account. Is there a way that for either of those above actions, we can have sheets know who made that action?
This way, if someone gets hold of the API key and spoofs their referer to make bad requests, then we can know which google account did it and ban them from the game.
For example, if I open up my sheet and say "see revision history", I want to not see one user for all the revisions, I want to see the user who triggered the action.
Is this a reasonable approach, and is it possible? Thanks!
(note: i know these two actions can be done via google forms, which can associate the user's account, but imagine we have more complex actions that cant be achieved with just a google form)
The short answer is no. You'll be using the spreadsheets API (NOT the Drive API) to update the sheet.As far as Google is concerned, the "user" is your application, regardless of which human was driving the application at the time. Your application knows who the human is, and so it is responsible for logging any audit info that your use case may require.
I have a website where customers may submit orders and I have Adwords campaign on it.
However, they may not necessarily proceed with the payment of the order.
I'd like to track my final conversion on google analytics such that my ECommerce transactions are tracked only when the customers have paid and informed us offline.
How can I track the following conversion:
1. User clicks on Adwords ads.
2. User browse website. <-- Already tracked in analytics
3. User clicks 'Purchase'. <-- First Conversion
4. User makes payment and inform us.
5. WE update our website order systems with payment information. <-- WANT TO TRACK THIS
PLUS: I wish to consider number 5 as the ultimate conversion not only relating it to number 3, but also number 1! Is there any good way to do this?
Specifically I am not very familiar with the details of the tracking flow enough to manipulate the important variables to submit to google by myself. I'm worried about things like what if at step 5, the IP address that request to Google Analytics is not the same as that of the users' in step 1, will the 'source/medium' tracking be broken?
Hope someone may know of any idea or even a help page specific to my case can help.
Thanks!!
To answer the questions, no, there is not a good way to do this and yes, source/medium tracking will be broken albeit for a different reason than you think.
GA does not use IP adresses for tracking (in some countries using IP adresses isn't even legal). The Google code assigns a visitor id to recognzie a user (more precise, the browser - ids are stored in a cookie) and session ids to the visitor id to recognize recurring visits. Also the code stores a lot of information in the browsers cookie, among other things source and medium.
To do what you want the user would have to look at the Google analytics cookie in his javascript console, send to you at least the visitor id, session id, timestamps, source, medium etc. Then you would have to create manually a gif request that sends that data to the Google server.
To avoid misunderstandings, I'm not suggesting that you do that, I'm telling you why there is no good way to do this. It's better to use Ga for the things it was designed to do and look into CRM systems or something if you need to track conversions offline.
I was thinking of having a simple feedback form in my website.
It would be something like:
Your Feedback will help us improve.
[ ]
and then a textfield/textarea where the user can type (let's say) up to 100 characters of feedback.
Rather than handling it all myself on the server-side I was thinking to use Google Analytics (since my site is already wireup) and every time a user writes a comment, send a custom event to google analytics.
I think it might work.
Can people suggest a better approach or point out any problem with this idea?
There are a few problems with this.
First of all, it's against the Google Analytics Terms of Service to pass personally identifiable information to Google Analytics (#7). So, if you were to want to collect their feedback, you legally could not collect their name or email address without risking your account getting shutdown by Google.
Second, this is not at all what Google Analytics is for; its for collecting aggregate traffic and site interaction data. There's no easy-to-use interface for viewing long-form text information; I'm not even sure how you'd view event information thats longer than a few words.
Finally, Google Analytics sends its information in URLs, and there are size limitations to URLs (in Internet Explorer), and so Google Analytics will be default truncate any request with more than 2048 characters, meaning that your data will not collect accurately for longer feedback forms. (EDIT: Google Analytics recently raised this cap to 8096, by configuring the requests to use POST when >2048 characters.)
There are lots of free and easy to use data and form collection tools. Google Docs, for example, connected with Google Forms, can collect this data for you with ease. Then there's Wufoo, SurveyMonkey, UserVoice...I could go on forever.
Don't use Google Analytics for this. It's a bad idea with no upside.
Google Analytics events weren't made for gathering user feedback. Aside from the impracticalities of using the analytics console to view feedback, GA uses JSON to pass event information (which has size restrictions).
Why not try out uservoice.com or suggestionbox.com?