What we’ll cover

• How to determine which events to track on your website
• The data to track along with your events
• How to list out the events needed in your site/app to work with Google Analytics

Prerequisites

• A running website
• A growth strategy doc with the ad channels you’re going to run

Introduction

In this project, we’ll make a list of all the important events on our site.

Our final deliverable will end up looking like this example. Pop it open and skim it.

The list of events in the example doc is a lot more thorough than most companies typically track. Most companies only track major events like viewing a product page, adding to cart, initiating checkout, and purchasing.

But granular actions are important. They give you clues to what’s really happening on your site. As they happen more and more, you can use their data to figure out how to improve your site, soup up your marketing, and fix your product.

For example, if you’re seeing data that nobody is signing up after they visit your customer testimonial page, you might add a button to sign up on that page.

Phase 1: Create your list of events

Make a new Google Doc.

Decide on a naming convention

All the recommended events in Google Analytics 4 use underscores in event names. For example, add_to_cart, view_item, begin_checkout.

We strongly recommend following this convention. If you feel strongly otherwise, you can of course deviate from this. In that situation we recommend you remain consistent in the format you use.

Reference Google's Documentation

Google has some useful documentaiton on recommend events to use on your site. They then expand those recommendations out for specific company types.

These events also have recommended parameters (additional pieces of information to pass along with the event, like the value of a purchase).

Review those as you go along: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9267735?hl=en&ref_topic=9756175

1a: List out all actions

Go to your website and app. Click and tap around.

Starting when you first visit your homepage, list out all the actions that you can perform, grouped by the page you do them on.

Google Analytics 4 tracks pageviews, clicks, scrolls, downloads, and video watches by default. So feel free to omit those unless there specific ones you'd like to track like "scrolling to pricing section" or "click request demo."

The events you list should be exhaustive and include all major events someone might perform while browsing your site and make a decision to buy, including things like expanding FAQ items.

For example, you could list out:

Homepage

• Click “Sign Up”
• Hover over "All Products"
• Click “Request Demo”
• Click “Sign In”
• Click “Pricing”
• Pricing section scroll into view

Pricing Page

• Click Lite Plan
• Click Starter Plan
• Click Pro Plan

Note that these can all be one event "click pricing button" with a simple "plan" parameter with options"Lite," "Starter," and "Pro."

All Pages

• Open Intercom Widget
• Enter Mailing List Email

Add a description to what the event is so you remember what they mean. And so your engineering team will know what they mean.

Time-saving tip: group similar actions together

This work may seem repetitive, boring, and time-consuming. It is. Save time by condensing similar actions together. Here's what we mean.

Instead of writing out...

Pricing Page

• Click Lite Plan
• Click Starter Plan
• Click Pro Plan

Write...

Pricing Page

• Click {Lite, Starter, Pro} Plan

We'll be sending this doc to your engineers at the end of this project, so as long as each action on your site is clear to them, you can condense similar actions together. They can create a single event "click pricing plan" and pass a parameter "plan" with options Lite, Starter, and Pro.

1b: Add parameters

Use Google's recommended events doc to think of useful secondary pieces of information to send along with your events.

For example:

Add to Cart

• description: user adds product to cart
• action: add_to_cart
• items: Growth Program
• value: 500
• currency: USD

Add each of these to your analytics proposal.

1c: Go over it a few more times

Go over it all again and make sure you’ve covered all the actions, and added labels and values where applicable (and useful), and lumped them into logical categories.

Make sure all your action descriptions are clear, and that everything is in the same format (lowercase vs uppercase, etc).

Phase 2: Send analytics doc to engineers

Send your analytics event doc to your engineering team. Here's an example message you can send them:

Hi {{engineers}},To get data on how people use our app/site, we need to start tracking these events in Google Analytics and {{our user-level tracking platform: mixpanel/heap/etc.}}.Could you add the code that fires when these events happen?{{LINK TO YOUR ANALYTICS DOC}}

Here are the docs for how to track these in Google Analytics: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/eventsAnd here are the docs for mixpanel/heap/etc.:

• https://developer.mixpanel.com/docs/javascript
• https://docs.heapanalytics.com/docs/heap-overview
• https://amplitude.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001361248-JavaScript-SDK-Installation

Thanks!