Better Google Analytics Integration

[lentinj]

There's a laundry list of problems with Google Analytics:

• [x] As noted in #722, we hide cookiecontrol's widget to revisit cookie settings. We don't have any spare corners for it to sit in, but could see if we can add a menu option to open it again?
• [x] The consent integration is currently complaining with "A tag read consent state before a default was set", reorder calls to fix, which may help our consent properties, which are active & not active, depending on which page you look at.
• [x] Generate "page_view" events manually, so we don't report every OTT as a separate page. Possibly we need to enable enhanced collection, but disable every collection within, especially the history API - related advice for integrating with SPA's, which we nearly are. Once page_view is under our control, remove OTT from tree navigations, keep non-tree pages as they are.
• [ ] Google Analytics thinks ~200 pages are missing a tag, although they clearly don't (they're mostly life variants). Maybe related to consent property problems?
• [x] Record pop-ups with a "select_item" event, with the OTT as an ID
• [x] Record searches as a "search" event
• [ ] Add custom events for sponsorship flow with the various page_view events, I'm not sure this is worth it.
• [x] Add "tour_view" custom event when a tour is selected

Ultimately what we want to do is improve the average engagement time:

(The total length of time your website was in focus or your app was in the foreground across all sessions)
    /
(The total number of active users)

...given this is total session time, even if users ended up with multiple tiny sessions that shouldn't be a problem. Possibly the lack of Enhanced Measurement means we can't measure session time?

[lentinj]

I've added onezoom.org & www.onezoom.org to list of domains:

https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#/a35612933p275165219/admin/streams/table/2644191729

...I'm not convinced it's necessary, but was recommended by the config pages and I don't think it'll hurt.

[hyanwong]

Great, thanks @lentinj

[lentinj]

Having pondered this over the weekend, these pages demystify what's going on a bit:

• https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11109416?hl=en
• https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9216061?hl=en

Basically, engagement time is reliant on events sending "engagement_time_msec" (which is kinda obvious in retrospect). We've not enabled "enhanced measurement", which means the additional events aren't happening.

Our new events do send "engagement_time_msec" so I think we should see a dramatic improvement. The remaining questions are:

1. Do we want to enable enhanced measurement? For the tree it's largely useless, for regular pages they could be interesting, but there's enough page views happening as you click on links that I don't think we'd learn too much more. The main thing is to keep history API instrumentation off, which will spam page_view events as you scroll around the tree.
2. Should we send a "scroll" event on record_url()? Without, a user who opens the tree viewer, zooms around a bit and closes won't have their full session time recorded.

For (1), I feel like being as close to the default settings as possible is most useful, to make one less thing to remember.

For (2), I can't find any evidence of limits we'd exceed, but it feels excessively chatty to me. I'd rather wait & see if it's needed instead of leaping straight in.

[lentinj]

Things we want to get done ~now:

• [x] "scroll" event on record_url
• [x] "popup_load" event to record both pop-up openings and tab-switching
• [x] "popup_close" event (custom event, nothing matches)
• [x] "popup_scroll" event within tab
• [x] Clicking on signposts ("select_content")
• [x] Document all events & what they do in views/analytics.html

[lentinj]

I think this is all done now, the weirdest addition is "popup_scroll" which fires if a wikipedia page has scrolled, and is still visible after 5 seconds after the event. It doesn't fire for subsequent scrolls.

The main point was to lessen false-positives, flicking and immediately closing. We could fine-tune it if need be.