Additional event tracking needs (and clarification)

[devrap]

After a good discussion on tracking user interactivity goals and the overall need to capture where our users drop off/abandon interaction, we have some follow-up questions. @Bobfrat, can you clarify the following?

1) As far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be an event action defined for the "Find on Map" button (linked with Add to Map from catalog search results), and we'd like to track this. Is this true, or is this absorbed into/named something else?

2) Can you tell me what the "Mapped" action is specifically tracking? I know it's turning up results for specific labels like currents@, wave heights@, etc. Is that inclusive of both direct station clicks on the map and also views that load from Find on Map or other points of entry? I just want to make sure Find on Map clicks doesn't end up getting double-counted, if that makes sense. But at the same time, we need to differentiate the Find on Map clicks from Catalog results vs. manual clicks on stations from the map.

3) We also don't seem to be tracking anything happening from clicking on "External Links"--which is prominent!-- and also the offsite links that follow (to station page, HABS, metadata page, etc.). So we're unable to see if people fall off at this point. Are these external links being tracked with labels/actions I'm just not seeing in GA? I know the process of getting there is different for the Catalog view (you need to click on External Links) than for the Map view (the direct links of external links is auto-displayed in a prominent bubble when applicable if you have clicked on Find on Map--FYI, there seems to be no way to get that bubble back if you click on any individual stations or reload that initial result without starting over--possibly something for discussion in a separate thread.).

I'm thinking External Links would be a good category, labels could be Ext Station Page, Ext Metadata, Ext Buoy, Ext Web (for things like "Tom Ridge Environmental Center at Presque Isle"), and the action would of course be mapped to the specific station #, buoy, or URL. Thoughts on this?

In the meantime, the new Site Navigation data for Map button and Catalog button is showing up great. From a very short period of time, it looks clear that the # one action people are taking so far is to click on the Catalog button from the Catalog page (and dropping off), so I'm going to open this as a separate issue for discussion.

Thanks!

[kkoch]

We probably need a LOE here @kknee

[kknee]

@devrap @kkoch, estimate from @gitchrisadams follows:

1. Confirmed 'Find on Map' is not tracked. Probably only an hour or two to add
2. Confirmed that 'Find on Map' would not be double-counted if we implemented No. 1, but would need a couple hours to fully document how 'Mapped' works
3. This would be 2-4 hours to implement, depending on how many places the links need to be tracked + testing

[kkoch]

@devrap @tslawecki Need a make it so or more discussion?

[devrap]

I think we need to make all 3 so to more accurately track what Becky and Sneha are looking for. @tslawecki , do you approve the work?

[devrap]

Bumping this up, per our analytics meeting: @tslawecki or @kkoch : can you assign priority to these tasks to the RPS dev queue? This will give us better fidelity on our events data.

[kknee]

all - these changes have been made on dev, should we push to production?

details from @gitchrisadams:

Item number 1: I added a GA entry to track when the find on map is clicked. It adds it under Site Navigation > find on map > model name. (See screenshot)

Item number 2: Mapped is hit when the time slider is changed when a layer is on the map. So this gives information about what layer was on the map at time of the time slider change. This is different from a separate WMS > Changed Time hit this is set when the time slider is changed. So I can confirm this is not double counting or affecting the "find on map"

For item number 3, I added to Site Navigation > external link > the url as shown in screenshot.

This is just one example of the tutorial videos, but as far as the format, let me know if it looks good. I will look at getting other external links going to GA as well.

I added clicks from the info button:

As well as the links from the catalog:

Going into GA as:

[devrap]

Excellent! Looks great to me, @kknee and @gitchrisadams. I think this will make a big improvement in terms of more accurately capturing on-page events. If all is testing well without disruption to the dev product, I think we can roll this out to live. Thanks.