support GA content groups

[ndhoule]

From @DirtyAnalytics on June 12, 2014 16:41

Here's the GA docs.

When these are set directly through GA the code looks like this:

ga('create', 'UA-XXXXXXXX-Y', 'example.com');
ga('set', 'contentGroup5', 'Docs');
ga('send', 'pageview');

And here's how I think it should work in Segment...

When people call this:

analytics.page({
  contentGrouping: 1,
  contentGroup: 'Men'
});

Becomes:

analytics.js: ga('set', 'contentGroup1', 'Men');

There are 5 content groupings slots available in GA, grouping is the very top level category, examples would be:

• clothing
• marketing
• docs
• app

Then there are content groups which the user defines as a string and for that reason there can be as many as they want, groups always fit under a content grouping, here are some examples that would fit in the groupings above:

• shirts
• case studies
• integrations
• settings

Let me know if this makes sense @ianstormtaylor @yields @calvinfo @lancejpollard

Also - let's only worry about supporting the GA universal tracking method.

Copied from original issue: segmentio/analytics.js-integrations#210

[ndhoule]

From @ianstormtaylor on June 12, 2014 17:0

Interesting, my understanding is that it maps best to our name and category for pages. From their example, they have a Content Grouping called "Clothing" that has a subgroup called "Men". I think that would map nicely to:

analytics.page(category, name);

And then in the Segment interface they would make a mapping of:

category -> contentGroup#

For example:

'Clothing' -> 'contentGroup1'

And then with this call:

analytics.page('Clothing', 'Men');

That would translate to...

ga('set', 'contentGroup1', 'Men');
ga('send', 'pageview');

How does that sound? Not sure how we should prioritize this, since it seems like only one or so have asked for it so far?

[ndhoule]

From @DirtyAnalytics on June 12, 2014 17:2

It sounds ok, but the page name is a problem I think. I agree that's how this should be mapped, but we are setting the page title in GA to name which probably isn't the best idea. More details here: https://github.com/segmentio/analytics.js-integrations/issues/194

If we changed that I'd be down for the name and category going to content group and grouping.

[ndhoule]

From @pmmaga on June 12, 2014 18:25

Hi @DirtyAnalytics!

Thanks for creating the issue.

I think that the direct interpretation of category may be helpful but won't cover all the cases as, for example, forcing secure connection on GA using

ga('set', 'forceSSL', true);

I believe that the issue lies with the fact that the analytics.ready is raised only after the first analytics.page().

[lukebussey]

I really need this to work also and was expecting the following code to do the trick, but it doesn't.

analytics.ready(function () {
    window.ga('set', 'contentGroup1', 'Marketing');
});

analytics.page();

@ndhoule Is there a way to work around this?

[lukebussey]

For those interested, I worked up an elegant work around for this which still uses the page call, but just doesn't pass it to GA via Segment:

analytics.on('page', function (event, properties, options) {
  ga('set', {
    contentGroup1: 'Marketing',
    title: options.name || options.title,
    location: options.url,
    page: options.path
  });

  ga('send', 'pageview');

  ga('send', 'event', {
    eventAction: 'Viewed Home Page',
    eventCategory: 'All',
    nonInteraction: true
  });
});

analytics.page('Home', {}, {
  integrations: { 'Google Analytics': false }
});