Assignment #1: Event Metric Analysis
Metric Identification: Event
One of the metrics I chose to examine for this week’s assignment is the event metric in the foundational metric category.
According to the Analytics Help page, the events metric in Google Analytics “are user interactions with content that can be tracked independently from a web page or screen load” (Analytics Help, 2017). As I mentioned in discussion this week, event tracking can aid businesses in tracking CTA’s or Call to Actions that can increase conversion rates.
However, event metric tracking on Google Analytics can track any independent web asset. While this includes CTA tracking, it also includes: “...downloads, mobile ad clicks, gadgets, Flash elements, AJAX embedded elements, and video plays” (Analytics Help, 2017).
The event metric on your analytics platform contains three sub-values that essentially provide guidelines for measuring your designated event. The sub-values are: category, action and label. These sub-values are effectively defined by Moz (Henry, 2010) and summarized, below:
- Category: the designated name for the information you want to track
- Action: defined action that you want to track
- Label: additional, optional defined actions that you want to supplement the primary action
This information means little without real world examples to elucidate application.
Real World Example #1
Avinash Kaushik provides a helpful example of leveraging events in analytics by examining the car customization flash module on the Toyota website in his textbook Web Analytics 2.0 (2010).
I am going to use the live Toyota custom build module to assist me in describing this event metric example. Below, you will find a snapshot of the current Toyota customization module, which is different from the example in our textbook. I will conduct this analysis using the Toyota Corolla model.
Toyota. (2017). Your build 2018 Corolla iM. Retrieved from https://www.toyota.com/configurator/#!/build/step/model:engine-transmission/year/2018/series/corollaim/model/6273
The object in this scenario is the model of the car, so the 2018 Corolla iM. So the category of this event could be called “2018 Corolla iM Customization.”
The action in this scenario would be the features of the customization. See below for a visual representation of the event action:
Toyota. (2017). Your build 2018 Corolla iM: “action”. Retrieved from https://www.toyota.com/configurator/#!/build/step/model:engine-transmission/year/2018/series/corollaim/model/6273
Lastly, the label of this event would be the options for each feature of customization. This will allow Toyota to further track this event, determining how many events are completed for each option provided for customization. A visual representation of the options for this customization module can be found below:
Toyota. (2017). Your build 2018 Corolla iM: “labels”. Retrieved from https://www.toyota.com/configurator/#!/build/step/model:engine-transmission/year/2018/series/corollaim/model/6273
The collection of this event data by Toyota could be best visualized by the following table that I created based on the example by Kaushik (2010):
Category / Object
|
Action
|
Label
|
Car Model
|
Engine
|
Manual transmission, variable transmission
|
Colors
|
Barcelona Red Metallic, Black Sand Pearl, Classic Silver Metallic....
|
This data collection, though extensive in its setup requirements, provides ample data that is of high value for Toyota.
From the events tracking feature of Google Analytics, Toyota can determine the percentages of selections in customization. For instance, if the Toyota marketing team wants to create a commercial for their 2019 Corolla model and they want to maximize efficiency, they can pull from the 2018 Corolla model data from these events to determine the colors with the highest event completions and cross-reference that data with in-store sales to choose the color of car for their commercial.
Tracking event data, in this situation in particular, can also help Toyota to diagnose which options in the customization are low performing, and remove those options moving forward to increase the ROI and decrease spend.
Real World Example #2
The second example I have to examine the efficacy of event metrics is the tracking of CTA’s or Calls to Action on a designated page of your site.
If we take the Southern Living magazine website as an example, we can test which CTA (circled, below) draws the most traffic and/or the most conversions.
Southern Living Magazine. (2017). Southern Living Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.southernliving.com/
As you can see, there are two CTA’s with slightly different verbiage and different placement on the site. If Southern Living is tracking their CTA efficacy with events, they will be able to determine which CTA hosts the highest traffic and the highest conversions.
If, Southern Living Magazine were to see low traffic on the CTA located in the top right hand corner of their website, they could rearrange the CTA to a different spot and determine which location bodes the highest success rate. This would require ongoing tracking, however, it could help to boost subscriptions to the magazine, which boosts sales and helps the company to grow.
References
Analytics Support. (2017). About events. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033068?hl=en
Henry, C. (2010, May 18). Google Analytics event tracking to monitor calls to action. Retrieved from https://moz.com/blog/google-analytics-event-tracking-to-monitor-calls-to-action
Kaushik, A. (2010). Web Analytics 2.0. Wiley Publishing Inc. Indianapolis, IN.
Southern Living Magazine. (2017). Southern Living Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.southernliving.com/
Southern Living Magazine. (2017). Southern Living Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.southernliving.com/
Toyota. (2017). Your build 2018 Corolla iM. Retrieved from https://www.toyota.com/configurator/#!/build/step/model:engine-transmission/year/2018/series/corollaim/model/6273
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