Event Tracking with Google Analytics | Flash Integration | Tutorial

Many have read my Integrate Google Analytics with Flash Tutorial in which I express enthusiasm for the new event tracking at google analytics! Well, it’s been a while, but I was admitted to the Beta testing group! So I’ve now had the chance to play with event tracking a bit and wanted to publish my findings!

Overview

Almost a year ago Google Analytics announced their new event tracking model and have had help documents published and code samples up. And as with many of Google’s products the beta stamp has lasted a very very long time. Many have seen my earlier tutorial exploring using traditional Google Analytics Tracking from within Flash, and it does wonders to track your flash apps in this manner, but there is a problem with it. We’re using supposed object oriented concepts to track objects as pageviews. One thing is it really isn’t a very intuitive way to represent that data, and another it inflates your pageviews! The solution? the long awaited and announced Event Tracking model. I’ve been itching for this to be released so I could refresh my analytic tactics I use in my flash projects. No, to answer your questions, it has not been released yet, but I contacted Google and explained that I would be a great beta tester for this feature and after a bit of correspondence they invited me to join in the beta testing! This is good news for you too! Because I will tell you all about how to do it and even show you what the reporting looks like and when it is released finally, you will know what you’re in for after this sneak peak!

UPDATE: Here are the reports for this very example: Report from Event Tracking with Flash Tutorial

The very quick summary is this:
_trackEvent(category, action, optional_label, optional_value)
Note that the _trackEvent function is called on the pageTracker object itself. (initially Google had you instantiate a separate event tracker for every object (or category) you wanted tracked)

For example, if we want to track a ball. All the actions that can apply to the ball are: it being created, dragged, dropped, bounced, deleted… You get the idea. We can have direct user actions tracked or even automatic actions. If we have gravity and physics running, the ball may bounce a lot without any direct user interaction. But it will never be dragged or dropped without direct interaction. I’d recommend only tracking user interactions because who cares how often a ball bounces on your page (unless you’re doing an experiment, of course), want we want to know is how and when a user interacts with the ball.

category:string (required)

This is the name of the object you are tracking.

action:string (required)

This is the action that happens to your object you want to track.

optional_label:string (optional)

This can be more information to accompany the action.

optional_value:integer (optional)

A number to provide numerical information to accompany the action.

Steps

1. First, I’d recommend reading up about Event Tracking at Google
2. Decide your object oriented structure for tracking events. What objects do you want to track and what useful information do you want to get through tracking user interaction?
3. Make sure you have the new Google analytics tracking code on your page
4. Use these functions to communicate Google Analytics from your flash
   1. Call the main function with the specified parameters
   2. It will call the appropriate function and send the data to your pageTracker object through javascript with externalInterface calls
5. See the reports in your analytics profile! (if your a beta tester, or else, wait until it is released)

Source code

The tracking functions are below, I enhanced the earlier trackGA function I wrote about. Now you call trackGA with 2 required parameters, categoryOrPageTrack and action. categoryOrPageTrack is where you have to pay attention. I wanted to keep the ability to track pageviews as well as have event tracking, so as the first param you either send in the string ‘page’ to explicitly state that you want to track the page view, or you send in another string to state you want to track an event on that specified object. Action remains the same, the action you want tracked (either on the pageview, it is the path that will appear in your reports; or the event tracking will be the action tracked to the category)…
So to track a pageview I call
trackGA("page", "swfLoaded");
and to track an event to an object I call ball:
trackGA("ball", "created");
The trackGA function will rout your call to the appropriate place and send the info to Google through either the trackGAPage function or the trackGAEvent function.
[cc lang=”actionscript” tab_size=”2″ lines=”40″]
//trackGA (categoryOrPageTrack [required], action [required], label [optional], value [optional]
//categoryOrPageTrack – either the category string or a string saying ‘page’
function trackGA(categoryOrPageTrack:String, action:String, optional_label:String, optional_value:Number) {
//call page tracking version of Google analytics
if (categoryOrPageTrack == “page”) {
//trace(“GATC pageTracker call”);
trackGAPage(action);
}
//call event tracking method
else {
//trace(“GATC event tracker call”);
trackGAEvent(categoryOrPageTrack, action, optional_label, optional_value);
}
}

var prefix:String = “flashGA”;
//Google Analytics Calls Page Tracking – for tracking page views
function trackGAPage(action:String) {
//GA call
if (prefix != null && !eventTrack){
var call = “/” + prefix + “/” + action;
//Old Google Analytics Code (urchinTracker)
ExternalInterface.call(“urchinTracker(‘”+call+”‘)”);
//New Google Analytics Code (_trackPageview) pageview
ExternalInterface.call(“pageTracker._trackPageview(‘”+call+”‘)”);
trace(“==GATC==pageTracker._trackPageview(‘”+call+”‘)”);
}
_root.tracer.text = action;
}

//Google Analytics Event Tracking Calls – for tracking events and not pageviews
//category, action, label (optional), value(optional)
function trackGAEvent(category:String, action:String, optional_label:String, optional_value:Number) {
/*
objectTracker_trackEvent(category, action, optional_label, optional_value)
category (required) – The name you supply for the group of objects you want to track.
action (required) – A string that is uniquely paired with each category, and commonly used to define the type of user interaction for the web object.
label (optional) – An optional string to provide additional dimensions to the event data.
value (optional) – An optional integer that you can use to provide numerical data about the user event.
*/

theCategory = “‘” + category;
theAction = “‘, ‘” + action + “‘”;
theLabel = (optional_label == null) ? “” : “, ‘” + optional_label + “‘”;
theValue = (optional_value == null) ? “” : “, ” + optional_value;
//New Google Analytics Code (_trackEvent) event tracking
theCall = “pageTracker._trackEvent(” + theCategory + theAction + theLabel + theValue + “)”;
ExternalInterface.call(theCall);
trace(“====GATC====”+theCall);
_root.tracer.text = theCategory + theAction + theLabel + theValue;
}
[/cc]

Here’s the actionscript lines where I call the trackGA function:
[cc lang=”actionscript” tab_size=”2″ lines=”40″]
//Tracks that the swf loads, so I pass ‘page’ to let it know I want a pageview tracked…
trackGA(“page”, “swfLoaded”);
//Tracks various objects sending various actions
trackGA(“gravity”, “on”);
trackGA(“gravity”, “off”);
trackGA(“friction”, “on”);
trackGA(“friction”, “off”);
trackGA(“ball”, “deleted”, count);
trackGA(“ball”, “created”, ballCount);
trackGA(“ball”, “drag”, this.ballNum, this.ballNum);
trackGA(“ball”, “drop”, this.ballNum, this.ballNum);
trackGA(“ball”, “bounce”, “right”, this.ballNum);
[/cc]

Example

[kml_flashembed fversion=”9.0.0″ movie=”/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/integrategoogleanalytics/integrategoogleanalytics.swf” targetclass=”flashmovie” publishmethod=”dynamic” width=”400″ height=”400″]

[/kml_flashembed]

View example in it’s own html page, I even added a couple html buttons with javascript hooked in to show javascript event tracking implementation.

Download

Download Source

Concerns

I’ve noticed while putting this together that the calls to google analytics are not completely fullfilled, this example sends out correct calls to javascript, but (in firefox at least) a max of about 1 tracking call is registered with the tracking code every 5 seconds or so. I noticed this as I was monitoring the drag and drop events for each ball, although the drag and drop events are both fired, usually the drag event was received and the drop is not. After verifying that my code was consistent, I noticed that no matter how fast I interacted with the objects, the calls were much slower. I’m guessing this is a limit placed by the google team to keep us from sending pointless data such as is posted at the bottom of the event tracking implementation guide, titled Events Per Session Limit.