eventCategory and eventAction values

3
votes

My team is in the process of implementing event tracking for Google Ananlytics and they are not sure what values to use for eventCatgory and eventAction.

Based on all the documentation, it looks like it is just supposed to be descriptive, but my concern is that it may be more important than that since the two fields are required.

We do have an internal description of each event (like "click on map") and id numbers. Is this where we put them? The documentation makes it seem like it should be generic description.

Option 1- using internal reference sheet a) eventCategory = 4343 b) eventAction : click on map

Option 2- being more descriptive like in the documentation a) eventCategory = personal listing page b) eventAction : click on map

What are the implications for how these values pass back to Google Analytics as we track them?

1
eventsgoogle-analyticsevent-tracking
If I were to give a tl;dr version it is: Do the values we enter for these two values have an effect on our ability to track them in Google Analytics beyond just having to look for different names? – Michael Hollman

1 Answers

1
votes

I understand them as this:

  • EventCategory: describe the context where the event occurs. For example "Frontpage" or "Single Product Page", or "Taxonomy Archive". If your site has a Video player, it could be "Video player"
  • EventAction: What the Event does, from the user's point of view. For example: "Load More posts via Ajax", "Launch User Registration", "Subscribe to Newsletter". In the example of a video player it could be : "start playback", "stop playback", "move playhead timeline"
  • EventLabel: How the Event is formulated. Also useful if the same action can be made in different places in the same context. For instance: "Load More/ Lifestyle Posts", "Load More/ Music Posts". In the example of a video player it could be : "play", "stop", "move playhead timeline to 00:39 seconds" ...

I think it is designed to be flexible according to your own project's specificities.

In the wild

I just implemented Event tracking in a news website where we added a "Load More" button that fetches via Ajax a few more posts. It is available from several sections of the interface on the Frontpage.

Here is a screenshot of how it renders in GA/Behaviors/Top Events :Events Overview

When the "Frontpage" Event Category is clicked, you get the Event Action and Event Label as dimensions.Event Action

Then, the Event Label lets you see which ones are the most used.enter image description here