Web analytics¶

Google Analytics for tracking institutional pageviews¶

It’s also possible to track pageviews for individual institutions who are sharing a multi-repository AtoM instance by adding a custom dimension to the tracking ID. Adding this dimension will set the authorized form of name from the source culture of the repository as the dimension value (e.g. for a repository where the source culture is English but translations into other languages are present, Analytics will use the English form of the authorized form of name).

• Description pages (all templates) use the repository value (direct or inherited)
• Actor pages use the maintaining repository value
• Repository pages use the repository’s authorized form of name value

Follow the instructions provided in Google’s Analytics Help pages to Create an event scoped custom dimension. When you reach step 5, Event parameter, choose page_title. Once you have completed all the steps, the custom dimension will be displayed in a table. Next, you want to navigate to your AtoM site and access all of the repositories you would like to track. This step is required so that we can use the repository’s page_title as a variable for filtering for our dimension. Note that these variables can take up to 24 hours to appear in GA4, and the following instructions will require access to these variables.

Viewing Google Analytics institutional pageview data¶

There are several ways to visualize analytics data in the Google Analytics dashboard. You can view institution names in the page views table:

1. In the Google Analytics dashboard left sidebar, select Reports.

2. Under Life cycle, select Engagement and Pages and screens.

3. On the right hand corner, select Customize report, then Dimensions. Add the new dimension to list, and click Apply.

4. Next, in the Customize report page, click Add filter. Select your custom dimension and set the Match Type to exactly matches, and select all repositories you would like to track in the populated list. Note that variables are made available on GA4 by accessing them in your AtoM site and can take up to 24 hours to populate in GA4.

5. Click Apply and Save to save your changes. Notice the new filter under the Pages and screens title and can select your event in the dropdown below the table graphs.

   

6. You can export this data by clicking the Share this report button on the top right corner. Select Download File and select whether you’d prefer a Download PDF or Download CSV.

Back to top

Google Analytics tracking ID setup¶

1. If you haven’t already, log in to https://analytics.google.com with a Google account and click the “Start collecting data” button.
2. Select Web as you platform.
3. Fill out Website URL with your AtoM URL and click Create.
4. Accept the service agreement that pops up. You’ll be redirected to the Tracking Code section of your new web property. Copy down the Tracking ID shown on this screen - you’ll need this to set up your Google Tag Manager variables.

Google Tag Manager container set up¶

1. Log in to https://tagmanager.google.com/ with a Google account and click the “Create Account” button.

   

   The account will be created with a single Google Tag Manager container and you specify its name and type in the Container Setup area. You can specify it as a Web container for the AtoM functionality.

2. Click create. You’ll be shown a service agreement, and when you click Yes to agree to its terms, you’ll be redirected to the container dashboard, which will show the code snippets for the first time. AtoM will produce these automatically from the container ID so you don’t need to copy them, and can close the dialog.

3. The ID for your new container will be displayed in the dashboard:

   

4. Once GTM and GA4 are configured, you can start setting up tags to track events in your pages and getting reports in Google Analytics.

Tag Manager Variables¶

In the following example we’re going to track Click events (buttons, links, etc). First we need to enable the built-in “Clicks” variables, and make a few other configuration changes.

1. Click “Variables” in the left sidebar and then the “Configure” button in the Built-in Variables section.

2. Enable all the Clicks variables:

3. We can also create a variable to store the Tracking ID of the Google Analytics web property we set up in the section above, so we can reuse it in multiple tags.

   To do so, click “Variables” in the left sidebar and then the “New” button in the User-Defined Variables section.

4. In the Variable Configuration section, click the Lego block icon or the pencil icon to get started. In the resulting configuration page, select the Google Analytics Settings type, and set the Tracking ID of your Google Analytics web property. At the top of the page, we’ll also name the new variable “Tracking ID” so we can identify it when setting tags. When this is complete, click the “Save” button.

Tag Manager Triggers¶

Triggers listen to events on specific page elements and make tags react when the event is detected. We’re going to create a trigger to listen to click events on the Download button of the Finding aids section of the right-hand context menu of an archival description. Note that this button is just an HTML link element styled to look like a button. Let’s set up a trigger for this event.

1. Click “Triggers” in the left sidebar, and the “New” button in the Triggers section.

2. In the Trigger Configuration section click the circled button or the pencil icon and choose the “Just Links” trigger type under the Click category.

3. Under “This trigger fires on,” select “Some Link Clicks,” which allows you to define selectors to identify the specific HTML elements you want to track. This will depend on the markup of the page and how specific you want to be. A selector like #action-items a.btn (all links that look like a button on the right sidebar) might be good enough or #action-items a.btn[href$=".pdf"] (all links that look like a button on the right sidebar and where the href URI ends in .pdf) might be way more specific. Name the trigger “Download button” and then click the Save button at the top of the screen.

Tag example: tracking finding aid downloads¶

Now that we’ve configured our Variables and Triggers, in the following example we’re going to track how many times users click the finding aid Download button in the right context menu of an archival description. We are going to generate a report that groups all these events in the single category of “Finding Aids,” and which shows the URL of their related archival description.

1. Click “Tags” on the left sidebar and the New button in the Tags section.

2. In the Tag Configuration section, click the tag button or the pencil icon and choose the “Google Analytics: Universal Analytics” type. For Track Type select “Event” and for the Google Analytics Setting, select your Tracking ID variable.

3. The Category, Action and Label tracking parameters are arbitrary values that become dimensions in the Google Analytics event reports so you can adjust them conveniently. For example, we’re going to use the URL of the archival description as the Event label, so click the lego block button next to the field and select the “Click URL” variable.

4. In the Triggering section click the circled button or the pencil and choose the Download button we configured in the previous section.

5. Finally, name your tag “Finding Aids Download” and click the Save button at the top of the screen.

We’re almost set! Let’s preview our work and make sure everything is working as expected.

Previewing your Google Tag functionality¶

Before publishing your new tag you can preview its functionality by clicking the Preview button in the container dashboard. Once you’re in preview mode you can open a new tab in the same browser and visit your site.

You’ll see a Tag Manager pane at the bottom of your page.

If you click the finding aid download button of an archival description, the PDF will be open in a new tab and you’ll see a new Click event in the Summary sidebar showing that the tag was successfully fired.

Publishing your tag and getting an Analytics event report¶

After you check that the tag works you can publish your workspace by clicking the “Submit” button in the Google Tag Manager Container dashboard. Set a name and description for the version changes and click the “Publish” button.

Now you can visit your web property in Google Analytics. You can either check the Realtime > Events report:

Or the Behavior > Events reports to see the dimensions you defined being tracked.

Back to top