Gator Analytics enables a radically new way to analyze the effectiveness of your online marketing, and to help you navigate through
the product, we have created a number of additional help systems.
When you are logged in, you will see a menu item at the bottom called 'Help Center'. For product help, click the 'Product FAQ' menu item. For setup, integration and implementation
guides, click on 'Developer Help'.
Some reports have a tour built in. If you see the 'Tour Page' help menu item, you can click it to view a tour of the report's features.
Within reports, by hovering on table column names, you can get a description of what the column is. Also, in segment and filter definitions, you can click on the 'info' button for
attribute
For email or phone support, every page has a link at the bottom with information on how to contact us.
Common Terms
Gator Analytics uses a number of new concepts and terms. This tutorial will give details of some of them and where they are used.
Session
A session is a visit from a user to your site or app. A session is recorded when a new user visits your app or site, or when 30 minutes elapses from the user's last interaction.
Also, for web tracking, a session in recorded when the user re-enters the site from a different source (campaign, referrer, or search engine).
A daily history of sessions can be seen from the 'Sessions/Timeline' menu item.
A log of sessions can be seen from the 'Sessions/Log' menu item.
Event
An event is an activity performed by a user, like 'App Launch', or 'Signup'. Events are tracked via JavaScript or API calls. Events can track
any extra data. For example, a signup event can also pass in the user's name and other info.
A daily history of events can be seen from the 'Events/Timeline' menu item.
A log of events can be seen from the 'Events/Log' menu item.
Attribute
Tracking records data called 'attributes'. We collect a large number of attributes per session or event and these can be reported on immediately. Attributes can be
either elements or metrics.
Elements are attributes (generally strings or dates) that reports can be grouped on. For example, 'Browser' or 'Campaign'. You can select elements on most
reports. You can also combine elements for more detailed analysis. For example, on the session timeline report, if you select an element, the report will
display a line chart of the top elements. You can also customize which elements to display on the timeline.
Metrics are numeric attributes that can have summary operations computed on, like totals, averages, etc. For example, 'Average Session Length'. Metrics can also be
selected on most reports and for each metric you select, a corresponding chart will appear on the screen. You can toggle the display of metrics from the table columns.
Segment
Segments are used for comparing different data sets within a report. For example, you can define a report with sessions and then
add the 'Mobile Web' segment and that both appear on the report.
Filter
A filter creates a subset of the data for the report. For example, you may wish to only see sessions from iPhones.
A filter applies to the whole report, including segments.
Tagging and Live Tracking
To track data on a website, you need to add a small snippet of JavaScript to your pages. Each project has its own unique script. You can get the scripts from the Setup/Project menu.
Find the project you wish to track, then click the 'Web Script' button. This will display the tracking script for that project. Simply cut and paste the script onto your pages (we
recommend using a tag manager or include file for this). Then, you can log page views, events, people, etc.
For example, the script automatically logs page view using the 'logPageview' call. To log an event, you can add a 'logEvent' call. Then, the data will instantly show up
in your project's reports. Here's how. Add the call to your web page, then add any data you wish to track with the event. Hit refresh on the page, then the event and data shows up
on the reports.
The User Scoring System
Users of your site are scored on a scale from 0 to 1000. The lower the score, the more likely the user is a bot, spider or hidden. A score of 0 to 100 is referred to as 'invalid'.
Invalid users are almost certainly not human, or are humans masking their origin. Scores above 500 are reserved for future whitelisting technology.
The simplest way to show how many invalid sessions you have is to go to the 'Sessions/Timeline' report. Remove all the attributes except 'Sessions' and then add the 'Invalid' segment.
This will show a comparison of your total sessions vs. your invalid sessions.
The quality menu has a number of ways to view your data with scoring. For example, by campaign, event or source. You can also view a realtime map of where your bad users are coming
from.
Event Tracking
Events are tracked via JavaScript or API calls. Events can track any extra data. For example, a signup event can also pass in the user's name and other info by adding a JSON object to the
call. For example, to track when a user clicks on a button, you would add the 'logEvent' call to the button click event.
To capture data on the button click, you can add a JSON object to the call, like this.
This data will then be attached to the event. You can filter reports based on the data you pass into events. See the tutorial on custom attributes for more information.
Events can be
updated at any time if you set a unique id on the event. For example, let's say you wish to track orders. The unique id would be the order id you created, and you can add that to an event
like so:
Make sure to assign the unique id to the 'id' attribute.
Then, if you wish to update the user's data, you can use the 'updateEvent' call. For example, to update the shipping cost of the order, you could make the following call:
Then, the event is updated in your account.
Custom Attributes
You can create custom attributes that can be used like system attributes once they are added. Custom attributes can be added to sessions, events and
people. Let's add a custom attribute to an event and then show how it can be used.
First, go to the Setup/Projects menu. Find the project you want to add the attribute to and click on the 'Attributes' dropdown, then select 'On Events'. Then, click on 'Create new
event attribute'. We are going to create an attribute called 'Color', which will be used as an attribute on orders. It is an element, since we will be reporting on it.
Now, on the Events timeline report, we can create a report that groups on color.
To create an event where the color attribute is recorded, use the 'logEvent' call with data on the call:
Then, the event will appear in the event log. And, you can add the color attribute to the table.
Finally, you can filter all event reports based on the custom attributes you create, like this:
Campaign Tracking
To set up a campaign, from any source, simply add a 'source' query string parameter to the link to your site. For example:
www.mysite.com?source=BingCampaign
When this link is clicked, our system will identify the campaign on the session. In addition, the user will be assigned the campaign, and you can report on campaign activity
based on a user's first campaign that brought them to your site, or the latest campaign, or the current session's campaign.
In addition to the 'source' parameter, we also look for the 'utm_campaign' query string parameter automatically. However, if you have legacy campaigns you can't alter easily, we have two
other methods to identify campaigns.
First, click on the Setup/Projects menu and find the project you wish to use. Click on the 'Campaign Referrers' button. This gives you the ability to assign a campaign to any
referrer that is sending users to your site.
Second, click on the 'Campaign Ids' button. This allows you to assign any query string parameter for our system to look for that will identifiy a campaign. create a
parameter called 'camp', then any visits to your site with the query string parameter camp assigned will be identified as a campaign.
For example:
www.mysite.com?camp=EmailBlast
The primary way to display campaign effectiveness is the Campaign Activity report. This report allows displays conversion data, which is explained in the Conversion Tracking
tutorial.
Funnels
The funnel report shows the dropoff in users across a series of events. This report can be found on the Conversions/Funnel menu. Simply pick an
event sequence and the funnel will display the results. The series of
events can happen across sessions, as long as they are within the timeframe of the report. The series
of events can happen loosely, meaning other events can come in between the steps.
The funnel report is based on unique users, not sessions. The completion rate is how many unique users started the funnel and completed all the steps. The
arrows indicate the percentage drop between steps.
You can also breakdown the funnel steps by any major element. For example, you can view the top channels of users that went to the checkout page on the second step of the funnel.
Ecommerce Tracking
Gator Analytics comes with item-level ecommerce tracking that is easily implemented with event tracking. Any event with 'revenue' assigned to it is automatically considered an ecommerce
event. For example, this is what a 'logEvent' call looks like when tracking revenue:
Events can also assign tax, shipping and a unique transaction id as pre-defined ecommerce attributes.
However, for item-level detail, you can create events that assign item name, SKUs and other item level data and that information will be tracked into pre-defined attributes.
Then you can see the results in the Conversions/Ecommerce report and the Conversions/Items report.
People Analytics
A person is a known user, which means you have identified the user with the 'setPerson' API call. Generally, a person is known to you when they log in or identify themselves in
some other way.
By tracking people, you can view their aggregated analytics. This data is for all their sessions, even across devices. And of course, you can assign custom data to people.
For example, here's how you would assign a user's phone number:
You can then view all of their major statistics on one screen. You can even filter people by their session information or even custom attributes.