How nonprofits can best use custom event in google analytics

Introduction

You may not realize this, but you can use Google Analytics to capture specific events.

In fact, when you track your website’s traffic with Google Analytics, there are already a handful of built-in event types that come with it by default. These include Pageview Events (when someone visits a page on your site), Social Media Interactions (such as when someone clicks on a Facebook ad), and more.

But what if you want even more granular data? For example, what if you want to know how many people clicked on a particular link within one hour after seeing an email campaign? Or how many people visited your website from Facebook. This is where you can customize Google Analytics events —and why nonprofits should use them!

Record Donations with an Event

In order to create a successful non-profit, it is important to understand how to convert website visitors into donors. Conversion events are an important way of tracking these and can be easily set up in Google Analytics. In this post, we will outline the steps necessary to create conversion events for donations in Google Analytics.

1. Create a Conversion Event: The first step is to create a conversion event in Google Analytics. This can be done by going to the Admin section and clicking on ‘Create new Conversion’. You will then need to specify the type of conversion you are tracking (in our case, donation) and provide a name and description for the event.
2. Add Data Layer Values: The next step is to add data layer values for the purchase amount and donation value. This can be done by adding code similar to the following into your website’s header file: ga(‘create’, ‘donation_event’, {‘donation_amount’: $ Donation Amount,‘donation_value’: $ Donation Value});
3. Add Event Tracking Code: The final step is to add the event tracking code onto your donation form or button. This code should look like the following: <script>ga(‘send’, ‘event’)

*there may be additional steps required by a developer to ensure the value of the transaction is being captured by the newly set up event. In some systems, permissions to expose these values are also required before Google Analytics can be added.

Form Submissions

Form submissions are another important nonprofit activity you can track in Google Analytics. They’re a direct indicator of user engagement and they tell you how many people submit a form and what percentage of them complete it.

To set up this event you’ll need to know your form’s source URL (the link that sends users from your website to the form). In Google Analytics, start by creating an advanced segment for all traffic that has visited your site in the past 30 days but not submitted any forms using this method:

• Source = Direct
• Medium = Organic
• Campaign medium = None (you don’t want any campaign information here)

You should also create an advanced segment for all traffic that has visited your site in the past 30 days and submitted at least one form using this method:

• Source = Direct
• Medium = Organic

If you’d like to see additional information about specific forms on your website (like which ones have been completed or not), then add those filters as well: For example, if we wanted to only see our contact us page submissions in Google Analytics we would select “Contact Us” as our category filter under “Forms”. For more information about how best practices in tracking form submissions with Google Tag Manager please visit [Google’s official documentation](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1059200)

Video Views

Video views are a great way to track how users are interacting with your site. If you’re working on an event page, you can see how many people watched the fundraising video, paused it, or skipped forward or backward in the timeline.

You can also see what type of device they used to view your content: desktop computer or laptop (Windows or Mac), mobile phone (Android or iOS) tablet like iPad/iPad mini/iPad pro).

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