Tracking User Behavior: A Deep Dive into Google Analytics Events

25-Sep-2024

You can understand how data collection and analysis is an important part of any business, and there are a lot of tools in the market. Still, when you look at the most trusted tools, they are provided by Google. Here, one will learn about Google Analytics and how one can use it to track user behavior.

When a user comes on a platform such as a website or application for a business, tracking how the user behaves on that platform is one of the most crucial processes for data analysis. Google Analytics makes it easy, especially with its new updates, Google Analytics 4. Read to learn everything from this comprehensive guide that is important for tracking user behavior using tools with step-by-step processes and important takeaways. 

What is user behavior tracking?

Before going to learn about how to track, it is important to have an idea about what user behavior tracking or analytics is called. Well, user behavior tracking analyzes user's behavior patterns, and what this means is from all the users who are reaching your website, how many of them are stopping on it and going through the website, how many of them are taking actions, such as purchasing any products, using any service, or showing any other interactions. 

Why is tracking user behavior important?

There are many reasons why tracking behavioral patterns is important, and here are some of the points explained below.

• It helps directly in understanding about what features or services most of the users interact with. 
• Helps in identifying the areas that need more improvement.
• The data of user behavior tracking helps in understanding the user churn. 
• Companies or businesses can run promotional or marketing campaigns targeting them to encourage more interaction with the product and ultimately generate leads.

How to track users using Google Analytics?

When you understand user behavior, you can be more focused on your user's interests and preferences, where they are more interested when they reach your website, what features they prefer, and where they are getting issues so that improvement and fixing can be made. Google Analytics is the best analysis tool, and it is trusted by millions. To track user behavior, you can simply follow these simple steps. 

Step One: Setting up Google Analytics to start tracking

1. Create a new Google Analytics account, or if you already have one, then simply log in. 
2. New users need to configure their Google Analytics account. 
3. Once you are done with the second step, you need to add a Google Analytics code line to the pages of your website, which you can find under the "Add new page tag" area and paste it into the Head section of your web pages. You can simply use Google Tag Manager for that.
4. Once you complete the code insertion process, GA will soon generate analysis reports. Some traffic is coming onto the page.
5. You can check the live traffic data using real-time reports and match it with the report generated by Google Analytics to determine whether it has been set up correctly. 

Step Two: Tracking the user activity with behaviour analytics

1. The process of tracking and analyzing user data, both quantitative and qualitative, is said to be behaviour tracking.
2. Using the behaviour tools will give you insights that will help you clearly understand how users are experiencing after landing on the page.
3. Analyze using the SaaS behavior tool and start tracking users' behaviour. 
4. Heat maps and session recordings are two of the most important tools with which you can easily visualize the clicks, hovers, and movement of cursors throughout the page. Session recordings are replays of user’s whole sessions on a single page which can help you get more quality-based insights than heat maps.

Step Three: Configuring Google Analytics events

1. Jump to the admin dashboard or settings.
2. On the left side of the menu, you can see the "Data Display," where the "Events" option is listed; simply select it.
3. From the events list, enable those you want to use as key events by simply clicking on "Mark as key event."

Step Four: Get the reports, take insights, analyze and track the user behaviour regularly and make decisions accordingly. 

What is a Google Analytics event?

You may be wondering what is “event” in Google Analytics. It is a measuring tool that helps you measure the user interactions on your website pages or mobile or web applications. When a user visits a page, clicks on links, makes purchases, or has any other interactions, these activities get recorded in events and Google Analytics uses these data to build reports about the user behaviour, which works as crucial information about your business.

What are the benefits of GA4?

Here are some pros of Google Analytics 4 and why you should use it to track users' behaviour patterns.

• It offers enhanced tracking of users.
• It is more private than its previous version and adheres to international data privacy regulations.
• It offers better control over usage and collected data. 
• The integration of the data has been improved.
• Data can be collected from more sources.

How can I track user behavior on my mobile app?

People looking to track their users' behaviour on their mobile application can also track it using user activity tracking tools like Google Analytics; no matter whether your mobile app is iOS or Android, you can track user behavior and get insights. The process of tracking is simple and has been explained in the above sections. Kindly follow that process using Google Analytics 4, and you will be able to track website traffic, including bounce rate, page views, and referral source; visualize data for the user's interaction behaviour with the help of heatmaps and the whole sessions of the particular user across the website by the help of session recordings. 

Takeaway

With the help of this deep dive guide about user behaviour tracking through Google Analytics, hopefully, you have understood it well. You have learned what user behaviour tracking is, its importance, and how to track it in four easy steps. The new Google Analytics 4 has some improved features called events; formerly, it was called conversion; these events help you measure user behavior patterns quantitatively and qualitatively.

Tracking User Behavior Deep Dive into Google Analytics Google Analytics Events Google Analytics