StatStory

Google Analytics, Custom Variables And Contact Form 7

Adrian Speyer — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 02:19:07 +0000

WordPress Contact Form 7
As we have covered before, Contact Form 7 is a very popular form plugin for WordPress. Over 10 Million people use the plugin, which is an amazing number. Unfortunately, lots of the good info about Contact7 form is hidden, like these special tags you can add to your mail to get more info about the user who sends you a message. There is also a great plugin to add hidden fields in Contact Form 7. Then there is (i my view) the most powerful way you can use Contact Form 7: The Additional Settings Box and the “on_ok_send” command. The additional settings box is found at the very bottom of every contact form setting page. With the “on_ok_send” command, you can execute any Javascript you want at the time the email is sent. Best of all you can enhance the usefulness of your forms with the power of Google (or Piwik) Analytics. More specifically you can use Events or with Custom Variables, and you get to go to a whole different level of intelligence.

A Note on PII
With email you have to be careful with PII (Personally Identifiable Information) and Google Analytics. When you you use Google, you are not allowed to use personal information in your analytics. For example YOU CANNOT use a Custom Variable, which inserts a perons name or email into Google Analytics and ties to their site behaviour. Google takes this very seriously and you can have you account suspended if you you use information improperly. You can of course use Google Analytics to categorize your users, such as lead types for example –or consider using Piwik, which as a self hosted solution does not have this issue.

Contact 7 Form setup
Now that we have understood the limits of PII, we can have fun getting data to segment on our form submitters. The first step is to add a new element on the form. In this case, we are going to ask the people filling in the form if they are new customers or old customers. To do that you will generate a new tag. When you are done it should look like below:

contact7-adding-custom-variable

The main thing to ensure is you give your new form item an ID, which in this case with be “Lead_Type”. It will look like this

Make sure you add the code noted at the bottom of this screen to the left in the form so users can fill it in for you. You also want to make sure you add it to your email to, so make sure to add those tags to. Once your form is done, you are ready for some code

On to the code
Now that you are done, it’s time to add the code to make this work to the “Additional Settings” box using the “ok_on_send”. Just copt and paste below

on_sent_ok: "var lead = document.getElementById('Lead_Type').value;_gaq.push(['_setCustomVar',1,'Lead Type',''+ lead+'',1]);"

When done this is how it should look like below

So what does this code do? First, it makes sure that the user email meets the requirements, for example if you have a captcha, or that the email address is well formed. If all is okay, the Javascript will search for the value of “Lead_Type”, which we have assigned to a variable called “lead”. The final step is Google Analytics, will grab the value of “lead” and insert it into Google Analytics via a custom variable. We have in this case used slot 1, and we have set the session level at Visitor level (denoted by the number one)/ This means as long as the cookie remains, your visitor will have this variable assigned to them for two years. In some cases, it might make sense to use at the session level, which means the final number should be changed to “2″ or Page Level, which is “3″. It really all depends on your needs and strategy. If you are interested to learn more on Custom Variables, you can read our article on them here.

Final Thoughts
So there you have it. If you are able to make it happen in Javascript, you can make the data available for Google. Just make sure you respect their rules. Happy tracking!

Google Analytics, Custom Variables And Contact Form 7 is a post from: StatStory

Tracking Clicks and Impressions In Piwik Analytics

Adrian Speyer — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:22:27 +0000

Tracking Clicks and Impressions with Google Analytics
As you may or may not know, when you use Google Analytics you cannot track clicks or impressions of ads on your site. In order to do so, you need to employ an ad server. As such, it’s not really a big, deal, but if you are like me and you like to have all the data in one place, it can become a pain. I have created a solution for this problem, for Google Analytics users, but I did not want to stop there. I wanted to share my code with users of Piwik. This is not only because I think Piwik rocks. With Piwik’s powerful PHP API, you can create some awesome things as well.

The basic tracking
So how do you go about creating a tracker for clicks and impressions for Piwik. You use Custom Variables of course! I covered the basics of those over here, but in short, the custom variables in Piwik looks like below:

piwikTracker.setCustomVariable("INDEX", "NAME", "VALUE", "SCOPE");

INDEX: 1-5 slots
NAME: This is the group name
VALUE: The Label for the group
SCOPE: This you have choice of Page or Visit.

In Piwik, we would build the clicks to look like this

piwikTracker.setCustomVariable(1, "BANNERNAME", "click", "page");

And impressions will be created like so:

piwikTracker.setCustomVariable(1, "BANNERNAME", "impressions", "page");

As you may notice, we do not have a slot for Cost per Click or Cost per 1000. We can get creative and append to the Name Value like so

piwikTracker.setCustomVariable(1, "BANNERNAME-Click", "1.00", "page");

So what’s the full code look like?
As we saw with the Google solution, we will use an invisible GIF to fire to track impressions. So now we put all together so it can work for Piwik:

You will obviously need to change “http://localhost/someurl” to be the link where you want users to go and “http://localhost/someurltoapic.jpg” for the appropriate image, but this will work right out of the box except…

Some other Modifications are needed and notes
To make custom variables work for you you will need to ensure that your Piwik Tracking code is the not at the . Also as Piwik only allow you to have 1 INDEX slot per page view (for now) so that means maximum number of ads you should run with this is 2 per page. Now that you are up and running, you will have a custom variables report for clicks and impressions right in your Piwik install. Below is a screen shot of how it will look:

You can also create your own script with the Piwik API, to get the Clicks and Impressions in the format you choose. Like below

You can get this script here to play with. It pulls the latest from your custom variables that contain the word Banner.

Creativity Time
Other than this, the sky the limit for your creativity. For example, you can create a PHP array and rotating banners. To help your creative juices, I have come up with a script that does just that. You can get it for free right here. I hope you find this solution helpful or if you appreciate it, please don’t be shy to share this article with your friends. Also if you also want check out the Google Analytics solution to track impressions and clicks.

Tracking Clicks and Impressions In Piwik Analytics is a post from: StatStory

Tracking Clicks and Impressions In Google Analytics

Adrian Speyer — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:21:04 +0000

Internal Banner Ads and Google Analytics
One thing of the many things that Google does well is integrate with Google Adwords. No other Analytics package can really compare with the ease to which it does this because they are so well inter-linked. So, to me, it has always been a shame, Google Analytics does not come with an easy way to track on-site banners or advertising. For example if you want to calculate how many clicks a banner has on one of your pages or if you want to know how many impressions an advert has, you are basically out of luck. If you have a Magento Eneterprise site with banner ads or if you have a simple site that sells space you are pretty much have couple of choices: Install an AdServer, like OpenX or some other service. The reality is, though, you have Google Analytics for a reason: To track user behavior. Why now pile another tool into the mix?

Tracking Banner Clicks and Impressions with Google Analytics
With some creative tinkering and leveraging Event Tracking, I am proud to share with you a great way to track banner ads for your site. Not only can you get the number of clicks (which you could already get), I have found a way for you to also calculate the number of impressions of a banner. Also with the beauty of events, you can assign a value, so you can charge a cost per impressions or a cost per click and easily create an easy way to charge your customer. Even better with Event tracking you can create goals, custom reports, filter to a profile and even more.

Below is the code that does all the magic

What does the code do?
The first bit of the code, you want to replace “http://localhost/someurl” with the link you want users to visit. Then we hit the event tracking portion which looks like this

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Banner', 'Click', 'BANNERNAME',1.00,true]);

As you recall from an earlier article, an event is composed of few bits of information:

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent' ('category', 'action', 'label', 'value', 'noninteraction']);

So for us, it works as the following:

Category will be “Banner”
Action label for this is “Click”
Label should be the “Banner Name” and possbily the location of the ad (top) or size (728×90)
Value can be left blank or 0. If you like, it can also be your cost per click (CPC)
Non-Interaction, we have set as true. As we do not want this interaction to interfere with the bounce rate. As Google notes.

The next bit of code tracks the impression, by sending an event when a fake transparent gif on load. The code looks as follows

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Banner', 'Impression', 'BANNERNAME',2.00,true])

So for us, it will almost be same as the set up for clicks:

Category will be “Banner” like before
Action label for this is “Impression”
Label should be the same “Banner Name” as before, as well as possbily the location of the ad (top) or size (728×90)
Value can be left blank or 0. If you like, it can also be your cost per cost per 1000 (CPM)
Non-Interaction, we have set as true.

Once done it will provide you a lovely report in Google Analytics like below:

Now you can create a custom report, goals, email reports, or even a profile filtered just for ads.You can even get more creative with array and rotating banner, and get totally rocking with tracking banner ads and impressions. To help your creative juices, I have come up with a script that does just that. You can get it for free right here.

A couple of final words
While I don’t think it should be an issue for most site, for high traffic site I recommend you read Google Analytics Implementation Considerations about events. In short, Google Analytics records, the first 10 event hits in a session sent to Google Analytics are tracked immediately. Thereafter tracking is rate limited, so it can only record one event hit per second. As the number of events in a session approaches the collection limit, additional events might not be tracked. For this reason, I also recommend you check out my implementation for this solution in Piwik. With Piwik, you can use their PHP API to create a lovely report including CTR and customize it to your needs. I also have one favor to ask, if you found this solution helpful or if you appreciate it, please don’t be shy to share this article with your friends. It’s wonderful readers like you that make sharing these solutions worthwhile.

Tracking Clicks and Impressions In Google Analytics is a post from: StatStory

Change Language of Piwik Opt-Out Iframe

Adrian Speyer — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 03:10:34 +0000

Protecting User Privacy
On your website, you can add an easy way for your visitors to “opt-out” of being tracked by your Piwik install. By default, all of your website visitors are tracked. With Piwik iframe, you get some simple code to add to your privacy page, to let users opt out. When finished it will look like this:

To find the code go to Settings > Privacy.If a user opts-out by clicking on the checkbox in Privacy iFrame, Piwik will set a new cookie called: “piwik_ignore”. Now with the cookie set, this user will not be tracked.

Opt-Out in Your Language
If you need to change the language of the iframe for optout for users, all you need to do is change the language. For example below if the code for English:

Just change “en” to “fr” as below

This comes in handy if you have a bilingual site and want people to opt out in their language, but keep your backend Piwik install in one of your choice.

Change Language of Piwik Opt-Out Iframe is a post from: StatStory

How To Avoid Bots When Using Image Tracking in Piwik Analytics

Adrian Speyer — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 20:33:27 +0000

Javascript Free Tracking

There are a couple of ways to track your visitors, without javascript, for example using the Piwik PHP API. But sometimes, you just need a quick fix or a simple solution. In case you were not aware, by default the standard Tracking Tag for Piwik uses Javascript. This means, Piwik will only track visitors with Javascript enabled in their web browser. If you happen to be in a niche, where lots of users have noscript enabled, you will lose a percentage of your visitors. Out of the box Piwik offers a way to track users with Javascript disabled. The code looks like below.

With this code, you will get only basic information of a hit to your website. You will not get custom variables, you will not get technical information about the user (i.e. Browser, Screen Size ect). And you will also face a bigger issue…

Rise of the Bots
Bots. Yes, those lovely creatures. Well some are not bad, such as Google or Bing who crawl our site and help with getting you traffic. Nevertheless, they can also cause your trouble, by triggering your image tracker and in a really bad case cause server slowdown.

Solution
Thankfully there is a simple solution, you can modify the code. All you need to do is replace the standard image tracking code with the below:

All you need to do is change the url and the siteid to the appropriate information. After that, this code will start tracking only when a user has noscript enabled and their user agent does not meet one of the patterns listed (i.e bot). It will also create a custom variable in slot 5 with information that the visit was a Javascript disabled/non-bot visit. If there are things you want to add or delete to the image tracking, you can read all the options at the Piwik wesbite and learn more about customizing the image tracker.

How To Avoid Bots When Using Image Tracking in Piwik Analytics is a post from: StatStory

Debugging Google Analytics

Adrian Speyer — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 16:03:57 +0000

The Art of Debugging
Depending on your view, debugging Google Analytics can be fun, interesting or frustrating. One thing we can agree on, is that it can be time consuming. Imagine, you just spent hours tagging a site with custom code/events/custom variables and then you go to your Google Analytics and you have no data! ACK…What can you do? Welcome to the art of debugging Google Analytics.

Basic Steps
One of things that can happen, with many CMS’s such as WordPress is Plugins, like SuperCache, will have a cache of the page, and your code while uploaded, is not actually live. Make sure you have cleared your cache of your site. While at it, I would also clear your browser cache. Personally one of my favourite tools for debugging is Google Chrome Incognito mode. When you use it, you get a new session.

Another important step would be to make sure you check you do not have Adblock, Noscript or Google Analytics Plugin enabled. Sometimes, when I am working on a site, I will enable this to not count my visits. When debugging you want to make sure this is off.

The final of the basic steps is to use Google Analytics Real-Time. With this tool you can see if your visits are even being seen instantly. Remember, it can still take time for your visits to show in the reporting tabs, but if Google Analytics sees your visits in realtime, all is not lost. Now the issue could be a custom variable or an event code is not firing properly. If after some time (like 2 hours) you no do see data, make sure you refresh your report. Google Analytics themselves added a cache feature which might be the cause of your issues. You will see the option to refresh you report at the bottom of report pages in the right bottom corner.

If all of the above does work, collect $200 and pass go. Otherwise let’s more to debugging tools.

Debugging Tools

The most important (and almost only) tool you will need to troubleshoot your Google Analytics install is Google Analytics Debugger Chrome Extension. When installed, this tool will print out the information sent by Google Analytics to Google from the code on your site. Once you install the plugin, make sure you have all other plugins blocking Google Analytics off, or use an Icognitio tab, and click the Google Analytics Icon:

To see the information open your Javascript Console in Google Chome (CTRL+SHIFT+J), and you will get all get messages, including any errors and warnings, as well as a detailed breakdown of each tracking beacon sent to Google Analytics. Below is an example of output on this site:

This will tell you right away if you event has fired. If the data is not even being sent to Google, then you can see where in the code the issue lies. Maybe Events are tracking, but Custom Variables are not. Maybe some custom variables are showing and some are not. Honestly, the Chrome Extension will save you hours of work very quickly. I should note, it works only on the ga.js tracker, so if you have moved to Universal Analytics, you will need to use Firebug. Also if you do not want to use Chrome, here are some alternatives suggested by Google, but to honest, use the Chrome extension. You won’t regret it.

Remain Calm
Sometimes it becomes hard to figure out the issue with your Google Analytics, but there has never been an issue that Real-Time Google Analytics and the Google Chrome Extension has not been able to help me solve. All you need is some patience and to remain clam. Eventually you will find the issue and be able to continue measuring your visitors on your website. Good Luck!

Debugging Google Analytics is a post from: StatStory

An Extra Data Point in Piwik Custom Variables

Adrian Speyer — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 02:58:23 +0000

Sometimes when you are working with Piwik Custom Variables, you need an extra slot for data. Below is some quick code to add an extra value to your custom variables:

{..}
piwikTracker.setCustomVariable (1, "Category","Data1 = $variable1"+ "| Data2 = $Variable2", "page");
{..}

In this scenario, $variable1 and $variable2 are whatever you want. It could be a variable for a topic and a landing page. It could be country and language. It can be any two data points you want associated.

So in the end full code will look like this

Output will look like this:

An Extra Data Point in Piwik Custom Variables is a post from: StatStory

How Many Users Block Your Ads? Find Out!

Adrian Speyer — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:01:03 +0000

Your Visitors Block Ads, But How Many?
Have you ever been curious to know how many people are blocking ads on your site? I had try to measure this in the past, but today I have a much more elegant solution.

Why Bother Tracking If People Don’t See Ads?
One of the reasons I wanted to know how much adblocking was occurring is to make the determination if serving ads was even worthwhile. Sure if you have Adsense, you get a feel for the revenue, but do you know how many extra eyeballs never even see the ads? Maybe 90% of your users block ads? Maybe you need to get creative in your advertising? Maybe you should remove ads altogether if you need a source of revenue?

Some Caveats About Ad Block Tracking
If a user is intent on not being tracked, this solution will not work. In other words, if they are using no script or blocking trackers all together, they will not be counted. There are work-arounds for this, but there is a whole new set of problems with tracking noscript referrers. If you are not aware, bots do not read javascript so your log/analytics could get swamped by hits from bots, crawlers and other beings that may or may not be real. Nevertheless, taking this into account and having an adblock number can still give you some interesting insights about your visitors.

Choose your solution
No matter your analytics solution, either Google Analytics or Piwik Analytics, below is how you would find out if users are blocking ads.

First Step: jQuery
Please make sure you have your Google or Piwik tracking installed and working. You will also need the jQuery Library on your site. The easiest way
to add this is use the Google hosted jQuery Library. Just add this code to your site:

Second Step: Your Ads
The next step is to mark up your Ads div. If you don’t want to mark up the div, or are not sure how to, just add the below to anywhere on the page.

Third Step: Tracking – Google Analytics

For Google Analytics you can do the tracking as an event or a custom variable. Just make sure the div is the same as denoted in this portion of the code: if ($(".adsense"). If you use our default implementation or your div name is “adsense” you are fine.

Custom Variable Code

/* Adblock Check */ 
$(document).ready(checkAds());

function checkAds() {
        if ($(".adsense").height() == "0") {
        document.write("

Personally I would use the custom variable option. The benefit of using custom variables is you can easily use it to see behavioural differences of those that block ads vs. those who do not. Only do this if you have the slots in Google Analytics. If you were not aware, the free version of Google Analytics limits you to 5 custom variable slots per session. To account for this, I have set the code to take slot 5. If you need all 5 custom variable slots, use the event tracking. Don’t cry if you have to use the events code. You can still see how Adblock visits affect your traffic by using Advanced Segements. You can see here for more details on how to use Advanced Segments and Events.

Sometimes, when you are using custom variables, it’s hard to place it within the core Google Tracking Code. If your adblocking check must happen later in the page, after the initial call to _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);, there are two solutions: One is to use a virtual pageview, which you would filter out of the account (i.e. _gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/fakepage]); ). The reason you would do this is to reinstantiate the tracker, by causing a tracking GIF request. This in turn will help to deliver the custom variable to your Google Analytics. The other, solution to refire the tracking GIF request is to call an event after you set the custom variable. Below is the sample code to do that.

Calling an event after the custom variable is set is also a preferred method noted by Google in their Custom Variable documentation.

Third Step: Tracking – Piwik Analytics
For Piwik Analytics the tracking is done as a custom variable. Just make sure the div is the same as denoted in this portion of the code: if ($(".adsense"). If you use our default implementation or your div name is “adsense” you are fine. Like Google Analytics, Piwik has 5 slots per scope. For this reason, I have selected index 5, to allow you for 4 more indexes.

Place the below code INBETWEEN var piwikTracker = Piwik.getTracker(pkBaseURL + "piwik.php", 1); and piwikTracker.trackPageView(); in your Piwik Tracking Code

 {...}
$(document).ready(checkAds());

function checkAds() {
        if ($(".adsense").height() == "0") {
       document.write("

Once you are done you will be able to get some fun data like below:

Piwik

Google

There you go– now find out how many users actually see you ads and how each type behaves on your site.

How Many Users Block Your Ads? Find Out! is a post from: StatStory

Tracking Events in Google Analytics

Adrian Speyer — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 01:33:06 +0000

Basics of an event tracking
Event tracking is one of the amazing flexible parts of Google Analytics. With Event Tracking, you can get information on the actions your users make on your site. Once you have the standard tracking for Google Analytics installed, you can use events on your page. An event call consists of a push of data to Google Analytics, with the following parameters: category, action, label (optional), value (optional) and non-interaction parameter (optional).

It will look like the below:

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','category', 'action', 'label', 'value', 'noninteraction']);

In this case, once the page is loaded an event will be fired off to Google Analytics to be recorded. However, for maximum benefit, one should include a true user interaction. The most common type of interaction would be a click. In this case, the Event call would look like below:

Link Here

What happens with the above code is a click on the link, will record data to Google Analytics. Before moving on with events, let’s look at…

Anatomy of an Event
To create a successful event you need to fill some following parameters (which we listed earlier). Now let’s look at each one of them a bit closer.

category (required)
This is the name you want to give for the collection where actions you want to track will occur. An example of category could be Video’s or Datasheets.

action (required)
This is a string which is paired with each category, and most often is used to describe the user interaction with your content. An example could be play, click or download.

label (optional)
This is an optional string which can be valuable in adding a dimension to the event data. Usually I use it to differentiate content. For example, if you want to know which specific video is played or which datasheet is downloaded.

value (optional)
This is a number, which you can use to provide a numerical dimension to a user action. Normally, I leave this blank unless I have an ecommerce reason. For example if you have a form, where a user can fill in a price or quantity, you can pass this value via an event.

non-interaction (optional)
This is a crucial aspect which Google Analytics added to change how events and bounces are calculated. A bounce in Google’s definition here is a session containing only one interaction hit. By default (i.e leaving this blank) an event hit sent by _trackEvent() is considered an interaction hit, which means that it is included in bounce rate calculations. If you set the value to true, the type of event hit is not considered an interaction hit. An example would be a page with a video embedded. Setting this to true, means the video interaction will not be used in the Bounce Rate calculation –which in fact could raise your Bounce Rate and create a stricter interpretation of bounce rate. Default (blank) is false. More details on Non-interaction from Google here.

Putting it together, using an example of a pdf download, would look like below

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent' ,'PDF Datasheets', 'Download', 'WidgetB', 1.50, true]);

If I leave off value and noninteraction, the Event would look like below

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','PDF Datasheets', 'Download', 'WidgetB']);

There is tons more about Event Tracking, so if you need even more details, I recommend you check out the official Google documentation on Event Tracking

Tracking Mailto with Events
I was asked a question by one of the readers (hi Martijn) of this blog on how to track clicks on an mailto link. I wanted to get a bit more creative and have some fun with request. Below are the steps and the code to make this happen.

Setup with jQuery, Tracking Code and HTML
The first step is to include the jQuery Library. If you are unsure if your page/website has it included just, click view source and look for the word “jquery” or “jquery.min.js”. If you do not have it, it’s easy to add. Google actually hosts a version of jQuery, so you can include it easily with the below markup in the of your page.

Next you want to place your Google Analytics tracking, which to be in the appropriate place is just before .You will then need an Email link to track. Here is the basic HTML for that:

This is an email link:Send Mail

Please note if your subject spaces, replace them with %20 to ensure that it would be rendered properly.

Time for some magic…
Up to now, nothing will be tracked. Below is the code that makes mailto tracking work and sends the event to Google Analytics.

The above code will record the the email click and in this case, the category is email, the action is send, the label will be youremail@yourdomain.com?Subject=Test

If you want only the page that the user emailed from, maybe for example, if your link test was “share this page”, the code you will need would look like something below:

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'email', 'shared', location.href,,true]);

If you want to have the email subject and the page location, below is how you would combine the two:

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'email', 'send', this.href.replace(/^mailto:/i,'') + ' /Page = ' + location.href,,true]);

Ok, so now let’s put it all together:






This is an email link:Send Mail

This way you can decide which you want. Just remove the “//” before the _gaq.push for the one that works best for you.

That’s all folks. Now go have some fun with events.

Side note for my Piwik Friends
Event tracking equivalent for Piwik is Custom Variables. You can learn about Custom Variables for Piwik here. I also have a post on doing mailto click tracking for Piwik here.

Tracking Events in Google Analytics is a post from: StatStory

Tracking Mail-To Clicks with Piwik Analytics

Adrian Speyer — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:54:29 +0000

Custom Variables to Record Actions
Custom Variables as we have learnt are very flexible. I wanted to share another cool way you could use events: to track an action taken on your website. In this case, we are going to learn below how to use Custom Variables to track clicks for a Mailto link. As this was disabled, I figured I would add here a way to get the tracking Mailto automatically.

Using jQuery
The first step to tracking a Mailto action is to include the jQuery Library. If you are unsure if your page/website has it included, just click view source and look for the word “jquery.js” or “jquery.min.js” . If you do not have it, it’s easy to add. Google actually hosts a version of jQuery, so you can include it easily with the below markup in the of your page.

Ensure You have Piwik Tracking
It goes without saying oyu need Piwik installed, and you want to ensure you have placed your Piwik Analytics tracking code on your site. It should be placed just before tag on your site.

Now for the HTML

You need to have a mailto link to track. Here is the basic HTML for an email link

This is an email link:Send Mail

Please note if your subject spaces, replace them with %20 to ensure that it would be rendered properly.

Now comes the magic that makes this work and sends the custom variable to your Piwik Analytics install:

The above code will record the page from which the Mailto link was clicked. If you want the email subject, the code would look like below:

{...}
piwikTracker.setCustomVariable(1, "Share By Email", this.href.replace(/^mailto:/i, ''), "page");  piwikTracker.trackPageView();
{...}

If you want to have the email subject and the page location, below is how you would combine the two:

{...}
piwikTracker.setCustomVariable(1, "Share By Email",  'Email='+this.href.replace(/^mailto:/i,'') + ' /Page = ' +  location.href, "page");  piwikTracker.trackPageView();
{...}

To get the above the final code would look like this:

So there you have it. Now you have an easy way to track your mailto links in Piwik Analytics!

Tracking Mail-To Clicks with Piwik Analytics is a post from: StatStory