Takes 5 mins
We’re building websites with the prospect to provide essential information to visitors in the form of content i.e. videos, facts, statics, and many more, etc with the intention of converting that visitor either to buy something from the website or to subscribe to the newsletter.
Sometimes what happens is that we aren’t aware of the content consumption capacity of visitors. Regardless we provide all the avail content to visitors on a single page then It becomes too long a page with 3 -4 scrolls.
Now here the problem arises either how to get information about visitor’s content engagement or how visitors engage with the page that has 2 -3 scroll-long content. This analysis is mandatory to get an insight into the content engagement of visitors or how visitors look at the content in the 2nd or 3rd fold of the page.
With the help of scroll tracking implementation for google analytics, based on that analysis website owners can re-organize content placement to increase content engagement of the website.
Scroll Tracking Implementation for Google Analytics
I have developed a jquery based script that would help to identify % page viewed, % page scroll, and the page fold user is in.
Instructions to use:
- Please download scrolltracking.js
- Include the code block as shown below.
<!-- your default google analytics tracking code --> <script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXX-X']); //replace your profile id _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); </script> <!-- include the jquery library reference --> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></script> <!-- include scrollscript.js reference --> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="scrolltracking.js" ></script>
See it in action:
- Scroll tracking as Event Category
- pv|ps|pf as Event Action
- Event Values
Scrolltracking.js would attach a function to scroll changes on the document. So whenever the user scrolls down it’ll collect the following values as “pv|ps|pf” with a non-interactive flag.
- pv – maximum % page viewed by the user.
- ps – maximum % page scrolled by user.
- pf – maximum page fold user viewed.
Here all the values measured and tracked in GA would be the maximum value of %page viewed, %page scrolled and page fold user was in. So we can identify how much content is viewed by users on a given page. If a user lands to page and goes to another page without scrolling. It’ll track default values “X|0|1” in GA where “X” is % page viewed (user viewed some portion) and 0% page scroll and 1 as page fold.
Note:
- This script works with jQuery versions greater than 1.3.2 and tested with Chrome, firefox, internet explorer 8
- You can exclude information if you don’t want to track any of the values pv (% page viewed), ps (% page scrolled), or pf (page fold) – You’ll need to update the script.
8 Comments. Leave new
Nice idea Ravi – can you explain how your code works please?
Brian,
Thanks for your comment. The purpose of this scroll script was to understand the content consumption at a one more level of detail. The script fires event calls as users increase content consumption which is scroll down. There are three main values that we are tracking. It is not necessary to track all three, but since we wanted to cover all 3 concept, we have kept 3 different ways to understand scroll.
First way is to understand % of page viewed which as its name suggest is an indicator of proportion of page viewed. When you break down this event with page path and unique pages views as metric & draw a frequency plot one gets sense of how many unique people are consuming content to different extent. When I get more time I can paste chart within the blog post.
The second measure is % page scroll , is an derivative of % page viewed represented in percentage incremental scroll that occurs from the basic height of the fold.
Third measure, is proportion of fold also represents scroll in terms of # of folds, we choose this since UX designers (at least our internal UX) likes to think of page’s content consumption in terms of folds 🙂
Usecase/example:
User is viewing a page with 1200 px in height in the browser which has visible area of 300px:
Now 1st case user has not scrolled anything and viewing the page so:
%PageViewed would be => 300 (visible client height or viewed page height) / 1200 (total document height) * 100 = 25%
%PageScrolled would be => 25 – (300/1200)*100 = 0% (as user has not scrolled anything)
PageFold would be => 300/300 = 1 (User is in 1st page fold)
Now 2nd case user scrolls some portion i .e. 100 px on the page so updated values:
%PageViewed would be => (300 + 100 (scrolled amount from top)) /1200 * 100 = 33.34%
%PageScolled would be => 33.34% – 25% = 8.34%
PageFold would be => 400/300 = 1.34
Now 3rd case user scrolls down through bottom of the page so updated values:
%PageViewed would be => 300 + 900 /1200 * 100 = 100%
%PageScrolled would be => 100% – 25% = 75%
PageFold would be => 1200/300 = 4
Note: Whenever user scrolls up it would not change the values, as the current %PV is lesser then variable stored %PV so it won’t fire the tracking call.
I like the look of this script. I am going to test it out on one of our sites. It might be worth adding an optional trackPageView call so visitors who view a predetermined % of the page are not considered bounces.
Thanks Brad.
All eventTracking calls would be fired with “non_interaction” flag set with “true”, which will not impact bounce rate. 🙂
Hello,
I get a javascript error when i start to scroll:Erreur : too much recursion
Fichier Source : http://www.atelierdecocadeau.com/js/scrolltracking.js
Ligne : 34Can you help?I inserted your script at the very end of my tag, as you can see in the source code.Thanks!
Hi Jerome, I’ll surely help you. Can you please try inserting script just before the tag?
Hi Jerome,
Can you comment line 54 to 57 in scroll tracking script which calls the updateresult() function after 3 second. If gaq tracker is not available. It seems html5 code structure has problem with it.
Can you please update and let me know that works for you?
Regards,
Suketu Parikh
Nice script, thanks for sharing and I will sure use on my blog