Google Analytics for EPiServer with support for Universal Analytics

Google Analytics for EPiServer makes it easy to enable tracking and let editors, marketers and merchandisers access analytics data directly inside EPiServer. 

Today we’re releasing a new updated version of Google Analytics for EPiServer with several changes that let business users better understand how content performs to increase engagement and conversions. There are four major areas that have been improved, each described below.

More configuration alternatives and support for Universal Analytics

When configuring the add-on you can now choose if you want to use Classic Analytics, Universal Analytics or a custom script tag. Classic Analytics are for customers who have not yet upgraded their Google Analytics account. The Universal Analytics alternative lets you take advantage of the latest functionality in the Google Analytics platform, including better cross channel tracking, improved report capabilities, enhanced e-commerce, as well as extended tracking. The custom script tag is something that is recommended if you want to use Google TagManager and insert all your scripts and custom tracking that way, or if you want to manage everything from your own code.

Simplified developer setup and custom tracking

Google Analytics for EPiServer can be installed as a solution add-on inside Visual Studio. This means that you can safely add custom tracking through code and use it as a dependency in your projects. The new version has a simplified API and with the Universal Analytics support you have better tracking capabilities. We have also made sure to improve our documentation around how to add custom tracking to get you started faster.

Enhanced e-commerce analytics

The Universal Analytics supports enables something Google calls “Enhanced Ecommerce tracking” which is a must if you want to get an overview on how your different products and product categories performs. Since this tracking involves both interactions with the shopping cart as well as the whole checkout process it’s something that you will need to add as custom tracking. When the tracking is added, you can also expose some of this information to merchandisers inside EPiServer so they don’t need to login to Google Analytics to get important insights. See link to Steve Celius’ blog post below to get a great introduction on how to enable this on an e-commerce site.

Improved on page analytics

We’ve also made small but important improvements to the page analytics gadget that lets editors, marketers and merchandisers see analytics next to the content that they are working on. Any segment can now be used to filter the data charts and we have highlighted the data that marketers have pointed out as most important. Related to this there is also a new acquisition section to immediately see how much traffic pages drive and from where. All figures are now compared with site average, which makes it easy to understand how specific content performs.  As an example you can now see the bounce rate on a landing page for customers that are part of the winter sales campaign and compare that with site average.

Next steps

The new version is currently in beta and can only be installed as a solution add-on inside Visual Studio. We’re expecting to remove the beta label beginning 2015 and at the same time we will make the add-on available as a one-click installation as well.

Further reading

• Google Analytics Tracking and Customization - blog post by Steve Celius
• Documentation for installation, configuration and customization
• User guide (added PDF document)
• 2 important improvements for managing add-ons in EPiServer

Comments

Dec 9, 2014 02:50 PM

Great update. :)

Dag Stuan Dec 12, 2014 09:05 AM

I cant edit the gadget in edit mode due to a problem described in this post: http://world.episerver.com/forum/developer-forum/Problems-and-bugs/Thread-Container/2014/9/Google-Analytics-Gadget/ Is this a known issue?