Actions and events tracking

There are four ways of tracking actions and action targets on the site.

Actions could be sometimes referred to as "events" in other statistical software. Tracker uses the term "actions" everywhere in the interface, so if you are looking for events — actions is what you need. 

Also, in Tracker a sale is not an event or an action — it's tracked separately using special tracking code. You can read more about sales tracking in a separate section of the manual.

1. Tracking an action by using a special tracking code.

You can just place a special code on the page, and an action will be tracked whenever this page is opened.

2. An action can be associated with an URL on the site. Such action is tracked using a standard visitors tracking code.

When creating a new action, you should indicate what URL will be associated with it: it can be just a page URL (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/actionpage.html), or a certain URL pattern (e.g.  http://www.yoursite.com/*/actionpage.html).

The place where Tracker takes the action target from is also specified in the URL. For example, you can specify an URL http://www.yoursite.com/search.php?query={a}, and then the actual 'query' parameter value will be recorded as an action target.

3. Tracking action via redirect.

When creating this type of action, you should specify the site and the page to be associated with the action. This is necessary for Tracker, because any event on the site (whether it is an action, a sale, an ad click or a split test entry point) is always associated with a particular page URL. In the visitors paths and in the actions log reports you will be seeing the specified page as if the action has actually taken place on it.

You can specify the target URL where Tracker should redirect the visitor to after logging an action. Redirect implies that you are giving to the visitor a special tracking link which leads to Tracker, and not to your site.  After the visitor will open the tracking URL, Tracker will redirect him/her to the target URL you have indicated.

(As soon as you fill in the form and save the action, Tracker will inform you what link should be given to visitors). In order to avoid confusion, let us once again define the notions:

1. There is an URL you give to visitors (for example, in order to register file downloading). This URL leads to Tracker, and we will call it Action URL.
2. And there is a target URL where Tracker should redirect the visitor (for example, a particular file address). Let us call it Redirection URL.

You may use dynamic substitution of redirection URLs. Just add the parameter &rurl=redirection_url to the given action URL. If "&rurl" parameter is present in the tracking URL then Tracker will send the visitor to the URL specified in this parameter.

In the example with file downloading you could make the following links on your site: http://tracker.yoursite.com/track/event.html?eid=1&rurl=http://yoursite.com/file.zip . Tracker will register a file downloading action and redirect the visitor to http://yoursite.com/file.zip.

In addition, with such a scheme you can track action targets. Add the parameter &itm=  to the action URL, and all the value of this parameter will be recorded as an action target.

For example: http://tracker/track/event.html?eid=1&itm=Very_important_file&rurl=http://yoursite/file.zip