Plugin to provide event tracking

[matt]

Google Analytics provides an event tracking feature, with a few custom dimensions.

Piwik has been designed so that adding event tracking would be feasible without architectural changes. An event would be a new page type (like Action, Downloads, Outlinks).

We may want to provide two dimensions

• event category
• (optional) event value (could be string or integer or float)

We could give reports like:

• count people who click on "Video - play", "Video - forward", etc.
• count how long does it take to load the page. when event value is a int/float, eg. "Loading time" is "1min". the UI would show histogram, average value, etc.
• when event value is a string: report values per category: "Video - play" has been clicked 15 times for "Movie 1", 10 times for "Movie 2".

This would be a simpler implementation than the one provided by GA.

More info:  http://blogoscoped.com/files/google-analytics-event-tracking-large.png  http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/eventTrackerGuide.html

extending tracking  http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/eventTrackerWrappers.html _trackEvent(category, action, opt_label, opt_value)

[geneellis]

Has there been any development in this area?

[matt]

geneellis, not so far.

[vipsoft]

We can avoid some duplication in piwik.js by using the existing JavaScript tracking API, i.e., .trackLink(url, linkType, customData).

[vipsoft]

Ok defer to 2.x pe email w/ matt

[matt]

Simple Events tracking is now possible in Piwik 1.5, using Custom Variables per page view feature.

This is explained in the forum post:  http://forum.piwik.org/read.php?3,76580,78086#msg-78086

If this is useful enough, maybe we could produce a Documentation page to explain this technique, and label it as "Simple Event Tracking".

[mofle]

Any updated on this?

Piwik needs real event tracking if it wants to compete with Google Analytics.

[aribao]

I agree with mofle, Piwik needs real event tracking.

Imho this should go to 2.0 milestone