Event Tracking

What is Event Tracking ?

Web-Stat measures the traffic on every single page of your site as long as the page contains the Web-Stat code. This works great most of the time but there are a few limitations :

• On non-HTML documents (like music, videos, PDF, or images) there is no way to add the Web-Stat code so the loading of these files can not be tracked in a conventional manner... Web-Stat's Event Tracking allows you to overcome this limitation
  
  
• If your site is built in Flash, the same problem applies : the standard Web-Stat code can not be installed. Web-Stat's Event Tracking allows you to monitor a Flash site
  
  
• Some people have ads on their site that lead to pages outside of their control - if you sell banner ads for instance - in a case like this you might want to measure the number of clicks that each banner receives. Since you can not install the Web-Stat code on the target site to measure the page views, you need an alternate solution. Web-Stat's Event Tracking does just that
  
  

How does it work ?

In all the cases above we are trying to detect the loading of a non-HTML document, or the loading of an HTML document outside of our control. This loading is triggered by a simple event : the visitor clicking on a link in order to access the document. 'Event Tracking' is the ability to record that click, as opposed to the default behavior of Web-Stat which detects page loads. So basically we are now detecting clicks towards a target file as opposed to the actual loading of that file.

So, to give an example : if your visitor sees a link on your site that says 'Listen to My Music' and clicks on that link, Web-Stat will detect the click and show a 'page view' for the music file.

Configure Event Tracking

The configuration is quite simple. Let's take an example and assume that you want to record the loading of an MP3 music file. Right now your HTML link to that MP3 file looks like this :

<a href="/my_music.mp3">Listen to My Music</a>

To enable Event Tracking for that link, simply modify it like this :

<a href="/my_music.mp3" 
onClick="javascript:wtslog('al####','#','http','my_music','event_track');"> 
Listen to My Music</a>

For a Flash site the syntax is a bit different but it works the same way :

on (release) {
    loadMovieNum("flash_file.swf", 1);
    unloadMovieNum(2);
    getURL("javascript:wtslog('al####','#','http','flash_file','event_track');");
}

As you can see, all you need to do is add the 'OnClick' element in red inside the link that you want to track (or the 'getURL' element for a Flash site) and Web-Stat will take care of the rest. Note that there are two caveats for this to work :

1. The standard or advanced version of the Web-Stat code must be installed on the page that contains the link (for a Flash site, simply add the code to the HTML container). The simplified version of the code will not support Event Tracking
   
   
2. The 'OnClick' or 'getURL' element must reflect your account's details. Please enter your user ID and password below and we will display The 'OnClick' element for your account
   
   
   

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