Event Tracking Naming Strategy

A good or bad naming convention for event tracking can mean the difference between insight and noise. But if every client's needs are different how do you organize your data so it makes sense? Turns out, that problem has already been solved in a different context: english grammar.

Google Analytics events have four parameters:

• A category
• An action
• A label, and
• A value.

Those four parameters are used to pivot and drill into your data so it's important to have a scalable naming strategy. Without a good strategy you'll end up with ambiguity and less effective insight.

I think an organized naming strategy should:

• Be easy to understand at a glance
• Allow drilling down and grouping data to be intuitive and flexible
• And shouldn't leave a lot of room for ambiguity

Introducing ...

The English Grammar Strategy:

The strategy uses English grammar and applies it as a naming convention.

• It reads like english sentences so it's easy to understand
• It applies to a wide range of clients
• It allows you to drill down or group with a lot of flexibility
• It scales for large sites with lots of stuff to track

Let's see how it works through an example ...

CATEGORIES: Plural nouns

Use plural nouns that describe what data is being looked at.

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For example, Videos, Interactions, PDFs, MP3s are good categories. I'm careful not to make them too specific. Whitepapers and eBooks may be too specific because you may have other types of PDFs on the site. What if the client wanted to know downloads for all PDFs not just the white papers? This strategy allows me to group data for those kinds of questions.

Let's put this into practice: Let's say we have a few white papers and eBooks in PDF format, and a few videos you can watch or download. My categories would look like this:

• Category: "PDFs"
• Category: "Videos"

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Downloaded, Watched, Interacted with, and Logged in with. This makes a lot most sense when you're drilling down you're working with conversions for different kinds of media. If you only have one action, like downloads, thats OK. At least you're leaving room for yourself later when you need to start measuring watching videos.

In practice, let's say our example users have the ability to view online, download, or bookmark the white papers, eBooks, and videos. My actions would be:

• Action: "Downloaded"
• Action: "Viewed online"
• Action: "Bookmarked"

• Category: "PDFs", Action: "Downloaded"
• Category: "PDFs", Action: "Viewed online"
• Category: "PDFs", Action: "Bookmarked"
• Category: "Videos", Action: "Downloaded"
• Category: "Videos", Action: "Viewed online"

Some example labels: Free eBook sampler, Full paid eBook, Client Case Study, Effective Strategies 2013 White Paper, Introduction Video, Tutorial Video #1.

They are all singular and it is what receives the action. Be careful. The label must be totally unique for the strategy to work.

In practice, let's say we have a Free eBook Sampler, a 2013 whitepaper, a short intro video, and a full Tutorial video.  My labels would look like:

• Label: "Free eBook Sampler"
• Label: "2013 Whitepaper"
• Label: "Intro Video"
• Label: "Tutorial Video"