Event Tracking value

I am a big fan of Google Analytics' event tracking feature and I think all web analytics programs should have that capability. There is one feature that would make event tracking even more useful in my opinion.

In addition to Category, Action and Label, you can send an event value, but this is supposed to be a positive integer. It would be more powerful if event value could be used also for cost data, i.e. dollars and cents, or a number with two decimals.

One of the strengths of event tracking is the ability to integrate other data sources, so wouldn't it be great to see either the cost or value of such external data sources? We could also assign a dollar value to outbound links, downloads or referral traffic coming to our site, and compare to e-commerce revenue.

As it stands now I have to multiply the cost by 100 before sending the event in order to turn cost into an integer, but then I am comparing quite literally dollars and cents.

Comments

[Marc Flood]

This is great stuff. What would be great is if someone could develop an auto sort tool that prioritizes a Yahoo Store (or other cart) section page based on events.

[Michael Whitaker]

That's a great suggestion, Marc, and I think that this is where things are going. Dynamic optimization based on web analytics data. With the recent addition of API access to web analytics tools such sorting tools could access the data and display elements on your site based for example on conversion data. But before we get there I suggest you take a look at this post http://monitus.blogs.com/yahoo_store/2009/09/arrange-items-using-event-tracking-analytics-data.html and rearrange the items on your section pages and show the best ones in order, rather than perhaps in alphabetical order.

Best,
Michael