David Vallejo
ANALYTICS

Universal Analytics Plugin Online Hackathon - Dual tracking

David Vallejo •
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I've been thinking about doing a Google Analytics related hackaton for a long time. Some months ago, I started to take a look about how Universal Analytics Plugins work and I decided that coding a plugin to all the data to a secondary property using just a plugin would be a real nice example.

For years now, I've sharing a lot of code that I've worked on, some tracking ideas too, but still I don't consider myself a developer, if i must say it, I really think that I really suck at programming even if I can do some stuff myself.

So here I am trying to organize an online Universal Analytics Hackaton. I hope this can turn on a great change to learn from other people, and understand how plugins work!!!

Of course you may be asking what's a "Hackathon" (don't be shy about asking). Let's quote the Wikipedia:

A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest or codefest) is an event in which computer programmers and others involved in software development and hardware development, including graphic designers, interface designers and project managers, collaborate intensively on software projects. Occasionally, there is a hardware component as well. Hackathons typically last between a day and a week. Some hackathons are intended simply for educational or social purposes, although in many cases the goal is to create usable software. Hackathons tend to have a specific focus, which can include the programming language used, the operating system, an application, an API, or the subject and the demographic group of the programmers. In other cases, there is no restriction on the type of software being created.

GitHub Repository:

https://github.com/thyngster/universal-analytics-dual-tracking-plugin

For now I've pushed to the repository  with some "core" code, that "already" works.

How to load the plugin:

ga('create', 'UA-286304-123', 'auto');
ga('require', 'dualtracking', 'http://www.yourdomain.com/js/dualtracking.js', {
    property: 'UA-123123123213-11',
    debug: true,
    transport: 'image'
});
ga('dualtracking:doDualTracking');
ga('send', 'pageview');

Some stuff you need to take in mind when loading a plugin in Google Analytics:

  • The plugin needs to be hosted within your domain
  • It needs to be "initialized" AFTER the "create" method call and BEFORE the "pageview" method.
  • If for some reason the plugin crashes it may affect your data collection, please don't use this in production before it has been fully tested.

Still it needs to be improved, for example:

  1. We don't want to use global variables
  2. Payload size check, and based on the results send a POST or GET request
  3. Add XHR transport method
  4. Code cleanup/Best practises
  5. Plugin option to send a local copy for the hits
  6. Better debug messages
  7. Name convention improvement
  8. Any other idea?

Anyone is welcome to push code, add ideas, give testing feedback, through the Github repository or the comments on this blog post.