Using Google Analytics™ in Certain

This document will guide you through setting up Google Analytics in Certain.

If you want to track page hits to your registration forms and event websites, you can use Google Analytics. Certain provides seamless integration with Google Analytics for this purpose.

Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about visits to a
website. You can track site activities such as site visits, page views, pages per visit, average time on site, referring URLs, etc. To do this, you obtain a Google Analytics Tracking ID from Google and add it to Certain. Certain uses it in the HTML of all the attendee-facing pages you wish to track in Certain.

For details of the cookies added to Certain forms and websites when using Google Analytics, see the
separate guide to “Cookies in Certain”.

(Note: Certain uses Google Analytics internally for some aspects of the Certain platform. An administrator
can disable this; see Certain Google Analytics” in your Account)

Contents

1. Set Up a Google Analytics Website Profile
   • Website Profile
   • Tracking ID
2. Configure your Event for Google Analytics
3. Add a Tracking ID to an Event Website
4. Add a Tracking ID to an Event Registration Form
   • Enable page-specific, page-level URLs
5. Add a Tracking ID to a Speaker Portal
6. “Certain Google Analytics” in your Account

Set Up a Google Analytics Website Profile

To sign up for a Google Analytics account, go to www.google.com/analytics, and follow the instructions to
sign up for an Analytics account.

Website Profile

When you sign up for a Google Analytics account, you are also prompted to set up your first Website
Profile. We recommend that you set up one Website Profile per Certain event. This will enable you to
track site traffic for each of your events separately. Google will provide a separate Tracking ID for each
registered Website Profile; see below.

When you are prompted to enter the URL for the Website Profile, enter the domain name portion of the URL you use to access Certain. For example, if you are a Standard edition customer, the URL would be “www.certain.com”. If you are an Enterprise edition customer, you would use the first part of the URL that you access Certain with, such as “registration.example.com”.

Tracking ID

When the Tracking Instructions page is displayed, copy the Tracking ID, which is in the format “UA-12345678‐1”, as illustrated below. You will later paste this Tracking ID into Certain.

Note: Do not copy the long “tracking code”, i.e. the snippet of JavaScript code consisting of several lines beginning “<script>” and ending "</script>".

Copy just the short Tracking ID, such as “UA-12345678‐1”.

Certain will dynamically generate the relevant code to use that Tracking ID in your Certain registration forms and websites.

Configure your Event for Google Analytics

To use Google Analytics for an event, follow these instructions:

1. In the event, go to Plan > Configure > Options.

2. In the Global Settings section, enter (or paste) the Tracking ID into the Event-level default Google Analytics Tracking ID field.

3. Click Save to save your settings

Add a Tracking ID to an Event Website

If you have entered a Google Analytics Tracking ID at the event level, as described above (see Configure your Event for Google Analytics), any event websites will automatically inherit that Tracking ID.

In some cases, you may wish to track traffic for an event website only, and not for registration forms. In such cases, you can enter a different Tracking ID at the website level. Note that a Tracking ID entered for the website will override the ID (if any was entered) at the event level.

To use Google Analytics with a separate Tracking ID for an event website, follow these steps:

1. In the event, go to the Promote > Websites > Setup page for that website.

2. In the Website Setup section, enter (or paste) the Tracking ID into the Google Analytics Tracking
ID field:

Add a Tracking ID to an Event Registration Form

If you have entered a Google Analytics Tracking ID at the event level, as described above (see Configure your Event for Google Analytics), all registration forms will automatically include the code to use that Tracking ID.

You may sometimes wish to track traffic separately for each registration form, which you can do using
separate Google Analytics Tracking IDs. This is typically done in the case of “series” type events in Certain
– where a series of recurring events are set up as a single event, with a separate registration form for each
occurrence or meeting.

Note that a Tracking ID entered for the form will override the event-level Tracking ID (if one was
entered).

To set up Google Analytics for an individual registration form, follow these steps:

1. In the event, go to Plan > Forms > Setup for that form.

2. In the Setup Information section, enter (or paste) the Tracking ID into the Google Analytics
Tracking ID field:

3. Click Save to save your changes.

Enable page-specific, page-level URLs

By default, hits to registration form pages are not tracked at the individual level. That means you can’t track the individual pages in a single registration form; once a registrant has proceeded beyond the entry page, the form URL is the same for all the following pages.

You can change this by setting labels to for page-specific, page-level URLs. To do that, follow these steps:

1. In the event, go to Plan > Forms > Setup for that form.

2. In the Page & URL Titles section, select Enable page-specific, page-level URL?

3. A list of text fields is displayed, numbered from 1 to n, where n is the number of pages you have
included in the form’s Online Form Sequence.

4. In each field, you can enter an optional text label to be added (preceded by #) to the URL for that
page.

   Caution: The examples you see, such as “Entry” or “Registrant Details” are just placeholders, with
   suggested text. To use this feature you must enter your own text.

This enables each page of your form to have its own unique URL, so that form progress can be tracked via embedded web tracking codes.

For example:     

If you set the label for page 1 to "ENTRY", then the URL for the first page would (depending on your
domain) be something like:

https:yourdomain/profile/form/index.cfm#PKformID=0x12345678all#ENTRY

You could then use that page-unique URL in your web analytics.

(Technical note: This was introduced in Certain 5.6. Without these labels, the URLs for each page seem identical; in the example above, https:yourdomain/profile/form/index.cfm#PKformID=0x12345678.)

Add a Tracking ID to a Speaker Portal

If you are using the Speaker and Session Management module in an event, then its Speaker Portal can have a Google Analytics Tracking ID.

In the event, go to Manage > Speakers and Sessions > Speaker Portal and click Settings. That
configuration page includes a Google Analytics Tracking ID field.

If you have entered a Tracking ID at the event level, as described above (see Configure your Event for Google Analytics), then the Speaker Portal automatically inherits that Tracking ID. You can choose to specify a separate Tracking ID for the Speaker Portal. This enables you to track visits to Speaker Portal pages separately from visits to event registration website pages.

If you do not enter a separate Tracking ID here, visits to speaker portal pages will be tracked using the event-level code, if there is one.

If you do enter a tracking code here, then when you are logged into Google Analytics, you can go to Content > Event > Overview to see the visit statistics for each Speaker Portal page separately: My Information, My Tasks, My Sessions, etc.

“Certain Google Analytics” in your Account

Certain uses some Google analytics in the platform itself.

An Administrator can choose to disable this for an account. To do so, they would go to the Account Settings > Implementation > Security page and clear the Certain Google Analytics check box.