Understanding the Differentiation in UI Analytics Library: Pageviews vs Other Events

[Isaac]

Sure, in simple terms, the separation between a page view and other events like clicks in Google Analytics helps businesses to analyze the data they collect in context.

Let’s illustrate this using a bookstore. Let’s say the page views are different sections in the bookstore like ‘science fiction’, ‘self-help’, ‘children’s books’ etc. Events, on the other hand, are like the different actions people can take like picking up a book to read the blurb, asking an employee for a recommendation, or buying a book.

If we lump all these together, it’s like saying, “someone did something in the bookstore”, without context. But if we have the page views separated out, we can say “someone picked up a book in the ‘self-help’ section”. This is more useful and actionable information.

That’s the essence of separating page views and other events in Google Analytics. It provides the context of where an action took place so that the analysis can be done in a better way.

Technical aspects aside, the practical aspect is that combining page views and events can lead to some confusion and potentially incorrect data interpretation, which is why it’s better to keep them separate.

[Oscar]

Page views and events in Google Analytics are fundamentally different and serve different purposes. A page view in Google Analytics signifies the loading of a webpage that the tracking code is installed on. This is an essential part of understanding users’ navigation patterns on a website, the popularity of different pages, and the overall traffic that a website receives.

Events, on the other hand, are user interactions with content that can be tracked independently from a webpage load. Events like clicking a button or logging in are actually secondary interactions that occur while a user is viewing a page. They provide more detailed insights into how users interact with the pages they visit.

Therefore, treating a page view as just another event wouldn’t offer the same level of insight. It might also lead to confusion due to the blending of fundamentally different types of interactions. The analytics.page method is necessary because it separates these two categories of data, maintaining clarity and allowing for more accurate reporting and analysis.