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stevem

I have developed a new site in Joomla and want to use google analytics.

I intend to use some of the following into the URL that enters our site - Campaign Source (utm_source) Campaign Medium (utm_medium) Campaign Name (utm_campaign).

My question is this.

How can I access that data within Joomla. If we have a lead capture form I would like to place the contents of Campaign Source (utm_source) in a field whose label would be "Where did you here about us"

This means that we will know who referred a particular lead. I am presuming that the google analytic information must be available during the session.

Any help would be of gratefully received.

tess

Hi stevem,

I honestly don't know off-hand how to best capture the campaign url into a form on the site, since I personally only use Google Analytics to get a more overall view.

That said, you can try using a hidden field in your form and capture the HTTP referrer but this might not work 100% of the time. One blog post that talks about this is Capture user IP, location and referring URL | iamseo.org

Best bet is for you to contact the developers of the form you're using and ask if they can recommend (or implement) a good way of doing this. Which form are you using?

I'm not sure the above is of much help, but hopefully it will lead you closer to a solution?

Cheers,
Tess

matt

I agree with Tess.

You may want to try and tackle it another way as well. If you only have 1-2-3-4-5 (whatever) people and you wish to figure out who generated the lead, give them all a custom landing page with the form in it. Then use Google funnels to fully track it.
This would obviously only work well in a small workforce environment and not scale well.

stevem

Hi Tess and Matt

Thanks for your responses.

Any solution needs to be scaleable so individual landing pages are out the door.

When I did it before I used php to query the url and then made sure that whenever I linked between pages that I appended the refer ID.

It was pretty basic and did not look that great but it worked.

In the body on the html I put

<?php

if (isset ($_GET['cause']))
{
$cause = $_GET['cause'];
}

if (isset ($_GET['id']))
{
$id = $_GET['id'];
}

?>

Then when I linked I put whatever the page is called .php?cause=<?php echo $cause; ?>&id=<?php echo $id; ?>"


Now I am not a techie but it worked OK, a friend showed m ehow to do that.

The quest then is can you do that in Joomla?

It is not how i would wnt to do it but if it works I can live with it.

tess

Hi again stevem,

Hm, I still swear by Google Analytics (and it's campaign urls if needed), but I'm pretty sure you can put your code in your index.php to achieve what (I think) you want to achieve. :)

Let us know how it goes.

Cheers,
Tess

matt

To clarify, the templates index.php, not Joomla's index.php

stevem

Hi Guys

I will attempt to get this working.

I can see how I might be able to amend the index.php file in the template to get the incomming referreal id.

How would I then ensure that it is passed from page to page? as an enquiry form could be on the 5th page they look as they are browsing the site.

tess

Hi stevem,

I have to admit that tracking referralID's is out of our expertise and no matter how much I want to help you get this working unfortunately my guess is as good as yours at this stage.

That said, I can point you in a few directions that might help you get better answers. ;) Check these links out:

Joomla SEO forum: Joomla! &bull; View forum - Search Engine Optimization (Joomla! SEO)
Google Analytics forum: Is there a way to view the full referrer in a report? - Google Analytics Help
Google Analytics article: What is a goal and funnel? - Analytics Help

I'd love to hear your solution, so please let us know how it goes and if we can help you in any other way around implementation etc.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

Cheers,
Tess

stevem

Tess Matt

I have worked out the first bit by capturing the URL.

I think the CCK editor has issues showing php code so that was what through me.

So now I can capture the google analytics variables and store them.

Next question.

Am I correct in thinking that joomla is building pages upon request?

Therefore when someone for instance cicks on the contact us page it should link to

www.mysite.com/contactus which I guess is actually calling www.mysite.com/contactus/index.php.

If my logic is correct there, how can I append the variables back to the passed url so that it becomes http://www.mysite.com/contactus.inde...source=referer

Any suggestions welcome but I think I am getting there.


Thanks fo ryour help with this