Help Center user segmentation using Google Analytics custom dimensions

Hi Corrin! Thanks for coming back and sharing what you found out from Support. I'm going to follow up on this Tip to see if we can get it updated.

I received an update from Zendesk that this article references an old legacy code.  The following articles were provided to help modify using the new code Google supports:

• Reference - Complete Web Upgrade: ga.js / dc.js to analytics.js:

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/upgrade/reference/gajs-analyticsjs

• Adding analytics.js to Your Site:  

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/

I also need the correct code for the exact example in this article as using the one given broke our java script.  

I have a Zendesk ticket out on this as I had to remove the script due to the unwanted impact of the presence of the script causing the Submit button on the customer's request page to disappear.

We truly need to be able to measure user role in our Google Analytics so would be grateful for the functional script!  Thanks!

I want to use the exact example in this article, ie tracking based on user role.  Does anyone have a corrected script for this that doesn't break everything?

Thanks!

Hi Sandra,

Just getting back to metrics after focusing on my main responsibility as Insightly's product writer for a bit. (The Many Hats situation of life at a start-up!) Our custom dimension is available in the Site Content reports and others. And our pageview counts have normalized, so this worked for us.

I hope you worked it out.

Hi Sandra,

I guess we're on the right track. :) Ours is a User-level metric, so I believe it will be applicable across reports through segmentation. Once we've updated our code and answer a couple more questions, I'll update this comment to let you know what happens for us.

Thanks for sharing your experience, too!

Hi Tony,

I just got the same reply in the Google Analytics user forum :) I updated the code in my post above as well.

I changed the code in JS but I can no longer report on the custom dimensions in Behavior > Site Content. Instead, I can then add the CDs to the statistics in Behavior > Events.

Is this how it is supposed to be? Does this mean I can't really combine the statistics before and after changing the custom dimensions to event hits?

Thanks,
Sandra

Hi Sandra,

I've run into the same problem. I took a class from a very helpful Google Analytics consultancy called LunaMetrics which helped me catch this. They've also proposed a solution:

If the custom dimension is set at the Session or User level, then you can use an Event instead of a pageview. What the event Category/Action/Label say isn't really important, as we're just using it as a vehicle to get the data into Google Analytics. The important part is the "non-interaction parameter" - which tells Google not to count this as an interaction, which means it won't influence Bounce Rate or Time on Site.

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/events

ga('set', 'dimension1', tag);
ga('send', 'event', 'ZenDesk', 'UserType', tag, {
nonInteraction: true,
});

I'll update my suggestion above to include this parameter.

Hello, I am using several custom dimensions (added in the JS code). I have one ga 'send' function below the custom dimensions to get the data into Google Analytics. However, since a page hit is already created by default, I get duplicate pageview hits.

Any suggestions on what I could do to avoid the duplicate pageview hits?

Updated to reflect a better workflow and avoid using ga('send', 'pageview');

We're trying to segment actions based on user tags for paid customers, staff, other (logged in, other tags), and anonymous (not logged in).

GA dimension is set to a User-level scope. We'll also pass this through with a non-interaction event, so we don't double our pageviews.

  // Google Analytics user tag dimension
var tag="";
if (HelpCenter && HelpCenter.user.tags) {
var staff_user = (HelpCenter.user.tags.indexOf("staff") > -1);
var paid_user = (HelpCenter.user.tags.indexOf("paid") > -1);
if (staff_user === true) {
tag = "staff";
}
else if (paid_user === true) {
tag = "paid";
} else {
tag = "other";
}
} else {
tag = "anonymous"
}
ga('set', 'dimension1', tag);
ga('send', 'event', 'ZenDesk', 'UserType', tag, {
nonInteraction: true,
});