Add custom dimensions to page views / events

[adriaanvanrossum]

Tasks

• Find a way to not end up with PII data in our tool
  • For example grab category, title, og:data, date, tags, ... from page
  • Or get custom dimensions set by developer
• Allow custom dimensions to be send to our database
• Make custom dimensions show up in our dashboard
• Filter on custom dimensions

Talk with a customer who explained very well how they would use dimensions

Customer:

As part of our Google Analytics installation we've set the following dimensions on our story pages, via variables provided by our CMS. This allows us to segment traffic based on the content itself. None of them tell us about the visitor themselves (we have GA set to anonymize visits). We'd like to continue to segment our content as we move away from Google Analytics.

I hope this helps to explain our use case. Thanks!

Here's the code:

ga("set", "dimension1", "\n ***\u003C\/a\u003E");
ga("set", "dimension2", "The ***, The ***");
ga("set", "dimension3", "October 28, 2020 - 10:45pm, \u003Cspan class=\u0022date-display-single\u0022 property=\u0022dc:date\u0022 datatype=\u0022xsd:dateTime\u0022 content=\u00222021-11-28T22:10:00-01:00\u0022\u003E2020-10-2");
ga("set", "dimension4", ", , title");
ga("set", "dimension5", ", Lifestyle \u0026amp; tag1, tag2, tag4, ");
ga("set", "dimension6", "name");
ga("set", "dimension7", "location");

Simple Analytics:

So you basically fill an amount of dimensions and in GA you can filter on those? Could you share a screenshot of GA where you use the filtering? That would be great! That way I can learn about the UI and what is currently working (well) for you (please hide sensitive numbers of course).

We need to find a way where customers can insert custom data without it being user IDs or any personal data. If you have any ideas on that, please let me know!

Customer:

Funny enough, Google Analytics is not loading properly for me today. So it will be tough to get screenshots - but I'll point you to resources that explain what GA is doing

1. In GA's admin there's a section where I can create custom dimensions - essentially defining it. This article is a nice summation of how it works in GA: https://ken-williams.com/guide/project-setup/how-to-set-custom-dimensions-and-metrics-in-google-analytics-4/
2. In the GA tracking script that I embed on to our site, I define variables from the story page to pass into each numbered slot (as I noted in the previous email).
3. Then if I want to view the results, like how well a category is performing, I can create a "Segment" referencing the dimension (like Author or Category). Its basically a filter that gets applied to the entire dashboard. As an example, I can say "category" contains "Every 30 Seconds", and I will only see data that filters to this condition. https://www.monsterinsights.com/how-to-create-google-analytics-advanced-segments/

There are other ways to do it in GA, it can get into the weeds a bit. Its part of the reason we are looking for a new solution. Its a complex tool and we want to make it easier for our team to find the data they need more quickly.

Also, GA uses the segment tool to do some gross things from a privacy perspective. We have our data anonymized as much as possible and that still isn't enough. I'm not a lawyer, but I think you can protect your platform by a strong privacy policy and frequent warnings to users of how this can or cannot be used.

[adriaanvanrossum]

This is currently being worked on.