October 29, 2021:

VDP Image tracking is live! You are now able to track image clicks happening on the VDP within Google Analytics. The new events are

  • Event Category: R-online(vdp)-new(used)
  • Event Action: R-vehicle-image

AND

  • Event Category: R-online(vdp)-new(used)
  • Event Action: R-vehicle-slideshow

R-vehicle-image represents image clicks happening directly on the VDP, whereas R-vehicle-slideshow represents clicks happening in the slideshow, after someone clicks to open an image. 

October 20, 2021

Tracking Bug Identified:

We've been getting questions recently from various dealers who noticed the bounce rate on their Express Store dropped significantly starting around September 23rd. After additional investigation, we identified the culprit:

On September 23rd, we pushed a new event called 'R-online-digital-retail' which fires automatically the first time a customer enters the Express Store. It wasn't until we started getting these questions and started investigating when we realized that this event inadvertently caused bounce rates to drop exponentially. The reason for this is due to the fact that GA Events can either be interactive or non-interactive:

  • Interactive Events: Events that fire when something is actually clicked - a customer must interact with the page to fire it.
  • Non-Interactive Events: Events that fire automatically on the page without requiring someone to click/interact
If a non-interactive event is set to be interactive, it can impact metrics in GA, specifically bounce rate. Bounce rate represents the % of single page sessions - customers who land on the site, don't interact and leave. If an event that fires automatically on a page is set to be interactive, GA is going to read that as an interaction even though it really isn't, so that session would not be considered a bounced one. 

We identified a few other events with the same issue, but pushed a fix earlier today to remedy this, so we should begin to see bounce rates normalize moving forward.

GTM Tagging Updates: 

Expanding on the issue above, this fix required moving all identified non-interactive events into their own individual tag where we can control if it is interactive or not. If you are using GTM, you will need to make the same changes on your side in order for the bounce rate to normalize. You can do this by uploading and merging an updated JSON file into your own container which can be found here.

Summary of changes below:

  1. The alert banner, chat impression, digital retail start, and price unlock PopUp events, which are all non-interactive, now have their own dedicated tags for instore (agent) and online.
  2. Each tag has its own dedicated trigger in order for it to continue firing when the appropriate event fires on the site.
  3. The triggers for the new tags have been added as blocking triggers to the existing 'Roadster GA Event' tag, so that it doesn't fire them from there.