Troubleshooting Google Analytics

Google Analytics & Google Universal Analytics are powerful tools for gathering quantitative data about your site visitors. They can do so much due to their flexibility and breadth of scope, but sometimes this can lead to complex and subtle issues. This article is intended to go over some common issues to find out why your Qualaroo events aren't showing up in your Google Analytics or Google Universal Analytics accounts.

1. Which version of Google Analytics are you using?

Google Analytics, sometimes called Classic Google Analytics and abbreviated here as GA, was created in 2005 and has grown and expanded greatly over the past decade. An updated version, called Google Universal Analytics (GUA) was released in 2012 and its functionality far exceeds that of GA. Since the UI has been updated, it's sometimes hard to tell which version your site uses.

Below are sample code snippets of each type of Analytics, and you can look in the source of your page to see which one is being used.

Google Analytics

Google Universal Analytics

Another way to tell is to look at the JavaScript file itself - GA uses a file named "ga.js" and GUA uses a file named "analytics.js" Here is a screenshot of where to find this information in the Chrome Developer Tools:

2. Which checkbox is enabled in Qualaroo?

Since GA/GUA are different systems, Qualaroo sends events to them in different formats. If you have the wrong box checked, our events will not be formatted correctly, and your Qualaroo data won't make it into your Analytics account. Please see this help article for more information on Site Settings.

3. Are there any errors in your setup?

One of the most difficult things about programming is that the smallest of mistakes can cause the most confusing of errors. A small typo when pasting in GA or GUA code can cause all sorts of difficulties later on. There are two excellent Chrome extensions, created by Google, that can notify you of errors in your setup, and provide debug information when diagnosing more subtle issues.

• Tag Assistant - Shows information on all scripts loaded via Google Tag Manager.

• Google Analytics Debugger - Adds debugging info to Console about Google Analytics/Google Universal Analytics.

4. Which account are you expecting to see Qualaroo events in?

Qualaroo is only able to send events to one GA/GUA account per site at this time. Some sites have multiple GA/GUA accounts on their pages, and Qualaroo events are designed to only be sent to the first account in the list.

Example: Google Universal Analytics

5. Is the Qualaroo JavaScript loading before GA/GUA?

The Google Analytics JavaScript must load before the Qualaroo JavaScript in order for the integration to work properly. Qualaroo sends events each time a survey or nudge is seen and answered, as well as survey-specific events including response data. However, if GA/GUA hasn't loaded by the time a survey is triggered by the visitor, it won't detect the event that Qualaroo sends to it.

Sometimes this problem can look like a mismatch in impression/response numbers between GA and Qualaroo, with Qualaroo's numbers being higher. The reason why some events get through is because some visitors trigger the survey after Google Analytics has loaded, so the event is detected. However, other visitors may trigger the survey before GA has loaded, meaning it doesn't catch the event.

The solution for this is very simple - make sure the Google Analytics code is placed before the Qualaroo code on your site.

If you're using a tag manager, you should be able to set the order of tag firing, and set Google Analytics to fire before your other script tags. Since Qualaroo's events are set up in a very standard way, this problem could also affect other JavaScript programs as well. If any of them send events to Google Analytics, they will also need GA to load before them.

6. Are you using a tracking prefix in your GA/GUA code?

GA and GUA allow for immense amounts of customization to be implemented, however, sometimes these non-standard formats don't play nice with other programs. If you use a prefix in your GA or GUA code, our system doesn't automatically pick this up, and frequently won't send events to accounts with this feature.

However, if you drop us a note including the prefix you use (you can even just send us your entire JavaScript snippet if you're not sure which is the prefix), we can add this internally so that you'll start seeing events show up. 

Example: Google Analytics

7. GUA only: Can your GUA Account receive events?

GUA has many great troubleshooting and diagnostic tools built in. Below is a snippet of code that can be entered in your page console. If it returns an alert, then your GUA account is receiving events. If it returns an error message, it may not be set up correctly, or you may be using Classic GA on this page.

ga('send', { 'hitType': 'event', 'eventCategory': 'button', 'eventAction': 'click', 
'eventLabel': 'nav buttons', 'nonInteraction': 1, 'hitCallback': function()
{ alert("Event received"); }
});

Success!

Error Message

8. GUA only: Are you using Google Tag Manager to run your GUA code?

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is another great tool, but we've noticed that lately it's been undergoing some changes. If you are using GTM to serve your GUA code, you may notice that the account information is not initialized in the same way anymore. This means that Qualaroo events may not be getting to your GUA account, even though technically there are no errors in your setup.

Drop us a note with your GUA account ID, and we'll be able to edit our internal settings for your site so that we can recognize the GUA account ID, and events will start showing up in your account.

How to find your Account ID

9. UI Navigation

The Google Analytics user interface (UI) has changed a lot over the years, and while it's very powerful and can allow you to access very precise slivers of data, it can also be really confusing. Here's the best way to navigate through the UI to access Qualaroo events in the correct order.

When you open Google Analytics, navigate to Behavior, followed by Events, then Overview. There, you will see a list of events, including one called "Qualaroo" and one or more with the names of your active surveys.

The Qualaroo Event Category will show all Qualaroo-related events for your site.

The Qualaroo - Survey Name events are a second type of event, and have question and response data associated with them.

Let's look at the General Qualaroo events first. Click on Qualaroo, and you'll see some new totals show up.

From here, click on the Event Action link just above the Event Category area. This will show you two new event types - Saw nudge and Answered nudge.

Clicking on Saw nudge will take you to a screen where you'll see the View/impression totals for each survey/nudge that has run on your site.

Clicking on Answered nudge will take you to a screen where you'll see the Response totals for each survey/nudge that has run on your site.

If you go back to the original screen and click on a survey name, you'll see more detailed response information. 

Let's click on a Qualaroo - Survey Name link. In this example, the survey is named Qualaroo - NPS Survey 1. Clicking here takes you to a screen that will show you some totals for this survey.

Again, you'll click on the Event Action link just above the Event Category section. This takes you to a screen which shows the questions from your survey. In this example, there are two questions in this survey.

Each question is from a separate screen in the survey. This page shows the totals for each question. Notice that Question 2 has fewer responses - this is because not everyone answered the 2nd question in the survey.

If you would like to see the responses each visitor submitted, simply click on each question.

The first question is an NPS score, so it will display the totals for each number, 0-10.

The second question is a freeform response, so it shows the text responses that the visitors have submitted.