Custom Events Data

Before you start

A few things worth knowing before you build anything around custom events.

• Custom events need the Max plan. Action Widgets are available on every plan, but the Log analytics event action and the Custom Events tab that reports it are Max features. On other plans the action is not offered when you build the widget.
• You set custom events up in the Campaign Builder, not in Analytics. The Custom Events tab only reports them. If the tab is empty, the thing to check is your Action Widget.
• One action logs one event. To track several different things, add a separate Log analytics event action for each, with a different Event value.
• Custom events stay inside ShortStack. They are recorded in ShortStack analytics only. They are not sent to Google Analytics or the Facebook Pixel — that is what the Tracking Widget is for.
• The Event value is the only label the report has. There is no separate display name. Pick something you will still recognize in six months: quiz_completed rather than test_1.

Logging an event from an Action Widget

Custom events are one of the actions an Action Widget can perform. If you have not built one before, start with the Action Widget article — this section assumes you have a widget in your campaign with a WHEN trigger already set.

1. Open your Action Widget's settings and go to SETUP.
2. Under WHEN, set the trigger that starts the sequence — for example, Widget labeled form-container is successfully submitted.
3. Under THEN, click the blue + button. The Edit Action window opens.
4. Under CATEGORY, select Campaign.
5. Under ACTION, select Log analytics event. An Event value field appears on the right.
6. Type the name you want this event recorded under into Event value.
7. Click SAVE. The action appears in your THEN list as Log analytics event with value followed by the value you typed.
8. Click SAVE AND EXIT.

Worked examples

Here are three examples of custom events that our analytics do not explicitly track.

What you want to know	THEN Action	Event value
How many people finished the quiz rather than abandoning it	Quiz Answers Container is Shown/Visible	quiz_completed
How many people opened the rules before entering	Rules Text Widget is Shown/Visible	rules_opened
How many people got as far as the second page of a multi-page form	Page 2 is Shown/Visible	form_page_2_reached

The event is logged by the action, not the trigger. Add Log analytics event to the same THEN list as the action you want to count.

Values are recorded exactly as typed. quiz_completed and Quiz_Completed are reported as two separate rows, so keep to one convention across a campaign. Action labels make the widgets you are targeting easier to identify while you build the sequence.

How to view custom events

1. From the Home Page, click the Manage dropdown at the top and select Analytics.
2. Use the Filtering section to select the specific campaign you wish to view.
3. Adjust the date range to display data for your desired timeframe.
4. Click on the Custom Events tab.

What the Custom Events tab shows

Data boxes

• Custom Events: the total number of events recorded across every event value, for the campaign and date range you have filtered to.
• Unique Visitors: the number of distinct visitors who fired at least one custom event. This counts people, not events — one visitor firing the same event twice shows as 2 events and 1 unique visitor.

Charts and graphs

Custom Events Summary: a line graph plotting daily events and daily unique visitors. Toggle either series by clicking its label in the legend; click again to bring it back.

Below the graph, a table breaks the totals down by value, one row per distinct Event Value, with its own Events and Unique Visitors counts. This is the view to use when you are comparing two events against each other.

Graph options

Click the hamburger icon (≡) on the graph to:

• View the graph in full screen
• Print the chart
• Download the data as a CSV file

Exporting data

1. Click the Actions dropdown at the top right.
2. Select Export PDF.
3. A PDF will open, then choose the file name and save location.

What happens when you change things

If you...	Then...
Delete the action, or the whole Action Widget	No new events are logged. Events already recorded stay in the report and continue to appear for any date range that covers them.
Edit an Action Widget on a published campaign	Unless you edit the event name, nothing changes. If you change the action the event is attached to — showing Container_12 rather than Container_14, say — the custom events can be misrepresented. If you change the event name, a new row appears in the Custom Events data tab.
Change the timezone selector in Analytics	The day an event is counted under in the Custom Events Summary shifts with it. An event fired at 11 pm PDT may fall on the following day under a different timezone.
Preview the campaign, or open it in the Builder	Custom events are only recorded on the published page. In preview mode the event is not recorded.

If your events are not showing up

Work down this list in order. The first three causes account for most of it, and none of them are visible from the Analytics screen.

The tab is completely empty

• Check the filter first. Analytics opens on whatever campaign and date range you last used. Confirm you are looking at the right campaign, and that the date range covers the period you are testing in.
• The Action Widget is in a hidden container. An Action Widget inside a container that is not visible will not run. Make the container visible, or move the Action Widget out of it.
• The widget's visibility is set to Inactive, or a date/time or country restriction is excluding the traffic you are testing with. Check the VISIBILITY section of the widget's settings, described in Widget Visibility.
• The trigger never fired. Test the WHEN condition on its own by temporarily adding a second action that does something visible, so you can see whether the widget is running at all.
• The campaign was not published after the change. Open the Builder and check for the "Publish changes" button to confirm every change is live.

Some events appear and others do not

• An earlier action in the same THEN list interrupted the sequence. Actions run top to bottom in the order they appear. If a Redirect campaign action sits above your Log analytics event action, the redirect may happen before the event is logged. Drag the Log analytics event above it.
• Two actions are using the same Event value. They are added together into a single row. Give each one its own value if you need to tell them apart.

The counts look wrong

• Events and Unique Visitors are not the same measure. Events counts every fire; Unique Visitors counts people. A gap between them means repeat firing, not double counting.
• A trigger that can fire more than once per visit logs every time.
• Unique Visitors depends on visitor fingerprinting. Enable the appropriate fingerprinting setting in Campaign Settings.
• Recent events may not appear immediately. Allow ShortStack Analytics up to 15 minutes to process custom event data. In most cases it is available within a few minutes of the event firing successfully.

Custom events and the other ways to track

Three features overlap here, and customers regularly pick the wrong one.

Feature	Use it when	Data lands in
Custom events	You want to count something ShortStack does not already report, and you want the number inside ShortStack	The Custom Events tab
Tracking Widget	You want campaign activity in Google Analytics or the Facebook Pixel alongside the rest of your site	Google Analytics / Facebook Pixel
Clicks Data	You want clicks on buttons and links, which are tracked automatically with no setup	The Clicks tab

Related resources

Analytics Overview (Help Doc)

Tracking Widget (Help Doc)

Clicks Data (Help Doc)