Work in progress

This guide serves as a starting point for the implementation of Google Analytics on Earthdata Search, specifically End-to-end Services. The overarching goal is to implement Google Analytics to gain insight into user behavior in End-to-end Services, with a specific focus on tracking behavior in the Data Access flow.

Basic Recommendations

Implement custom dimensions that allow for more useful segmentation of types of users
Implement well thought out events to help gain insight into the actions users are taking
Find relevant custom metrics to find better usage data
Set up goals to provide insight into the most important metrics

Custom Dimensions

Well thought out custom dimensions will allow us to much better segment user types. The custom dimensions allow us to send additional information about particular users, sessions, page hits that will become much more valuable in helping define and improve user behavior. When implementing the custom dimensions, we should be thinking about how the segments will become interesting when married to the data from actions.

We are limited to 20 custom dimensions and the data can become finicky when deleted, so a well thought out approach from the beginning is important.

Interesting Segments

Users affiliated with specific organizations
Behavior over account length
Power users vs. New users
All actions within a particular session

Possible Custom Dimensions

Name	Data	Use	Scope	Available	Notes
Account	User identifier	Allows for filtering events by individual users	User	?	Can't be personally identifiable information Thinking we could use a users id
Session	Session identifier	Allow filtering of data by session	Session	?
Organization	Organization information	Allow filtering behavior by individuals of the same associations	User	?
Account Length	Length of account	Allow filtering by account length Gain insights on new vs. old users, etc	Session	?
Total Checkouts	Total "checkouts"	See difference as users become more familiar Create buckets (New users v. Power Users)	Session	?	Would require server side logic Should make buckets (0 / 1 / 2-5 / 5-9 / 10+) Theres probably a better name for this than "checkout"
Current Time	Current Time	Allow for sequential view of actions	Hit	Y	GA’s out of the box time is inconsistent Should be current time down to millisecond
Page State	Page state info	Track the state of the UI	Hit	?	Could take a bit of time to implement successfully

Events

Events give us insight into the actual behavior of the users performing any given task.

Recommended Custom Events

Search

TBD

Project

Customization opened
Customization selected

Variable
Transformations
Output Formats

Variable Actions

Variable Type clicked
“Back to [variable type]” click
Variable modal “Back” button click
Select all variables clicked
Variable selected
Variable deselected
Variable modal “Done” button click

Transformation actions

TBD

Output Formats

Output format changed
Variable modal “Back” button click
Variable modal “Done” button click

Customization closed
Details opened
“Remove” clicked
“Back to search” clicked

Global

“Earthdata” logo clicked
“Earthdata Search” logo clicked
“Find a DAAC” clicked
“Find a DAAC” DAAC selected
Header Question Mark clicked
“Send feedback” clicked
“Login” click
Login success
Profile actions