Analytics and analytics

Why would you ever want to track analytics with two services? We have many clients that have historical data in one service, or internal sites that they can't track with Google analytics. There are many reasons – but is it possible? Yes, with some caveats.

We have implemented some complex tracking and profiles – where not only are page views and click streams tracked – but as a video plays percentage based markers are fired off as events to Google analytics and Webtrends simultaneously.

The most important thing to note as you're investigating or planning to use multiple tracking solutions is that you need to understand how all the elements on you page load, and to watch out for collisions. we have implemented analytics and WebTrends with most JavaScript libraries out there (prototype, jQuery, etc) without issue. But when you start to include multiple libraries, you need to do thorough testing to ensure there are no problems.

Google analytics and Webtrends load some JavaScript into your page and executes actions when a user clicks, browses, or as the page loads. They are quite refined scripts, and work well, but there is an outside chance they could interfere with other JS libraries you are using. If you are exploring multiple tracking services, test your pages to ensure all your JS events still function as they should – specifically any library based events. Custom JS events are easy to accommodate if there are collisions, but if you are using jQuery drop-down menus, and they stop working when you add multiple tracking services – that's harder to work around.

Overall we have very few issues, but when they do appear during testing it can mean some elements need to be rewritten.

Happy tracking!