Tracking of automatic downloads

[antonk11147724]

Hi.

I am trying to find out about how to track "automatic downloads" happening on our website.

What do I mean by that is, that the user who wants to download a file clicks on a button which takes him to a thank you page, and the download starts automatically.
It seems that the Adobe automatic download tracking is not able to catch downloads initiated in this way.

It is able to capture downloads initiated directly by clicking on a link to a file, but not these automatic ones.

Any ideas?

Best regards

[Aiyanna_Kuttapp]

Hi Anton,

From what I understand, wouldn't the number of automatic downloads be equal to the  pageviews of the concerned thank you page.

[antonk11147724]

Aiyanna Kuttappa wrote...

Hi Anton,

From what I understand, wouldn't the number of automatic downloads be equal to the  pageviews of the concerned thank you page.

Hi Aiyanna.

Yes, you are right. That would be the way how to work around it. But, this makes the File Downloads report essentially worthless for us, which is unfortunate.
It would be better if everything would be under file downloads, as it is great to know the exact filenames too. Not sure if there is a way how to achieve this though.

[warrensander · Accepted solution]

set up your own custom code for file downloads and put the file name into an evar and fire an event

if(s.linkType=='d'){ if(typeof s.linkObject.getAttribute('href') != 'undefined'){ s.url=s.linkObject.getAttribute('href'); s.propxx=s.eVarxx=s.url.substring(s.url.lastIndexOf("/")+1,s.url.length); s.eVaryy="D:"+s.propxx; s.propyy="D=yy"; s.events=s.apl(s.events,"eventzz",",",2); s.linkTrackEvents="eventzz"; } }

In this code we first capture the file name download rather than the entire url string which is in the file download report (also we put it into an evar good for the visit so we can through conversion events against it.

so propxx/evarxx is the downloaded file name we have it in a prop also so we can path the file downloads

We also put it into evar/prop yy the 'D:' prefix is for file download. we also have a 'P:' for page view, and other codes for pathable service calls on a page or flow. This way we can path from the pageview to the file download to a form completion (F:) in propyy makes it easy to path server calls rather than 'page views' etc.

We also fire a file download eventzz. that way we can do a report for campaigns etc and see how many file downloads happened for that campaign then breakdown to see what those filenames are.

Remember to add the correct extensions to s.linkDownloadFileTypes so things get recorded

[antonk11147724]

warrensander wrote...

set up your own custom code for file downloads and put the file name into an evar and fire an event

 if(s.linkType=='d'){ if(typeof s.linkObject.getAttribute('href') != 'undefined'){ s.url=s.linkObject.getAttribute('href'); s.propxx=s.eVarxx=s.url.substring(s.url.lastIndexOf("/")+1,s.url.length); s.eVaryy="D:"+s.propxx; s.propyy="D=yy"; s.events=s.apl(s.events,"eventzz",",",2); s.linkTrackEvents="eventzz"; } }

In this code we first capture the file name download rather than the entire url string which is in the file download report (also we put it into an evar good for the visit so we can through conversion events against it.

so propxx/evarxx is the downloaded file name we have it in a prop also so we can path the file downloads

We also put it into evar/prop yy the 'D:' prefix is for file download. we also have a 'P:' for page view, and other codes for pathable service calls on a page or flow. This way we can path from the pageview to the file download to a form completion (F:) in propyy makes it easy to path server calls rather than 'page views' etc.

We also fire a file download eventzz. that way we can do a report for campaigns etc and see how many file downloads happened for that campaign then breakdown to see what those filenames are.

Remember to add the correct extensions to s.linkDownloadFileTypes so things get recorded

Hi Warren,

looks good, we will try that.

Thanks for your help, much appreciated!