A simple, light-weight (< 5KB minified), no dependency, front-end website interaction tracker for personal websites and web projects.
Collects usage data and send it to a user-defined server endpoint on the beforeunload event.
Great for creating a database to drive analytics, inform A/B testing, monitor engagement, and guide site optimization decisions.
This data can help you analyze:
- How your users navigate your website
- Engagement levels on a per-page and site-wide basis
- What platforms, language settings, and browser dimensions your users have
- Bounce rates, page and site bottle-necks, impressions, and conversions
Documentation is currently being written. There's a working (front-end) example of Interactor. To explore it, open up your browsers' console and click on the interaction and conversion buttons.
Interactor currently supports modern browsers: Chrome, Firefox, & Safari. Additional testing & input is welcome.
General Data:
- Which page is loaded
- When the user loaded the page
- When the user left the page
- The URL of the loaded page
- The previous page location
- The title of the page
- The language settings of the user
- The user's platform
- The port used to access the web server
- The inner and outer width and height of the web browser
Interaction / Conversion Data:
- The interaction type (i.e. general interaction or conversion)
- The time of the interaction
- The event that triggered interaction
- The target HTML element tag
- The target HTML element classes
- The target HTML element content (i.e. text, etc.)
- The cursor position relative to client
- The cursor position relative to screen
Include the script in your HTML and invoke it.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Interaction Tracker Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<div class="interaction"></div>
<div class="interaction"></div>
<div class="interaction"></div>
<div class="conversion"></div>
<script src="interactor.min.js" type="application/javascript"></script>
<script>
// An example instantiation with custom arguments
var interactions = new Interactor({
interactions : true,
interactionElement : "interaction",
interactionEvents : ["mousedown", "mouseup", "touchstart", "touchend"],
conversions : true,
conversionElement : "conversion",
conversionEvents : ["mouseup", "touchend"],
endpoint : '/usage/interactions',
async : true,
debug : false
});
</script>
</body>
</html>To track a users interactions with an element, simply add the .interaction CSS class to the element.
Have a conversion point on your page? You can add that too, just add the .conversion CSS class to your conversion's HTML element.
Want to track a user's interactions and/or conversions with different element classes already on your page? Create multiple instances and allow each to target a specific element to track. No update to your HTML neccessary.
Example:
var elementsToTrack = [
{
element: "element1",
events : ["mouseup", "touchend"]
},
{
element: "element2",
events : ["mouseup"]
},
{
element: "element3",
events : ["mouseup"]
}
];
for (var i = 0; i < elementsToTrack.length; i++) {
var e = elementsToTrack[i];
new Interactor({
interactionElement : e.element,
interactionEvents : e.events
});
} Default Parameters:
{
interactions : true,
interactionElement : 'interaction',
interactionEvents : ['mouseup', 'touchend'],
conversions : false,
conversionElement : 'conversion',
conversionEvents : ['mouseup', 'touchend'],
endpoint : '/interactions',
async : true,
debug : true
}Sure! I'm a grad student – coffee is always very much appreciated! Thanks!
