Quickstart Guide to Google Analytics Clickstream Data

This post provides downloadable Google Tag Manager (GTM) scripts and a walkthrough of the necessary steps for getting clickstream data out of Google Analytics. This clickstream data already exists behind the scenes; every time a user takes a tracked action on your website, like viewing a page or clicking a button, the data about that action is sent to Google Analytics as a hit. But by default, Google Analytics doesn't expose this granular hit-level data -- instead all reports are aggregated together by location, marketing channel, and so on.

This makes sense within the Google Analytics interface where a firehose of raw data would be more of a hindrance than a help, but the underlying raw clickstream data has many use cases -- valuable enough that access to this data in BigQuery costs $150,000 annually via Google Premium (don't worry, of course we're going to get it for free here 😀 ).

THE VALUE OF CLICKSTREAM DATA

If you're here, you probably already know why you want clickstream data. It enables you to merge Google Analytics data with a CRM, integrate GA data into a data warehouse, perform cohort analysis, answer questions about lifetime value, and run all kinds of complex queries and advanced analytics that are inaccessible from the standard reports.

Simo Ahava gets a lot of credit as this system was inspired from his posts on improving data collection, using custom tasks, and leveraging the 'transport : beacon' field. So definitely read his posts for background information. This article slightly modifies, condenses, and simplifies the steps, and compiles the variable scripts into a downloadable container so you can get a quick start.

STEP 1: SET UP CUSTOM DIMENSIONS

In Google Analytics Admin, navigate to Admin > Property > Custom Dimensions > +New Custom Dimension.

In the new custom dimension interface, set up the following 4 custom dimensions:

1. Name = Timestamp, Scope = Hit
2. Name = GA Client ID, Scope = User
3. Name = Session ID, Scope = Session
4. [optional] Name = User ID, Scope = Hit. Use this if you're passing an internal ID to the data layer that identifies your logged-in users, as described here

Once these have been added, note the numbers assigned by Google Analytics in the Index column. We'll need these later, in Step 5.

STEP 2: DOWNLOAD THE SCRIPTS

Here I've compiled the scripts for these 4 dimensions into a downloadable container you can import into your own GTM account. Right-click the link and click 'Save link as' to save them to your own computer: GTM Clickstream Variables

For reference, this is the content of these scripts:

1. JS Timestamp

   function() {
    try {
     var timestamp = new Date();
     var time = timestamp.toISOString();
     return time;
    } catch(e) {
     return "unknown";
    }
   }

2. GA Client ID

   function() {
     var customDimensionIndex = 4;
     return function(model) {
       model.set('dimension' + customDimensionIndex, model.get('clientId'));
     }
   }

3. Session ID

   function() {
       return new Date().getTime() + '.' + Math.random().toString(36).substring(5);
   }

4. User ID
   Data Layer Variable Name =

   userId

STEP 3: IMPORT CLICKSTREAM SCRIPTS INTO YOUR OWN GTM CONTAINER

Follow the directions below to import the scripts into your own GTM container without affecting anything you have there already.

In Google Tag Manager, navigate to Admin > Container and click Import Container

Click Choose Container File and import the json file from step 2

Choose New workspace. Name it Clickstream and click Save.

Choose the options Merge and then Rename conflicting tags, triggers, and variables

Click Confirm and complete the import. Following the above steps will ensure that none of your existing tags are changed or overwritten.

You will now have 4 new Variables in a workspace named Clickstream: {{JS - Timestamp}}, {{JS - Session ID}}, {{JS - GA Client ID}}, and {{DL - UserID}}.

STEP 4: ADJUST THE NEW VARIABLES

These variables are almost ready to go. You just need to make one modification:

In the {{JS - GA Client ID}} Variable, click into it and add in the index number assigned by Google Analytics in Step 1 to your GA Client ID custom dimension. In my case it was "4", but remember to use your own assigned index number.

STEP 5: ADD THE NEW VARIABLES TO YOUR TAGS

The most convenient way to add these new variables to your tag is to update your Google Analytics Settings variable (located at Variables > User-Defined Variables). Make the following changes:

1. Add Field Name = customTask, Value = {{JS - GA Client ID}}
2. Add Field Name = transport, Value = beacon
3. For each of the other 3 new dimensions, add in the index number assigned by GA in Step 1, alongside the Variable name.

Tracking ID should of course be your own GA account ID. If you aren't using the Google Analytics Settings variable, you can find these same options by clicking into your tags and clicking the "Enable overriding settings in this tag" checkbox.

Note: the {{DL - UserID}} Variable requires that you are pushing your internal user ID to your site's data layer. You can leave it out if you're not using it. If you do include it as a custom dimension without actually pushing a user ID to the data layer, it just won't populate.

STEP 6: TEST AND PUBLISH

Always test to make sure everything looks good in Preview Mode before publishing to production. Click around your site and manually verify that the Variables are populating correctly, like this (note that JS - GA Client ID will contain a function rather than the actual ID):

Also click into your page view tag and verify that the Variables are being passed inside it, and are populating the correct index slot number.

CONCLUSION

Once you've followed the above steps, you'll have access to raw clickstream data from your GA reports. This is an example of what the data will look like (Click to import this custom report into your own GA account: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=sbXi8C3HQGukKWmO_39GPg)

Of course you can also access this data via the API, or send elements of it directly to your CRM upon form submission (if your form links directly to your CRM), or programmatically send this data to your data warehouse daily so you can run SQL queries on top of it, or push the data into BI software like Tableau... having this data available opens up all kinds of custom possibilities.

Have you implemented clickstream reporting or enabled any useful integrations? Let me know below.

Additional Reading:

1. Google's documentation on Integrating CRM Data with Google Analytics
2. a complete example of how to pull the GA Client ID and pass it in a form