Learn how to view your ebook analytics using Google Analytics.

Google Analytics

As of Kotobee Author v1.3.1, you are able to track analytics for your ebooks using Google Analytics. Google Analytics is basically a free web analytics service used to track and report website traffic. It can be easily set up for your multi-page website by embedding a single code into all your pages. However, if your website is a single HTML page relying mostly on Javascript (as is the case with Kotobee ebook web apps) then it can get tricky. Javascript is required to track user behavior in your website, by triggering events manually.  All of this is already implemented and made ready for you in Kotobee Author. All you need to provide is your Google Analytics ID.

The following events can be reported from your ebook web app to Google Analytics.

  • The date/time that a certain title was opened.
  • The name of the chapter that was navigated to.
  • Any video that has been clicked to play.
  • Any audio component that has been clicked to play.
  • Any interactive image that has been clicked to animate.
  • Any image that has been clicked to open in a media panel.
  • Any book widget that has been opened.
  • Any self-assessment question component that was solved, along with the user’s answer report.

Viewing Ebook Events

When you open Google Analytics again, it will take you directly to AUDIENCE reports and display the Overview page. On the left-hand side, you have a menu showing the different types of reports. Google Analytics is extremely powerful, and so a single report would not suffice to give you meaningful information. In our case, we are interested in seeing the behavior of users, particularly "events" being reported by the ebook. So go to the BEHAVIOR reports menu, expand the Events item and click on Overview. 

This page will give you general information on all the events that happened in your ebook across a certain date range. Currently, you will find it empty, although you may be sure that some users are reading your ebook. The reason is simple. It takes Google Analytics a few hours to include new events into its system, so the values shown are useful only if you want to see data for yesterday and earlier. If you're interested in monitoring immediate behavior from users, the relatively new REAL-TIME reports menu is what you would be interested in.

Viewing Real-Time Reports

Click on the REAL-TIME reports menu, and click on Events. 

This screen will show you the behaviors occurring at this instance inside your ebook or library.

The large number at the top left tells you how many users currently have your ebook web app open. The bottom list is what you should be more interested in. It lists the different types of interactions and events happening inside the ebook. First, let us understand the different columns.

  • Event Category: The object that was interacted with. It could either be the name of the book (book opened event), or a chapter name (chapter navigation event), or the name of the element (video, audio, widget, questions, or image) in case it was interacted with.
  • Event Action: The name of the action that occurred. The different possibilities are: opened, navigated, viewed image, played, solved, and clicked
  • Event Label: The name of the book of which the event occurred. It is very useful if you are tracking a library rather than an ebook. The Event Label is used to categorize the events. To see the Event Label for a particular event, click on the Event Category

As mentioned in the Event Label definition, the relative Event Label for a particular event may be found by clicking on the Event Category. Example:

A useful but hard to find option is viewing events across a 30 min span window. This may be enabled by clicking Events (Last 30 min).

For further help on finding your way around Google Analytics, refer to the Google Analytics Training and Support website.