Tracking and Analytics

Owned by Chris Purser
Last updated: Dec 22, 2021
4 min read

Get back to this page: rewr.app/tracking 

Introduction

Tracking visitors through your website provides a look into their intentions and better equips your team to be the resource that visitor is looking for, whether it be for a vehicle, a plumber or an ice cream cone. Methods for achieving this are available, but none of them are for the basic tech person. They all require a somewhat advanced understanding of the hosting platform.

Nothing about this is easy, but it's not impossible either. The rewards, though tough to visualize in the early stages, can be transforming for your business.

Tracking a visitor through a Digital Power Solutions product

The two primary products DPS offers at the time of this article are

  • TRADE CYCLE: Our flagship, Trade-In evaluation service.
  • RideItNow: Our live, qualification and payments calculator.

Each offer varying layers of tracking, therefore It's important to clearly recognize which you are working with. The two services differ some in capability and method.

We're going to use Google Analytics as an example, but any sufficient tracking technician should be able to translate these instructions to other tracking service providers.

Getting into Google Analytics

Once logged in, click  at the bottom left corner of your screen

  1. You'll need to have an "Account" in the first column. Either use the default or create one, following the basic instructions. Choose Web as what you want to measure.
  2. Next you'll need a "Property". Create a new one or use the default if one was created. Again, choose Web as what you want to measure.
  3. Once those two things exist, look under Property for "< > Tracking Info" and choose Tracking Code. A wide right column will open.
  4. There you'll find a section called "Global Site Tag (gtag.js)" and within that, a box with about 8 or 9 lines of code. This is what you need to send to us. 

Depending on your analytics strategy, you may or may not want to provide a unique code for each product (TRADE CYCLE and RideItNow)

If you only want basic tracking, this is all we'll need and we'll install this through the product everywhere we're able, and you'll start to see basic tracking about a day after we've confirmed installation.

Note: If you want more than basic tracking, you'll need to make sure you have a tracking expert on your team (either internally, or via a hire), who can provide us with explicit instructions for which codes are placed where. The opportunities for differing codes are spelled out below, and differ per product.

Tracking a TRADE CYCLE Visitor.

Basic Tracking comes in two parts. 1Tracking visitors through your site, and 2tracking visitors as they travel through your TRADE CYCLE campaign and convert (submit their completed entry and become a lead).

Note: We recommend a different "Property" and "Tracking Code" from the steps above for each of these parts.

Part 1 - Solutions Code

  • Part 1: We can install a tracking code that is part of the "NADA/Black Book/VALUE YOUR TRADE" TAB that you see, usually floating on the left side of your website.
  • We can install code into both the HEAD and the BODY of all those pages this way.
  • That should provide some basic tracking capabilities for all pages our code is installed onto (by design that is site wide)

Part 2: Campaigns

  • We can install tracking codes on each page of the TRADE CYCLE campaign.
  • We can install codes into both the HEAD and the BODY of each page of the campaign.
  • This often means that a modified code is desirable for installation onto the "Thank You" or 'conversion' pages so that if the visitor actually reaches them, a successful 'conversion' is recorded in your tracking data.
Submitting Tracking Codes for Installation.

Submitting a tracking code for installation

  • Copy your tracking code in the steps above, and paste it into a notepad and save it as "trackingcode.txt"
  • Find the file you just saved, right click → Send to → Compressed (zipped) folder


  • You'll now have a file in that same folder called trackingcode.zip
  • Make sure you have any instructions ready to send to us including any advanced requests from your expert.
  • Click the SUBMIT CODE button below, add your info and the instructions, and upload the zipped file you created in these steps.
Tracking a RideItNow Visitor.

Basic Tracking for RideItNow is a bit more limited due to the complexity of the interaction already occurring between the RideItNow service and your website.

Note: Only a single Google Analytics tracking code installation is possible for this product.

Tracking a RideItNow Lead

  • A tracking code provided to us will be installed into the RideItNow product in a way that reports traffic data at the time the first page of the Payments service is visited. 
  • No further tracking is available at this time.

*Google Tag Manager codes are not compatible at this time. (10/08/2020)

That's it... 

That's really all the information we have about this.

We don't have information on what you will see in your tracking dashboards, where to look for data, how to get more data, how to customize the tracking setup at all, or any other questions about how tracking is used or how to benefit further from it.

Our expertise extends as far as being able to successfully install provided code into our services.

Anything beyond this requires a tracking expert or consultant.