[Dave Flanagan]

Trying to figure out how to track downloads as a percentage of page visits, anyone able to point me in the right direction?

[roddersm]

Have you implemented GA already Dave and are having a specific issue or is this something you are planning on doing? I haven't used it myself but should be able to track down someone who has. 

http://www.blastam.com/blog/index.php/2011/04/how-to-track-downloads-in-google-analytics/

[Dave Flanagan]

Yes have GA working and can track downloads but just can't figure out how to display the percentage of visits to a download page that result in a download.

[tomtom]

Yes have GA working and can track downloads but just can't figure out how to display the percentage of visits to a download page that result in a download.

IIRC in the content page it will put pages and downloads down separately...
I have zip files that are downloaded from pages and these are listed seprately from the page they sit on (if that makes any sense).

[tomtom]

edit - its in the behaviour section...

[Dave Flanagan]

Thanks Tom. I can see how many downloads I get and I can see how many pageviews I get on the download page. What I want to do is track the percentage of visits that visit the download page but don't click on the download link.

Haven't done much with Analytics, it's pretty complicated.

[roddersm]

Hey Dave if you have the number of visits and the number of downloads can't you just calculate out the value you want, using JQuery if you want to display on the site, if GA can't provide it directly?

Or am I misinterpreting what you want? 

[Dave Flanagan]

Your right Rodders I could but am just looking for a way to do it within GA.

[slackline]

Hey Dave if you have the number of visits and the number of downloads can't you just calculate out the value you want, using JQuery if you want to display on the site, if GA can't provide it directly?

Or am I misinterpreting what you want?

Doesn't that assume that all downloads originate from the page on which Dave has hosted a link though?

For example I can link to Dave's free excerpt from here and someone clicking on it would register as a view/download of that file, but it wouldn't have originated from the page Dave has linked it from though so any percentage calculated in this suggested manner would be skewed (and you could potentially have > 100% of downloads of the PDF compared to page views if more traffic is coming from outside the site).

I don't use Google Analytics at all, but is it not possible to see where each page/files referrers pages come from?  Something like this perhaps? 

[Dave Flanagan]

I think you are right. It's straightforward to filter the download by referrer to avoid this problem.

[roddersm]

Yeah you're right slack line but if you only record downloads as those who click on the link on the download page then the percentage would be accurate.

If there was a need to record referrals or those who bypass the download page then this wouldn't work.