Section Meta Event

Section is a term that defines what content or type of the content the user is viewing and interacting with at the moment. In most cases, the Section is equivalent to term page and every (M) Section meta event captured means a page view.

Default Tracking of Section Events

By default, values of Section meta events are based on URLs of web pages viewed. If a user would open a page:

http://mywebsite.com/products/jeans

it would mean that the user is in “products/jeans” Section and the following meta event would be tracked:

(M) Section=products/jeans

URL Hash Parameter

By default, a Section event are also registered when a URL hash changes:

Section=products/jeans#quickView

URL Search Parameter

URL params (anything after “?” but before “#”) are not included in a Section name. Visiting pages:

would produce exactly the same Section event:

(M) Section=products/jeans

Tracking Hostname in Section Names

By default, Section does not include hostname. If you would be tracking pages on multiple domains into the same project you will not be able to differentiate between pages with the same pathname:

as they would all be tracked as:

(M) Section=products/

If you need to differentiate between the Sections on different hostnames you can add a parameter uIncludeHostnameInSection: true in the tracking code:

uDash.init({ uProjectName: 'mywebsite_123',uProjectApiPass: '0df30af9607b4941eba2de7abcedf683', uPort: 12345, uIncludeHostnameInSection: true });

(M) URL meta event

Besides tracking of Section events, the tracking code automatically captures the exact URLs visited by users as (M) URL meta events:

(M) URL=http://mywebsite.com/products/jeans?page=2

Why Are Sections Important?

Sections group events that have the same context. They are, for example, used to aggregate clicks on Heat Maps, forms related interactions in the Forms Report or all kind of events in the Visit Report.

Sections, together with (M) Action meta events form (A) path attributes, for example:

(A) path=^^Home^Submitted Form #search^products/jeans^Home^^

which are visualised in Paths Report to tell you what users are doing on your website and in what order.

What if a Page Changes but Its URL Does Not?

Sometimes, the layout, content or functionality of a single page can change significantly without the change of URL.

A common case are forms split into multiple steps with each next step displayed to a user using JavaScript. In such a case, a URL wouldn’t necessarily indicate in which step a user exactly is:

https://mywebsite.com/registration-form

One way to track Sections is the URL doesn’t change is to add a hash parameter to URL: 

http://mywebsite.com/registration-form#step-1

http://mywebsite.com/registration-form#step-2

or implement a request using JavaScript API:

uDash.saveMeta("Section", "registration-form/step-1");
uDash.saveMeta("Section", "registration-form/step-2");

or trigger a saveDataPoint response.

Additional Datapoints Tracked Based on Sections

There are several data points automatically tracked based on captured Section events:

(M) Time in Product/Shoes=10

Time (in seconds) spent by a user in a section during a single impression.

(M) Total time in Product/Shoes=54

Total time (in seconds) spent by a user during a session in section (equal to sum of all “Time in” events).

(M) Click pattern in Product/Shoes = a3dcb4d229de6fde0db5686dee47145d

Click pattern key based on ordered clicks on elements in a section. All users who clicked the same elements in the same order will have the same click pattern. The pattern key can be the same for different sections.

(A) Sections=6

Total number of Section events tracked during a session.