How to Track Scroll Depth in Google Analytics

The bullet point version:

• If you aren’t using Google Tag Manager, go directly to jail; do not pass go, do not collect $200. This post is not for you.
• If you don’t have scroll tracking set up, follow the steps in Benjamin Mangold’s fabulous post, How to track scroll depth with Google Tag Manager.
• I also recommend setting up an event to track zero-percent scrolls. This event is equivalent to a page view, but it will make your scroll tracking report more useful. To do this, in Tag Manager:
  • Add a new Google Analytics tag.
  • Set Track Type to Event.
  • For Category, use the same event category as your other scroll tracking events, the category is just ‘Scroll’ if you followed Benjamin’s post.
  • Set the event action to 0%.
  • Apply your Google Analytics settings variable. If you don’t know what this means, check out this Google Support article.
  • Set Non-interaction Hit to TRUE.
  • Apply the All Pages trigger.
  • Save and Publish!
• If you are just getting scroll tracking set up, you’ll probably want to wait a week or two to accumulate data.
• Once you have some data, you are ready to analyze scroll depth! Benjamin Mangold also has a great webinar on this, but I’m going to show you a cool report he doesn’t cover:
  • In Google Analytics, go to Behavior > Events > Pages.
  • Set the report type to Pivot
  • Set Pivot by to Event Action
  • Set Pivot metrics to Unique Events
  • Add an Advanced Filter to include only Event Actions that contain a percent symbol

Voilá! If it all worked, your report should look something like this:

How cool is that! Happy analyzing!

Nico Brooks oversees analytics at Two Octobers, and organizes the Denver Google Analytics Meetup. He loves people who scroll 100% through his posts, and he loves connecting with those people even more!