I'm currently using Google Analytics Event Tracking to track user interface interactions in my web application.
Since our system doesn't currently have a way to log client side errors, as a quick fix I've put event tracking code in catch blocks and web service error handlers.
Does anybody else do this? Is it effective, or would you recommend something else?
Thanks
I like it! Since you can add what ever in your tracking script, it's possible to get enogh information regarding the error! Though I would categorize the errors to be able to sort them out from the "real" Google Analytics data.
We do the same in a much simpler way; having some address validation logged in GA as a page view, which can be sorted out in the content drill down.
Not a bad idea! Very clever, in fact. The custom tracking tools in Analytics are just that: custom tools that you can use for whatever meets your needs.
Part of me worries that those with Javascript disabled aren't going to get reported to Analytics, but that percentage gets smaller and smaller.
On a related note: you might consider checking out the beta Analytics feature called "Intelligence." You can set up custom reports so if any numbers are abnormally high or low, it'll email you. Could be a nice way to keep an eye on how well your site is working.
An alternative would be to report the error via AJAX that spits out all the error info in an email. It works well enough for lower-traffic applications and doesn't take much to set up.