How to connect Google Analytics to your virtual tours

So you learned how to create your virtual tours and how to embed them on your website and post them to Facebook. Now you would like to know how many people actually view your virtual tour and where they view them from!

We decided to give you all the power  to connect Google Analytics to your virtual tours so you know that our analytics are not fabricated and are true views from real people!

To do this, you simply need to follow the guide below and you’re on your way. It is a step – by – step guide which should make it easy, though you need to copy some coding which might look scary at first but please don’t give up, you’ll feel like a true programmer after you’ve done this!

If at any time you get stuck or lost, you can always contact us and we can do this for you or guide you through it.

Here’s the quick guide for those that have been there before and feel adventurous today:

1. Get your Universal Analytics code from your Google Analytics account
2. Paste the code into the box in your Config & Settings, in the tab “settings” in your My360 account
3. Go back to Google Analytics
4. Create the dimensions: Click on Admin > Custom Definitions > Custom Dimensions
5. Create 4 new custom dimensions using the following names (exactly written as below):
   1. PGMProfileCode
   2. PGMProfileRef
   3. PGMVtTitle
   4. PGMParentUrl
6.  Leave the dimension on “hit” and make sure the dimension is ticked “active”
7. Create a custom report: Click on Customise>custom reports
8. Create 4 tabs in 1 report 
   1. Metrics > Users > Hits
   2. Dimensions > custom dimensions > one of the 4 dimensions per tab (so create 4 tabs)
9. Wait 72 hours for the report to start generating hits, come back and marvel and the wonders of the internet 🙂 

All this a bit quick for you? No worries, here’s the full step by step tutorial  on how to connect Google Analytics to your virtual tours with screenshots. Follow this to the dot and you should be rocking and rolling in no time! (and REALLY it is NOT difficult, just follow the steps, don’t scroll down this blog and get scared by all the information… just take it 1 step at a time and you’ll be sweet!)

Step 1:

Go to your Google Analytics account and find your Google  Universal Analytics code (Google UA):

Click on Admin > Tracking info > Tracking Code

Then find your code here:

Step 2

Go to your My360 Account (admin) and paste the code into your Config & Settings in the tab “settings”. Don’t forget to save after you have pasted the code 😉

Go to My360 >Config & Settings > Settings

Paste the code here:

Step 3:

Go back to Google Analytics. And click on “admin” and then on “custom definitions” and choose “custom dimensions”.

Step 4:

Click ” + New Custom Dimension”

You can add the following dimensions in the Name field (create a new dimension for each field)

PGMProfileCode

PGMProfileRef

PGMVtTitle

PGMParentUrl

Make sure you write it exactly like above with capital letters etc. otherwise the report will not work.

Leave the rest of the settings as they are and make sure de “active” box is checked like so:

Don’t worry about the “example codes for this dimension” giving you loads of scary javascript examples. This is something we have already done, so you can ignore that.

We suggest you create all 4 dimensions for optimal results. So your custom dimensions should look like this:

Step 5:

Now we have to create a custom report. So click on “customisation” and then “custom reports”

Now click on “+new custom report”

Name the report (whatever you like)

Now create 4 different tabs:

Tab 1:

Name: URL (or Tour URL or something similar)

Click “add metric”

Choose “users”

The select “hits”

Now  in the next block click on “add dimensions”

Choose “custom dimensions” and choose “PGMParentURL” like so:

Leave all the other settings as they are and click save.

Now click on “custom reports” again and then next to the report “virtual tour” you just created, click on the “actions” dropdown and then “edit”

“add another report tab”

This one will be for the Profile Codes, so we rename it to something like “Profile Code”. (the name does not effect the functioning of the report, so you can name it what you like, just make sure you can recognise it afterwards)

You follow the same guide as above, but instead of the dimension “PGMParentURL” we are going to choose the dimension “”PGMProfileCode” like so:

Hit save and add another tab, this time we want the Profile reference report. Follow the same steps as above, but in custom dimensions, choose “PGMProfileRef”

After that we add a last tab which will be for the Tour Title, so in custom dimensions choose “PGMVtTitle” this time.

So you should have 4 tabs now in 1 report

After you are done, click on “custom report”  again and you will see your new report has been created:

When you click on “actions” you can “edit” the report to change the names and metrics / dimensions

Your report should start generating data now, this can take up to 72 hours, so don’t worry if you don’t see any data straight away.

After a few days, come back to Google analytics to check the account, click on “custom reports and then on the report you created:

You should see the total visits on your tours:

In the first tab you can see the URL’s that these tours are displayed:

But this does not tell you which tours have been viewed on that particular page. So we’re going to add a second dimension so we can see which tour title is used on what pages like so:

Click on “secondary dimension” and choose one. In this case we will choose “PGMVtTitle”:

Now the report looks like this:

You can do this for each tab – so in this example we used the URL tab, but you can also just check the Ref code tab, or the title tab by itself by clicking on the desired tab:

“Now where do these references come from?” … funny you should ask…

Here’s the examples:

PGMProfileCode is the code My360 assigns to each virtual tour. This can not be changed and can be found by searching for the code inside your My360 admin:

PGMProfileRef is the internal reference code you gave to your virtual tour. This can be found in each tour profile:

You can change this code clicking on “details” and changing /adding it: 

PGMVtTitle  is the title you give to your tours. This can also be found in the individual tour profile and changed in details just like the above example.

The PGMParentUrl is exclusively for the URL where the tours are displayed. Please keep in mind the visits you see on “Parent URL” may vary depending on the site’s cookie settings and the users browser settings (some safari hits may not be recorded due to cookie policies)

So there it is, you can now connect Google Analytics to your virtual tours and get honest and clear visitor views using your own Google Analytics account.

If you have any questions or remarks, please let us know by commenting below or send us an email, open a chat or call us, we love hearing from you!