During the turn of the last century, the automobile radically transformed transportation across all walks of life. In the 1920′s people all over the United Stated and Europe first embraced the freedom the Ford Model T provided. In little less then one hundred years the cities and countries of the world have build massive infrastructure to support the automobile. Although opinions on this massive transformation varies, the fact is that most of the world and especially America, for better or for worse, is married to the automobile.

All relationship must change to service, and so must the relationship between man and his mode. The total amount of petroleum consumed by transportation accounted for 71% of the United Stated’s petroleum consumption. Additionally, transportation uses energy less efficiently then the electrical grid. For decades these two systems, the electrical grid and the transportation system, have been completely separate consumers of energy, but today these two technological systems are converging with the introduction of practical electric vehicles. This does not include most hybrids vehicle because many hybrids relied on the gasoline engine to charge batteries or fuel cells. Currently, there are only a few thousand completely electric cars on the roads of the world, but in the coming years these numbers are likely to increase dramatically. The residential sector was the third largest consuming sector of renewable energy until it was exceeded by the transportation sector in 2006.

Tesla Motors introduced the Tesla Electric Roadster several years ago. With the power, performance & price of a Lamborghini, the Roadster will never be a commonly available car. The technology behind the vehicle, however, has fueled the race to make a commercially practical electric vehicle. 2012 is year that Tesla plans to roll out the Model S, a completely electric four door car. With a price tag of $50,000 this vehicle coule easily sell thousands of units, and while the numbers of Model S cars sold will pail in comparison to total car sales, a trend in electric cars will drastic shift in the way we interact with the road and the grid.

Google’s driverless car project is likely to take human error out of the transportation equation. Once vehicles are automated, certain efficiencies can be introduced. More cars will be able to drive on highway, or be redirected automatically when gridlock traffic is detected by another vehicle. MIT Media Labs’s CityCar group is working on a semi-autonomous shared car to replace short distance driving such as commuting and shopping trips. Shared electric automobiles also hold the promise of storing additional energy generated by renewables such as wind and solar.

Battery technologies such as solid state Li batteries improve the distance these vehicle can travel as they become more efficient in capacity per volume. Additionally, when the car is not in use, local producered of electricity, such as domestic solar panels will be able to store unused energy in the excess capacity of the car’s battery. Currently, solar panels installed on homes and offices generate electricity and sell it back to the power company to put back on the grid. Smart transformers are paving the way for true local sustainable energy production, by directing electricity in the way information is sent through the internet. Instead of having one source, like water directed from a single municipal water treatment plant, any producer could share with a consumer.

The electric vehicles of tomorrow will transform global transportation, and revolutionize modern life in ways that most people can not imagine. Henry Ford once said that if he asked his customers what they wanted, they would say “faster horses”. If you asked people today what they want in a car, they might say “more miles to the gallon”.

Available Methods

The most efficient way to describe user traffic in terms of downloads and link activity is through an Event Handler encapsulated in an “a tag”.

onclick=”pageTracker.trackEvent(‘Catagory’, ‘Action’, ‘Label (optional)’, ‘Value (optional interger)’);”

There are two standard event handlers provided by Google Analytics. The first is trackPage method. This method uses a single variable to define the page the user is on. When this method is called a “virtual pageviews” is created. While this method is useful in some cases, for instance counting PDF downloads as pageviews; this method removes user data such as referral information, artificially inflates pageviews, and can only measure one variable.

Therefore, the best method to track user interaction on a webpage is with the trackEvent Handler.

Naming Convention

A clear naming convention is extremely important for tracking multiple. For Event Tracking there are four variables that can be defined, 2 required variables and 2 optional variables. The first two are the Category and the Action. These variables are both strings. The optional variables are the Label and a Value. The Label is a string and the Value is an integer.

The naming convention for tracking link traffic can be defined as the kind of link for the Category, the name of the link for the Title, and the page the event happed for the Label. If you were tracking a value, such as the length of time spent on the page, the price of a purchased item, or a value of a given measurement, the Value variable could be used to track this information.

onclick=”pageTracker.trackEvent(‘Callout’, ‘Plan Your Visit – StyleA (NY) [purchase tickets]‘, currentPage);”

When defining the naming convention for downloads, a separate Category can be used and the remaining variables can be defined accordingly. For a PDF the Category would be Download, the Title would be the kind of PDF such as Curriculum or Visitor’s guide, and the Label would be the name of the file.

onclick=”pageTracker._trackEvent(‘Download’, ‘Visitor Guide’, ‘guide_spanish.pdf’);”

Defining Custom Variables

In cases where a custom variable is needed to track specific information, such as the pathname of the page the visitor is currently on, a JavaScript variable can be created in an independent script. This snippet can be inserted in a separate script file or on the page itself. As long as the script sets the variable before the Event occurs, this is a reliable way to track custom information.

<script type=”text/javascript” language=”javascript”>
var currentPage = document.location.pathname;
</script>

In the above example it is important to note the Google Analytics already track the page an event occurs on, however this cannot be formatted and will include variable after & $ making pathnames vary long and fracture. It can also be difficult to cross-reference this information against other metrics.

Implementation

To implement an event tracker, the JavaScript handler must be placed in the appropriate <a> tag. Once the event handler is set, data should begin showing up in Google Analytics the following day. If no analytics appear after 24 hours, it is likely that something is set incorrectly. Always ensure that the links and interactive elements being tested has sufficient traffic or else no information will appear in the report.

<a href=”https://www.ovationtix.com”
onclick=”pageTracker._trackEvent(‘Callout’, ‘Plan Your Visit – StyleA (NY) [purchase tickets]‘, currentPage);”>

<a href=”images/content/pdf/new_york/foreign/guide_spanish.pdf” 
onclick=”pageTracker._trackEvent(‘Download’, ‘Visitor Guide’, ‘guide_spanish.pdf’);”>

Interpreting Data

Once user data begins to appear, it can be viewed in Google Analytics under Content > Event Tracking. This section will include the Category and other variables tracked over time.