Google analytics javascript webapp

Question

How do you setup google analytics to get an effective page views tracking while your app/website is based on a non reloading navigation (e.g. using a javascript navigation, history.js, angular or whatever js stuff that let your user browser with reloading the page) ?

I can see the use of events, but I'd still get a single page view per visitor., and a huge bounce rate

Answer 1

You would not get a huge bounce rate (I assume that is what you mean by rebound stat) since by default events count towards the bounce rate (i.e. somebody with a pageview and an event is not a bounce unless you set the event tracking code specifically not to affect the bounce rate).

More to the point, you can send virtual page views on your callback functions instead of events - that is if huge portions of the page content change you'd pass a made up url and a pagename to the pageview call (specifics depend on Google Analytics Version) and fire it after the function that changes the content. With Universal Analytics the info for the virtual pageview would go into the configuration object for the call:

ga('send', 'pageview', {
 'page': 'some/virtual/path',
 'title': 'Title for tracked view'
});

Even though the ressource at the url does not physically exist Google Analytics would still record it as page location if you send the call and thus allow you to distinguish individual views in your one-page app.