This document provides an oveview of screens and how to measure screen views using the Google Analytics SDK for Android v2.
Overview
Screens in Google Analytics represent content users are viewing within your app. The equivalent concept in web analytics is a pageview. Measuring screen views allows you to see which content is being viewed most by your users, and how are they are navigating between different pieces of content.
A screen view consists of a single string
field that will
be used as the screen name in your Google Analytics reports.
Screen view data is used primarily in the following Google Analytics reports:
- Screens report
- Engagement Flow
- Goal Flow
Implementation
The following sections will desribe how to implement screen measurement using either an EasyTracker or an advanced implementation. If you are using EasyTracker, you'll have the option to implement automatic screen measurement.
Automatic Screen Measurement (EasyTracker)
If you are using EasyTracker, you can use automatic screen measurement to
easily measure each of your app's Activities
as screens.
To enable automatic Activity
measurement:
- Add EasyTracker methods to all of your
Activities
- Set the
ga_autoActivityTracking
parameter in youranalytics.xml
file. - Give each of your
Activities
a screen name in youranalytics.xml
file.
Here's an example snippet from an analytics.xml
file once
automatic Activity
measurement has been enabled:
<-- Enable automatic Activity measurement --> <bool name="ga_autoActivityTracking">true</bool> <-- The screen names that will appear in your reporting --> <string name="com.example.app.BaseActivity">Home</string> <string name="com.example.app.PrefsActivity">Preferences</string>
Manual Screen Measurement
You can also manually send a screen view by calling
sendView()
. Even if you're already using EasyTracker's
automatic screen measurement, you can manually send screen views to
measure user engagement with Fragments
or other content that
might not be an Activity
.
sendView()
is usually called in the
onStart()
callback of an Activity
or
Fragment
as win the following example:
/** * Within an Activity or Fragment */ @Override public void onStart() { super.onStart(); ... // Your other onStart() code. myTracker.sendView("Home Screen"); // Where myTracker is an instance of Tracker. }