Need help using Javascript to insert an onclick event

Question

I am attempting to use Event tracking in Google Analytics. In order to achieve this I need to add an onclick attribute to certain links (The ones I was asked to track) like so:

<a href="http://www.example.com" onclick="trackOutboundLink('http://www.example.com');  return false;">Check out example.com</a>

The CMS I am using does not have an option to add onclick events to the menu and I don't want to track every link in the main navigation. I only have a beginner's level understanding of javascript, but I have been looking for a way to use it to insert the onclick status above to only certain href values.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Alternatively, if you would like to use your existing trackOutboundLink function, this would attach a click event to all outboud links going to http://www.example.com:

$(function() {
  // adding onclick event to this particular link
  $('a[href="http://www.example.com"]').click(function(event) {
    // preventing the user from navigating away from the page, temporarily
    event.preventDefault();
    // GA tracking
    trackOutboundLink('http://www.example.com');
    // continue default behavior for the click
    window.location = 'http://www.example.com';
  }); // end click event
}); // end document ready

You may want to consider redirecting the user using the callback hitCallback:

ga('send', {
            'hitType': 'event',
            'eventCategory': '...',
            'eventAction': '...',
            'eventLabel': '...',
            'hitCallback': function(){
                // redirect:
                window.location = 'http://www.example.com';
            }
        }

Answer 2

You can embed the GA send method into the onclick:

onclick="ga('send','event','outbound','click','http://www.example.com');"

This would likely do what the trackOutboundLink function does (assuming you were basing your example from this https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1136920?hl=en).

Answer 3

There seems nothing wrong in your syntax, its probably the quotes that are causing the problem.

<a href="http://www.example.com"  onclick=" trackOutboundLink('http://www.example.com'); return false; ">Check out example.com</a>