Custom Events in Your Dashboard

Once you’ve implemented custom event tracking on your website, you can view and analyze this data in your Betterlytics dashboard. This guide covers how to access and interpret your custom event data.

Accessing Your Custom Events

Events Page

Navigate to Dashboard > Events to access the dedicated custom events page. This page provides two main views of your event data:

1. Event Details Table - Summary statistics for each event type
2. Event Log - Real-time feed of individual events as they occur

Your main dashboard also includes a Custom Events section that shows a quick overview of your most frequent events.

Event Details Table

The main events table displays summary statistics for each custom event type you’ve tracked:

Available Columns

• Event Name - The name of your custom event (e.g., “button-click”, “form-submit”)
• Count - Total number of times this event occurred
• Unique Users - Number of different visitors who triggered this event
• Avg per User - Average number of times each user triggered this event
• Last Seen - When this event was last recorded
• Percentage - What percentage of all events this represents

Viewing Event Properties

When you click on an event in the table, it expands to show:

• Property names - All custom properties you’ve sent with this event
• Property values - The most common values for each property
• Value distribution - Visual bars showing the relative frequency of each value

For example, if you track a “category-card-click” event with properties like category names and category IDs, you’ll see:

• Which category cards are clicked most
• The distribution of category IDs
• The distribution of category names

Event Log (Real-time Feed)

The Event Log provides a continuously updating feed of events happening on your website, ideal for monitoring real-time activity.

What’s Displayed

Each event entry shows:

• Event name and timestamp
• Visitor ID (last 6 characters for privacy)
• Device type (desktop, mobile, tablet)
• Browser (Chrome, Firefox, etc.)
• Country code (ISO Alpha-2 code)
• Page URL where the event occurred
• Custom properties (up to 3 properties displayed as badges)

The log refreshes automatically every 30 seconds to capture the latest events. It supports infinite scrolling, allowing you to browse historical activity. At the bottom of the log, a counter displays the total number of events recorded since logging began.

Dashboard Filters

Use the standard dashboard filters to segment your custom events:

• Time Range - View events from specific time periods
• Query Filters - Filter by specific criteria (URLs, countries, etc.)

All filters apply to both the Event Details Table and Event Log.

Understanding Your Data

Gain deeper insights into how users interact with your website through event-level analysis.

Event Frequency Analysis

The Event Details Table helps you understand:

• Which events are most popular (highest count)
• Which events have the broadest reach (highest unique users)
• Which events are most engaging (highest avg per user)
• Event recency (last seen timestamps)

User Behavior Insights

The Event Log gives a live view into:

• Real-time user activity on your website
• Device and browser patterns for different events
• Geographic distribution of event activity
• Which pages generate the most events

Property Analysis

When you expand events to view properties, you can see:

• Most common property values for each event
• Distribution patterns in your data
• Count of unique values to gauge variability in your data

Common Use Cases

E-commerce Tracking

For online stores, you might track:

• product-view events with category and price properties
• add-to-cart events with product_id and quantity properties
• checkout-step events with step and total properties

Content Engagement

For content sites, you might track:

• article-read events with category and reading_time properties
• video-play events with video_id and duration properties
• download events with file_type and file_name properties

SaaS Applications

For web applications, you might track:

• feature-used events with feature_name and user_plan properties
• signup-step events with step and source properties
• upgrade-click events with current_plan and target_plan properties

Troubleshooting

Events Not Appearing

If your events aren’t showing in the dashboard:

1. Check your implementation - Ensure the betterlytics.event() function is being called correctly
2. Verify event names - Make sure event names match exactly between your code and dashboard
3. Check time range - Expand the time range filter to see older events
4. Review browser console - Look for JavaScript errors that might prevent events from firing

Low Event Counts

If you see fewer events than expected:

1. Timing issues - Events might be firing before the analytics script loads. In this case, see Handling Async Script Loading
2. Conditional code - Check if events are only firing under certain conditions
3. User behavior - Events might be less frequent than anticipated

Missing Properties

If event properties aren’t showing:

1. Property format - Ensure properties are passed as a simple object
2. Data types - Use strings, numbers, or booleans for property values
3. Nested objects - Avoid deeply nested objects as they may not display properly

Data Retention

Your custom event data is stored according to your plan’s data retention policy. The dashboard shows:

• Real-time data in the Event Log
• Aggregated summaries in the Event Details Table
• Historical trends based on your selected time range

Related: Learn how to implement custom event tracking to start collecting the data you see in this dashboard.

Questions about viewing custom events? Join our Discord community  for help!