Measure retention on specific page using Google Analytics

Question

We have a browser games portal and would like to measure retention for specific games via Google Analytics.

So, basically, the question we want to answer with data is this one: Of the people who play game X, what % returns to game X within 7 days.

In our case, a game play is a pageview (or an impression with the game name in a custom dimension).

Analytics has User Retention, but as I understand this, it's only on a sitewide level by default.

We tried making custom segments for specific games, but the problem is that we want to access this data programmatically.

Is there a way to achieve our goal via User Retention (ga:cohortRetentionRate) or should we look for a proxy metric?

Answer 1

To set this up you'll need two additions to your code:

1. Set a Cookie value for the game they're playing. Maybe just steal the path. Attach the event to game activation.
2. Custom event if this cookie is already set and matches the game they're playing.

The code would look like this (after GA container initiation):

var gameID = window.location.pathname; // Example uses a path grab
if (!!$.cookie(gameID)) {
ga('send', {
hitType: 'event',
eventCategory: 'Games',
eventAction: 'replay',
eventLabel: gameID
});
} else {
$.cookie(gameID, 1, {expires: 7}); // Cookie expires after 7 days.
ga('send', {
hitType: 'event',
eventCategory: 'Games',
eventAction: 'first play',
eventLabel: gameID
});
}

Anything can be used for the gameID and custom events can be shortened to:

ga('send', 'event', 'Games', 'first play', gameID);

You can then pull reports based on general first plays, and compare it to replays. This cookie doesn't unset so you'll get multiple hits from the same user on the custom event. If you don't want this, check the cookie value with the 'if' statement and set it on the replay event. So no value=set cookie, 1=replay event, 2=do nothing.

Answer 2

I'm not sure if there is a way to do that in analytics. But what you can do is create a new tracking code and site, and put that tracking code on only the page with the game. That will tell you how many returning users there to that page alone.