Blog

Recently, we had to analyse how users were interacting with a series of Flash videos. Data we need included the identities of videos that people were watching, the time they spent viewing them, and whether they reached for the pause button at any point.

In the past, lack of suitable technology has made it almost impossible to track user interaction in Flash. Luckily Google has now developed its own analytics tracking code which you can add to your flash movies.

When we added the Google actionscript code, we were able to catch any user-initiated actions and relay them to Google Analytics, along with the relevant movie name. In this way, we could get a complete analysis of the most popular videos.

As well giving us better understanding and more robust statistics for the success of our clients’ websites and features, the new technique is a major step forward when it comes to assessing the 'stickiness' of Flash interfaces and objects. Along with the development of sitemapping and history frameworks for Flash sites, the new Analytics code can be applied to larger projects to create fully searchable, bookmarkable and trackable Flash projects.

If you are a developer planning to add Google Analytics, one of the best tools in your armoury will be Firebug, a Firefox add-on that allows you to monitor any traffic passing out of Flash and into Google Analytics, along with the variables and commands you have given it. If you’re not familiar with it, give it a try!