For example, an event is triggered each time a user:
- views a page
- scrolls down a page
- downloads a file
In Google Analytics, the events from these examples are given the following names:
- page_view
- scroll
- file_download
Event count is the number times one of these events is triggered. For example an event count of 1,478 next to the page_view event means that there have been 1,478 pageviews.
An event count of 746 alongside the scroll event means there have been 746 scrolls down a page. Is that good? I don't know.
The meaning of the count depends on the event it's connected with.
There are a few cases where an extra event is generated besides a user action. For example when a user makes their first visit to your website, a first-visit event is triggered as well as a page_view event.
As you can see, events are very detailed, and so event counts get very large. This volume of data is useful when you want to look very closely at a particular page, or part of the page. However, when summarised it's overwhelming.
For example, Google Analytics might present you with a graph like this:
But what does this mean? The best you can say is "stuff is happening" and "more stuff happens during the week than at weekends".
It's hard to go much further than that, because this graph is a combination of such varied things. Publishing some long articles may result in more scroll events. If your cookies are set to expire after 2 months then you'll get more first_visit events that with a longer expiry interval, because Google will lose track of who people are.
Events are useful. But mostly they're useful when you pull them into explorations, not on the Events Page.