{"id":718,"date":"2015-02-24T20:00:35","date_gmt":"2015-02-24T14:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/promincproductions.com\/blog\/?p=718"},"modified":"2016-02-04T18:50:25","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T12:50:25","slug":"undocumented-lessons-learned-implementing-google-analytics-universal-enhanced-ecommerce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/promincproductions.com\/blog\/undocumented-lessons-learned-implementing-google-analytics-universal-enhanced-ecommerce\/","title":{"rendered":"Undocumented Lessons Learned in Implementing Google Analytics Universal with Enhanced Ecommerce"},"content":{"rendered":"

While doing a recent update to a site Google Analytics implementation from the traditional codebase to Universal Analytics I came across a few things that I felt were missing from the documentation.<\/p>\n

I’ve chosen to implement Enhanced Ecommerce anaylitics – extra reporting is always a good thing and so why not do everything I can to ensure that an upgrade is as good as it can be. \u00a0Also, having come from years of working with Adobe Omniture (Adobe Anayltics), Enhanced Ecommerce reporting fills in some of the reporting that I feel is missing in Google Anayltics.<\/p>\n

\"Use
Implementing the Enhanced Ecommerce plugin for Google Analytics Universal opens some great new reports and insights on your sales funnel and product performance.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here is the official\u00a0Enhanced Ecommerce documentation from Google:
https:\/\/developers.google.com\/analytics\/devguides\/collection\/analyticsjs\/enhanced-ecommerce<\/a><\/p>\n

But now onto the the focus of this article.<\/p>\n

Undocumented Lessons Learned for Implementing Google Universal Analytics with Enhanced Ecommerce<\/h2>\n

Setup a Test Account<\/h3>\n

I didn’t do this. \u00a0Dumb. \u00a0I did all my coding in a development environment, and that allowed me to verify that my tags were sending data. \u00a0All must be good, right? \u00a0Well when I went live with the code, I found some of the issues that led me to write this post, and as a result we missed out on some order data, and it took me a few days to reconfigure some stuff to ensure that all of the data was sending correctly so that the reports work correctly and my custom metrics work how I wanted them to. \u00a0Had I setup another Google Analytics account to send test data to I could have alleviated some of these headaches and mistakes.<\/p>\n

Escape Quotes<\/h3>\n

Ensure you escape or remove quotes in your text strings sent to Google Analytics. \u00a0They could break your code if there are erroneous\u00a0quotes in your strings that then break your functions. \u00a0In other words, change things like this:<\/p>\n

ga('ec:setAction', 'purchase', {\r\n    'coupon': 'Quotes Don't Matter'\r\n});\r\n<\/code><\/pre>\n
To this:<\/p>\n
ga('ec:setAction', 'purchase', {\r\n    'coupon': 'Quotes Don\\'t Matter'\r\n});<\/code><\/pre>\n
Or this:<\/p>\n
ga('ec:setAction', 'purchase', {\r\n    'coupon': 'Quotes Dont Matter'\r\n});<\/code><\/pre>\n
See the difference? \u00a0The quote on the word\u00a0Don’t<\/em> was either escaped or removed. \u00a0Leaving it there would create invalid Javascript and break everything.<\/p>\n
ec:setAction<\/h3>\n
ec:setAction is used to track specific Ecommerce actions a user takes such as add a product to the cart, view a product detail page, checkout, etc. \u00a0Look at the official\u00a0documentation for the full list of what actions can all be used.<\/p>\n
You set the action with the setAction command – as an example:<\/p>\n
ga('ec:setAction', 'detail');<\/code><\/pre>\n
This does NOT get sent to Google Analytics until you send a hit –\u00a0such as a\u00a0page view, event, etc.<\/p>\n
But the hidden lesson here is this: you can NOT<\/strong><\/em> set multiple ec:setAction parameters\u00a0per hit. \u00a0Let me say that again differently: you can only set\u00a0ONE<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0ec:setAction parameter per hit request.<\/p>\n
So lets say on the order success \/ confirmation page you wish to use setAction to indicate that a purchase has been completed as well as set the Checkout step, you’d think you could do the following:<\/p>\n
\/* setAction - Purchase *\/\r\nga('ec:setAction', 'purchase', {\r\n 'id': 'PIP12345',\r\n 'affiliation': 'PromInc Productions Web Store',\r\n 'revenue': '99.99',\r\n 'tax': '2.85',\r\n 'shipping': '5.34',\r\n 'coupon': 'TUTORIAL'\r\n});\r\n\r\n\/* setAction - Checkout step *\/\r\nga('ec:setAction','checkout', {'step': 3});\r\n\r\n\/* pageview - Send Hit *\/\r\nga('send', 'pageview');\r\n<\/code><\/pre>\n
What happens here though, is that the pageview hit will send and pass the checkout step only with it. \u00a0The purchase setAction will NOT be sent.<\/p>\n
The correct way to make this work is to send one of the setAction parameters via the pageview hit. \u00a0Then set the second setAction for the checkout step and it to Google Analytics\u00a0with an event. \u00a0You can set the event to any values you’d like.<\/p>\n
\/* setAction - Purchase *\/\r\nga('ec:setAction', 'purchase', {\r\n 'id': 'PIP12345',\r\n 'affiliation': 'PromInc Productions Web Store',\r\n 'revenue': '99.99',\r\n 'tax': '2.85',\r\n 'shipping': '5.34',\r\n 'coupon': 'TUTORIAL'\r\n});\r\n\r\n\/* pageview - Send Hit *\/\r\nga('send', 'pageview');\r\n\r\n\/* setAction - Checkout step *\/\r\nga('ec:setAction','checkout', {'step': 3});\r\n\r\n\/* event - Purchase *\/\r\nga('send', 'event', 'Cart', 'Purchase', 'PIP12345');\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/code><\/pre>\n
checkout vs checkout_option<\/h3>\n
To measure the steps in the checkout process, set ec:setAction to checkout and give it a step number that is then further defined in the Admin section of Google Analytics. \u00a0But there is also a checkout_option that can be set on your ec:setAction. \u00a0Don’t go thinking like I did that just passing checkout_option would suffice for both. \u00a0checkout_option is just that – setting and option value to the checkout action. \u00a0But oddly enough, you can send the checkout_option data within the checkout.<\/p>\n
Confusing – I know.<\/p>\n
So here’s what I’ve come to accept as the best way to handle this scenario:<\/p>\n
ga('ec:setAction','checkout', {\r\n 'step': 1,\r\n 'option': 'Visa'\r\n});<\/code><\/pre>\n
Here you are sending the checkout action – which is required to populate the\u00a0Checkout Behavior Analysis<\/strong><\/em> report by defining which step this action correlates to. \u00a0Also however, you are passing a checkout_option value at the same time – in the case of this example stating the payment method used for this order.<\/p>\n
Shopping Behavior Analysis<\/em> Report\u00a0<\/h3>\n
The Shopping Behavior Analysis<\/strong> report is a cool new feature introduced by the Enhanced Ecommerce plugin in Universal Analytics. \u00a0To ensure the data flows into the report, you need to populate all of the ec:setAction parameters through out the customers lifecycle on your site.<\/p>\n