Google Analytics
Printed From: ProductCart E-Commerce Solutions
Category: ProductCart
Forum Name: Search Engine Optimization
Forum Description: Talk about ways to optimize your ProductCart store for search engines
URL: https://forum.productcart.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=3937
Printed Date: 21-November-2024 at 4:53pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Google Analytics
Posted By: dccreatives
Subject: Google Analytics
Date Posted: 19-August-2010 at 11:37am
| We seem to be having gross undereporting of our orders in google analytics. I am not sure what the issue is. We have installed our code correctly, as per product cart tech support, and yet we seem to only have less than half of our orders recorded. Does anyone out there have any advice? |
Replies:
Posted By: ITistic
Date Posted: 19-August-2010 at 9:35pm
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Hi, What payment processors are you using on your store? If you're using Google Checkout then most likely this is causing the discrepancy. Any chance we can get a link to the store in question? Also, if you're using the 3.x build of ProductCart you'll need to use the legacy Analytics code. I don't think this is the problem, though, as typically it would not work at all if you were using the wrong code, whereas yours is working sometimes. ------------- Shawn Berg Owner / Project Manager (877) iTISTIC / (877) 484-7842 http://www.iTistic.com"> 
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Posted By: dccreatives
Date Posted: 19-August-2010 at 10:25pm
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We are using Authorize.net, Google checkout and Paypal. About 85% of our orders come through Authorize.net so I don't think it's a Google Checkout issue. I have seen specifically Google checkout orders post to analytics so I know that it's working in that sense.
Here's a link to the store: [redacted]. We are running version 4.0a SP4 and we have the most current analytics code as per the product cart wiki article.
Any ideas?
Thanks.
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Posted By: ITistic
Date Posted: 20-August-2010 at 9:52am
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What percentage of your orders aren't being reported in Analytics? ------------- Shawn Berg Owner / Project Manager (877) iTISTIC / (877) 484-7842 http://www.iTistic.com">
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Posted By: dccreatives
Date Posted: 20-August-2010 at 11:12am
| At least 50%. |
Posted By: razorclicks
Date Posted: 20-August-2010 at 12:55pm
| I can PM the data showing the discrepancy that dccreatives was referring to. It is across the board underreporting, even the transactions from AdWords. AdWords will show 138 conversions, and GA will show only 66 of them. Same for revenue and other ecommerce data. Visits as compared to clicks being reported in AdWords are off, but not by that much (which may be normal for GA). We need someone to investigate this issue and will compensate for the service. |
Posted By: ProductCart
Date Posted: 20-August-2010 at 1:13pm
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Everyone: just like we told dccreatives in a ticket that they recently opened on this topic, you need to contact Google Analytics on this. There's nothing we can think of on this side that would cause the discrepancy. The same code runs at the end of every transaction (the code included in "inc-GoogleAnalytics.asp"). Maybe there is a known issue that they are working on on their side. Specifically, if you http://www.google.com/search?q=analytics%20underreporting%20ecommerce%20transactions - do a search on this issue , you will see that there are many other users reporting problems. ------------- The ProductCart Team Home of ProductCart http://www.productcart.com" rel="nofollow - shopping cart software |
Posted By: razorclicks
Date Posted: 20-August-2010 at 1:27pm
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ProductCart, we really understand that you aren't familiar with GA.
However, we believe that you are the most qualified to solve this issue.
Basically, the order information is not being transmitted to GA upon
each purchase. Here is one clue that I spotted - in the Top Content Report on GA, there are two pages that seem to be appearing when the order is completed, PurchaseComplete.asp, and OrderComplete.asp. I believe that order data is only transmitted to GA upon trigger of the page OrderComplete.asp. Please see this image. If we can resolve the order complete page, this problem with probably go away.  |
Posted By: ProductCart
Date Posted: 20-August-2010 at 1:33pm
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Not sure what you mean. We are very, very familiar with Google Analytics. We have been using it since its inception. Again, this does not appear to be a ProductCart issue. There are widespread reports of Google Analytics under-reporting e-commerce transactions, as indicated in our previous post. As for your message above, purchaseComplete.html is not a ProductCart page. It does NOT exist in ProductCart. ------------- The ProductCart Team Home of ProductCart http://www.productcart.com" rel="nofollow - shopping cart software |
Posted By: Greg Dinger
Date Posted: 21-August-2010 at 11:12am
Posted By: razorclicks
Date Posted: 23-August-2010 at 1:06pm
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Everyone, I apologize for coming across so rude. My assumption was that Early Impact's refusal to deal with this issue was due to their not supporting third party programs such as Google Analytics. Bottom line, here's the problem:
Greg - I mean you too... |
Posted By: ITistic
Date Posted: 23-August-2010 at 2:22pm
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Hi, We'd be happy to work with you to resolve your problem. Please send me a private message here or http://www.itistic.com/contact - contact me through our website . ------------- Shawn Berg Owner / Project Manager (877) iTISTIC / (877) 484-7842 http://www.iTistic.com">
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Posted By: ProductCart
Date Posted: 18-October-2010 at 3:44am
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An update on this issue. Shawn ended up finding what the problem was (thank you Shawn!): apostrophes in the product name were causing a JavaScript error, which led to the order not being passed successfully to Google Analytics. As soon as we located the issue, we created a fix and tested it successfully. Updated files have been posted to the ProductCart WIKI. http://wiki.earlyimpact.com/widgets/integrations/googleanalytics/ga_productcart#step_3_-_upload_the_productcart-google_analytics_files - Download them again . The only file that has changed is pc/inc-GoogleAnalytics.asp We apologize for not finding the problem earlier. ------------- The ProductCart Team Home of ProductCart http://www.productcart.com" rel="nofollow - shopping cart software |
Posted By: Brett
Date Posted: 18-October-2010 at 12:37pm
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So was this an actual ProductCart bug with apostrophes not being escaped in the data sent to GA? Or is this something third party related with the guys GA setup?
Do I need to patch my code with this fix? Does it affect all installations? |
Posted By: ProductCart
Date Posted: 18-October-2010 at 12:55pm
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Correct, it was a bug. The code was not properly handling product names that contained an apostrophe. When an order included a product whose name contained an apostrophe, there was a JavaScript error that resulted in the data not being passed successfully to Google Analytics, thus the order not being displayed there. The vast majority of products do not contain an apostrophe in the product name, which is why the problem rarely surfaced. Still, we should have caught this earlier. To fix the issue, http://wiki.earlyimpact.com/widgets/integrations/googleanalytics/ga_productcart#step_3_-_upload_the_productcart-google_analytics_files - download the latest Google Analytics files . As mentioned above, the only file that has been altered to correct this problem is pc/inc-GoogleAnalytics.asp. Once you download the files, unzip them and upload the updated inc-GoogleAnalytics.asp to the "pc" folder. Note that the files to be downloaded are different depending on which tracking code your are currently using. See the WIKI for details. ------------- The ProductCart Team Home of ProductCart http://www.productcart.com" rel="nofollow - shopping cart software |
Posted By: Bosola 1
Date Posted: 03-January-2011 at 9:18am
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I think Google Analytics is generally pretty unreliable. The other day I had some very strange looking stats and found out it was just a slitch in the system. They up-dated to the correct ones about four hours later. |
Posted By: Hamish
Date Posted: 03-January-2011 at 10:06am
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Hi, I think it's pretty unfair to damn GA on one incidence which as you said yourself was a "glitch"! Google Analytics provides lots of potentially useful stats.
------------- Editing ProductCart Code? See http://wiki.earlyimpact.com/developers/editcode" rel="nofollow - WIKI Guidelines for Editing ProductCart's ASP Source Code |