I have question regarding integration Google Analytics 4 into Prestashop. My company has setup some years ago Universal Analytics. Now that Google forces everyone to slowly migrate to Google Analytics 4 I was tasked to do it.
I have created GA4 property, inserted gtag into site's code and connected it to the existing UA tag on the site. Everything is working fine, user's data is here except for revenue. Do I need to manually add everywhere custom events as in this documentation? https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/ga4/ecommerce?client_type=gtag
I know that they are Prestashop modules for this but they are paid and because of this aren't a option. Also current Google Analytics module don't support GA4
Yes, the url you posted describes ecommerce implementation through gtag. If that's what you're doing, then yes, to get revenue, products, transactions and the rest of EEC-related data, you'll have to implement it as described there.
Most of people choose to implement GA4 through GTM since it's much easier to manage and maintain there. But if the intention is to have tracking with the front-end team, then direct use of gtag may be justified.
Related
I have an old ecommerce platform that tracks what products are sold (names, price, transaction), gives us a return on Adwords spend etc. This is performed well by an old Urchin code in Google Analytics without any additional configuration.
Very surprised to see that by default in Universal Analytics when couple with OpenCart etc - even with Ecommerce switched on in Google Analytics, there is no Google Analytics ecommerce product data tracking.
Can this only be provided through Google Tag Manager by finding your product variables add then adding a datalayer with GTM?
Since Urchin was oldest version of google analytics, after that google had introduced synchronous, asynchronous and currently running version is universal.So it is recommended to upgrade google analytics code.
After upgrading analytics code it is mandatory to upgrade your google analytics ecommerce tracking code.
and if you are using google tag manager then you have to push all ecommerce details in dataLayer. And it is quite simple in case of opencart.
I worked on opencart multiple time, if you are looking to google analytics ecommerce tracking solution then follow this blog http://www.notesonclick.com/blog/ecommerce-tracking-in-opencart-2-3/
for enhance ecommerce tracking , search on google for extension
More or less. You could implement your GA code via a custom HTML tag without a proper datalayer, but even so you would have to create variables within GTM that you can pass to the GA tag. But if you want to use the Tag Template you got to have a datalayer in the format specified by Google.
Searching for "Open Cart Enhanced E-Commerce-Tracking Google" brings up several affordable extensions that promise to create an appropriate dataLayer for GTM (yoi do not usually "add a dataLayer with GTM - if at all possible you create the dataLayer on the server and pass it to GTM. You can write to the dataLayer from within GTM, but that's a bit of a hack).
I'm trying to find a web site/resource that has a working demo of Google Analytics to use.
As I have no website etc to be able to link my Analytics account to, I have no way of reviewing/learning to use Google Analytics.
Is anyone aware of such a demo available to the public?
Are you're asking for is a site where you can see GA working?
Years ago I set up 3 unusual but extremely effective GA learning sites mainly for myself (so they are crude).
I still use 2 of them today with Real Time reporting and Chrome extensions dataSlayer & WASP.
They accept your own Web Property ID (UA-xxxxx.yy) and save it in a cookie so the data goes into your own account.
Captures data to be sent to GA.
It's currently at http://cyclonal.com.
It still uses Classic GA (_gaq) - any offers to upgrade it to Universal gladly accepted
I also cloned a site used by the GA Dev team's (with permission)
It tested almost every feature of GA at the time.
Which is at http://cyclonal.com/g (has a history of the site link in the footer)
Finally, and probably what you may want to clone/create yourself, is a free form version of the concepts behind the above sites at http://cyclonal.com/sandbox/codeExec
Let me know if that works for you.
Google team released a Google Analytics demo account: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6367342?hl=en#access You can start "playing" with this account to get familiarized with google analytics api!
I attended a recent analytics conference and it was beaten into everyone that anyone capturing analytics data should be using google tag manager.
I understood that it was of primary value to those wanting to make changes/maintenance, without access to the code.
Since I'm a developer, we already define our analytics tracking code in one spot, for the entire site.
What are the benefits of using it for developers?
I think you would get a better response and discussion by asking it in either the Google Plus - Google Tag Manager Community (lots of devs, even Google's main GTM devs) or on the Google Tag Manager forum.
I'm attempting to learn how to incorporate Google Analytics and custom event tracking on a new website. After researching into it, I can't seem to understand the difference and relationship between Google Tag Manager and just writing custom event tracking code.
Is Google Tag Manager just an easier way to track information without having to write JS?
Yes - Google Tag Manager is a "Tag Management System" wherein you can implement a lot of tags external of a typical development release cycle.
Adding tags without efficient management prompts big problems. All that code bogs down your site. Redundant or incorrectly applied tags can distort your measurement and result in duplicate costs or missing data. And it can be time-consuming for the IT department or webmaster team to add new tags, which means important marketing and measurement programs can be delayed. With Google Tag Manager, you eliminate these problems—and run your campaigns when you need them. -- source
Marketing and tracking services provide “tags” — snippets of code you’re often asked to embed right before the end of your tag — and they’re relatively easy to use, but when more than a few tags are involved, managing them can be a tedious task. This is where Google’s new Tag Manager comes in, which consolidates all of your site’s tags into a single admin panel. Now, you only have to include one automatically-updated snippet on your site. -- source
A Tag Management System (TMS) is solution that controls the deployment of externally hosted Javascript "page tags", very similar to what a Content Management System does for content. Probably the most known tag-based application known is Google Analytics, but other apps include simple social media interactions such as the Facebook Like or Tweet This buttons to more complex systems such as the Intense Debate or Disqus comments systems. -- source
So in your question, you can implement google analytics via custom event tracking code or you can install google tag manager and then code all your custom google analytics event hooks in it.
The google analytics is for user tracking and website traffic analysis and statistics.
The Tag manager is to manage plugin to website like google analytics basically they are different.
You could add google analytics to your tag manager account and the only plugin you will add to your website it the tag manager
i have tried this already.
hoping this was helpful.
thanks (=
Let me share my experience of implementing custom event tracking with Google Tag Manager.
Goggles Tag Manager (GTM) is a layer between your website and Google Analytics (GA).
We can use GA code for event tracking but in this case we have to write JavaScript in the website code. We have to look for event and need to add GA code inside that event handler. Since we have updated code, now we have to wait for the code release cycle to make it available to live site.
Using GTM it is possible to handle custom event tracking without adding code to the website and we can test our implementation with GTM inbuilt debugger before deploying to production website, at anytime.
And there is one more design pattern where we can implement generic custom event tracking for the whole website without adding JavaScript, but adding data-attributes to links, buttons or div- what ever event we want to track just add your data-attributes to the link and those attributes will go to GTM trigger and if it matches the rule, that event will be tracked. This design pattern is good for any kind of generic custom event tracking. I have implemented custom click tracking number of times using this pattern, and I am happy with it.
Google Tag Manager makes tagging easy as it has quite a few builtin dom variables and event handlers for Click, Pageview, Custom Events etc.
It also allows you to manage various external vendors and sends them the data they need. (I.e., Facebook pixel)
It really is a great eco-system for non-developers to get involved in tagging and event tracking.
I have a client that runs a number of sites and I manage some of them. They are a large company so they have had a premium Google Analytics account for some time, likely because another project requested it and it was upgraded across the board.
Enter me, one project we are working on is improving the data we track in GA. Step one of my plan was to upgrade to analytics.js & the new universal tracking code and to add ecommerce tracking. Seemed simple enough, I've already done it for other clients.
Well I just discovered that premium account can not use the new universal tracking code. Insane move by Google IMO, I don't understand who signed off on giving free accounts a feature that premium accounts don't have access to but alas it is what it is. Source: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/upgrade/
I'm wondering what the best course of action is. Ideas:
Use the "old" method using ga.js--annoying because I'll have to rewrite everything once Google turns on support for premium accounts, I enjoy double the billable hours but would rather be more efficient
Downgrade part of the account--huge headaches here too, presumably whoever wanted premium to begin with will continue wanting it. Don't think I can seperate out only my projects without losing all past data.
Something else that will solve my problem? I'm hoping there's a plan I've overlooked.
Have you thought about implementing Google Tag Manager? By using GTM, you could
create a new universal analytics (analytics.js) account
create a google tag manager account
create a staging environment and add GTM to that
add both your ga.js and analytics.js accounts to GTM
QA and push to production
When analytics.js comes out of beta and is enabled for premium, simply do the migration and move your ga.js tracking code over to the analytic.js tags you've already setup.
I've written about the benefits of using dual-tagging using google tag manager in a blog post, but I think it's your best bet for not having to redo your implementation.