We know that Google Analytics tracks the UTM params present on the url during all eCommerce navigation.
One thing that i cant find over the Analytics Documentation is the following:
Does google Analytics reset the UTM params after the transaction has been made?
Take the following usecase as an example:
User clicks on Google Ads
User enter in the website with google ads UTMs.
User finish purchase (so Order Channel = Google Analytics)
User forgot to buy one item
He add the content to cart and finish the second purchase
The second order has the same UTM from the first purchase?
][`s
No, the traffic parameters go at session level so while the user dont end the session (no hits for 30 mins on default) or access with another traffic source on the same session the source, medium and campaign should be the same.
On the example you gave both transactions would be attributed to the same session, source, medium and campaign.
Hope it help!
Related
We have a problem with E-Commerce transactions sometimes not beeing set in relation to an ad click ("cpc"). They appear instead with the Channel/Medium "direct". This is a problem as we cannot correctly link our revenue to the costs spend on Google Ads.
We got a payment system that allows buyers to safely pay to sellers, and we get a fee percentage of the payment volume (similar like PayPal). We get our fees as soon as a pay-in is successful. Because our users can pay via bank wire as well it may take one or two days until we actually get our fee. This is why ecommerce transactions are not sent from the frontend to GA (on a thank-you page like in online shops), but from our server directly to GA as soon as a payment succeeds.
This is the GET call our server does when a payment succeeds:
GET https://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&tid=UA-XXXXXX-1&cid=1746XXXXX.1593XXXXXXX&t=transaction&ti=mytransactionID&tr=1&cu=USD
Here is a small diagram that explains the process:
We use cross-domain tracking, and the GA Client ID of the users stay the same when they get redirected from mydomain.com to app.mydomain.com, so this should not be the problem. What I assume is, that when a user clicks on an ad, the gclid of the ad is lost. Is there a way to manually send the gclid ID to Google Analytics? I would store the gclid then as well in our payment. Or is there another (maybe better way) to send transactions to GA?
Your transaction hit will only be attributed to ad-click session if payment occurs in a 30-minutes interval since the last hit with the same ID. Otherwise, the transaction hit would start a new session. Due to 'last-non-direct' rule the new session would only be associated with "cpc" channel if there were no other intermediate sessions after ad click. Please check the Google Analytics extensive overview for deeper insight.
Storing and passing gclid might help, however, this might result in some discrepancies in cost reporting since there would be several sessions for the same click. In the case of passing gclid it's recommended to pass at least two hits:
a simple pageview hit with a dummy location parameter containing gclid
and then later a transaction hit with the same location paraeter. In that case you'll be able to see your transactions as a separate sessions with a distinct landing pages
You should make sure you're using the GA client id in the Measurement protocol hit to ensure the hit gets stitched to the other hits of that user.
Now regarding reporting: Google Analytics uses the attribution model "Last non-direct Click", despite the hit being sent later, GA will ignore direct and use the previous touch point which should be the PPC campaign.
There shouldn't be an issue there. Which report are you using to see the transaction appear as direct, rather than Paid Search?
On a website with affiliate links, where there is no programmatic access to the conversion logs, I treat it as offline conversions.
My Setup
Online
A user visit my website, see the affiliated ad and a promotion view hit is being sent.
When the user clicks the ad, a promotion click hit is being sent and the user is redirected to another page on my site.
On the "redirection page", an product view hit is being sent, and the user is being redirected to the affiliation link, passing his Google Analytics clientId.
Offline
Once a week I download the stats from the affiliate program, which looks something like:
clientId visits conversions revenue
4444444444.3333333333 1 0 $0
1234567890.1234567890 1 1 $16.40
Then I use the Measurement Protocol to send offline events:
For each line of visit, I send a product click hit.
For each line of conversion, I send a product purchase hit.
My Problem
The conversion shows up on the eCommerce report:
Because the offline hits are being sent after the original session is already closed, a new session is opened which doesn't contain the info about the user.
So I can't see the conversion on the demographic report, for example:
Optional Solution?
I'm thinking of using the user-id feature of Google Analytics.
Even though the users are not identified, I can identify them by their clientId.
Sure, this is not what Google intended when they introduced that feature, but I believe it will solve my issue. I'm just not sure about the negatives.
My Questions
Any feedback on my setup?
Why is it even necessary to pass the clientId after the session is closed? what kind of information is being shared between the real session and the offline hit?
Is it a bad idea to pass the clientId as a userId to Google Analytics? Why?
Relevant Articles
A Comprehensive Guide to Tracking Offline Interactions in Google Analytics using the Measurement Protocol
Google Universal Analytics isn’t Linking Offline and Online User Properly
We were able to link offline action through as you did with measurement protocol but the problem is that those sessions are not included in demographic and age report.
Rather looking those report I used them to do segmented analysis E.g. pages they have look at, sources they used to come also I used it with attribution model to understand best channels to drive more conversions.
Yes you can use CID as a user ID but I haven't tried it with offline tracking. Share the result with us.
A client of mine is having some issues with regards to tracking campaigns in Google Analytics that I was hoping one of you can advise me on.
They have recently sent out an email with the Google Analytics campaign information in the links back to the site from a button in the email (link created with the URL builder).
As well as the Google Analytics information they also send their own parameter for tracking using a bespoke system of theirs. In the end the url that visitors would go to after clicking the button in the email was something along these lines:
http://www.domain.com/pagename/?bespokecampaign=lead_gen/email/email_btn/boxcampaign&utm_source=email_pure&utm_medium=email&utm_term=email_btn&utm_campaign=boxcampaign
Looking at Acquisitions in the Google Analytics report I can see in the past this page has been viewed and has the correct Source/Medium set as email_pure/email.
However, there was a lead gen form that was filled out on the site after landing on this particular page that sends an event action that the form was filled out. When trying to view the campaign information for these events I do not see any information regarding the Source / Medium for that event being the correct information from the URL.
The Salesforce model in place to receive these leads took the referrer URL correctly, containing the Google Analytics parameters, but there was no record in Analytics to suggest one of the form events had the Source/Medium of email_pure/email.
Does anyone have any ideas on what could be causing this and potential fixes?
Is there any way to check an user is redirected to my site via Google Ads?
I want to track number of user who are redirected via Google Ads and their activities.
I have Google Analytics, Adword added already to my website.
I can track users on my site via Google Analytics only.
You can link your AdWords account to your Analytics account. Once you have done this, you will be able to see how many users came via AdWords in the "AdWords" section of the Acquisition area of Analytics. You'll see which campaigns & ads the users clicked, what key words they used and so on. You can then do all the usual GA filtering and grouping with that data that you usually can with normal visit info.
Hope that helps.
Let's say that a person clicks on an ad on Facebook and lands on a page
http://www.store.com/product-page?utm_source=ad-agency-name&utm_medium=facebook&utm_content=fruit&utm_campaign=company-name
Than it closes a browser.
Later that day a person visits same page again by writing url directly in browser and purchases a product.
Google Analytics eCommerce tracking code is implemented on thank you page of that store.
Will Google Analytics eCommerce show this transaction's source as '(direct)' or as 'facebook'?
They will show this as "facebook". Google says that visits are attributed to the last marketing channel (for transaction attribution this is explicitely stated in the documentation but is also true just for visits).
Direct/Bookmarked visits are not a marketing channel according to Google. If there is already campaign info stored the visit will be attributed to the campaign (so a direct visit in GA is actually a direct visit by someone who has no prior campaign exposure or has deleted his GA cookie).
Btw. this means that campaign conversions will be overcounted at the expense of direct visits, if you need a more realistic picture you would have to look at the multichannel funnels which attribute to the "real" medium, not the marketing channel.