It might be a very stupid rocky question but I’ve never worked with Shopify before.
We have implemented Google Analytics via default functionality available with Shopify Plus. On top of it, I have added quite simple JS to track Consumer Funnel Steps and activated enhanced ecommerce feature.
One month later I have discovered the discrepancy in both number of transactions reported and the revenue that is nearly 50% which clearly indicates that something went wrong. My investigation has shown no patterns from the point of payment method/checkout process/device category. Our success manager told us that the process looks ok from their end and the issue is on our end.
Please help me to understand where else shall I look to identify the bug. Thanks!!
This is a common issue for Google Analytics and it happens on all ecommerce platforms and the main reason behind it is ad blockers.
About 20% of users use ad blocking extensions which prevents Google Analytics from firing and capturing any data regarding that visit (this also includes ecommerce data), thus, discrepancies are created between the numbers reported in Shopify backend and Google Analytics.
There are more reasons behind why the discrepancies might happen (some of them are of legit concerns like faulty tracking) but ad blocking extensions are probably responsible for most of the discrepancies. If interested, you can see the full list of transaction discrepancy causes here.
Related
Looking more for some fresh ideas to help me troubleshoot the below problem than solving any coding issues (which may come next).
Creating a similar site to an existing one that uses all previous GA tech (analytics.js, _gaq.push, Google_Service_AnalyticsReporting_ReportRequest(), etc) and provides all the easy data needed for my simple GA reports (i.e. page views by date and location).
However, not quite ready to bite off the whole enchilada (GTAGMgr, GA4, and such) so created dual Properties (UA and GA) as many forums have recommended when making the transition.
Setup the website same as the active [UA] site but using the gtag.js (per the Property Tracking Code snippet provided in ADMIN) vs the analytics.js code. Created View(s), new Service Account for the "user", an API Map Key for the Google Map Charts, and any other pieces I could find.
Have the GTAG.JS setup on each page and added any special page tracking via gtag('event', 'page view', {...}) but letting the default page view still occur as well.
Page view hits are coming through as expected EXCEPT the page views locations (City, State, Country, Region) are not being populated. All that comes thru is the "not set" for any location. Ironically, the old analytics.js code was still active initially and location data was being populated.
Would think if gtag.js is collecting standard page view info for the configured Property, that location data would be there as well. Am sure it is but possibly the older getReport calls need tweaking. No doubt I probably have a something not quite right but if REALTIME data shows usage, page views, etc. AND my GA Report calls are working, would think location data would be there too.
Any brainstorming ideas would be appreciated.
Thank you,
LarryG
ANSWER ... the EZ Button ... my code and calls were correct using old and [semi] new way. The majority of the problems were McAfee VPN kicking in. It is set to turn on with reboot and I do not always remember to turn it off. The first obvious clue was the realtime location for my actions were not where they were supposed to be. Also, appears Google API PHP Client has some issues with PHP7.4FastCGI.
So if you took the time to read ... check your VPN settings if you are getting an abnormal amount of NOT SETS in your GA data.
Begs the question ... with the increase in companies providing VPN services out of the box, that renders some of the tracking a moot point.
LarryG
I have an issue that's happened since we replaced the UA code with GTM and now run everything through tag manager.
Everything was working fine with analytics using plain UA. We could see ecommerce, user journeys etc all in one sessions however last October we changed to GTM. Initially we left the UA ecommerce code in place as our Devs did not have the capacity at the time to replace that.
That cause an issue where everything after a certain page become a new session. I tried setting the tracker name in GTM to blank, which I've been told fixes the solution, but still 90% of those who gave (It's a charity) would start a new session one a process giving page. Note: There are about 10% who appear not to be affected.
We then thought it might be because the GTM code and the UA code wouldn't accept each other as the same session, so we recently removed the UA ecommerce code and replaced it with GTM.
This broke the ecommerce altogether and I only managed to fix that yesterday. We also had some virtual page views for checkout journey which were also only fixed yesterday but were working fine on UA until we implemented GTM.
The issue seems to be that at the last virtual page on the form people are having their session ended. Then there's this processing page and then the thankyou page with the ecommerce code on.
I have looked through the user journeys prior to us having GTM and I cannot see any pages in that journey which I can't see currently (by this I mean I don't think there are any other pages that I should be making sure have GTM code on and thus breaking the journey in two) but even if there were, sure since GA sessions last 30 mins, it shouldn't necessarily matter if there were a phantom page.
Should I be setting the Tracker ID to blank again? I'm at a loss as I've been fixing all these problems since October and my brain has melted.
Edit: After a bit more research it looks like secure trading might be the issue. Does anyone know how to overide secure trading making a new referrer and keeping the sessions the same?
I'm trying to find a way to track "paid traffic" from Youtube, ie. people who click on one of our ads, got redirected to one of our videos, then clicked on a link in the comment section. At the moment everybody coming from Youtube appears under the Youtube channel in our analytics.
Yet, inside Youtube Analytics, I can see that 90% of people watching specific videos come from paid traffic.
I tried to see if I could get any possible information from the youtube APIs but it looks like nothing is useful, event to determine how could be the split between paid/unpaid traffic.
Also, impossible to find a split by video.. except in GA. Therefore, no possible link?!
1/ Is it possible to link paid traffic internal to Youtube and part of the "youtube" channel traffic in GA? data-wise or just mathematically?
2/ Is there a way to hadve an idea or approximate the convertion rate?
PS: I know this should not be seen a pure conversion channel*
To answer your questions:
1. Is it possible to link paid traffic internal to YouTube and part of the "YouTube" channel traffic in Google Analytics? data-wise or just mathematically?
As far as I know, yes it is possible. In fact, there's no better way to analyze your new brand channel layout than integrating it with Google Analytics. Reasons as given:
The main difference between YouTube analytics and Google Analytics is that the former provides data about the videos, while the latter provide data about the visitors of the channel’s pages.
To use this feature, please refer to the steps given in How to integrate your YouTube One brand channel with Google Analytics
2. Is there a way to have an idea or approximate the conversion rate?
I tried looking for documentation on conversion rate but it seems that this doesn't exist as also mentioned in Conversion rate between YouTube views and track sales
And, as suggested in Google AdWords Help, in tracking viewer conversions for video ads,
Since video advertising doesn’t always drive immediate conversions, we recommend that you look at view-through conversion data, which shows the number of online conversions that happened within 30 days after a viewer saw, but did not click, your video ad.
I hope that helps.
So I've been working on a website for a while. GA account has been up for a couple months but I waited for the website to be finished before putting up the actual JS tag.
In the meantime, the website is being HTTP password restricted (basic authentication) so it isn't even accessible unless you know the user/pwd combination.
To my surprise, I realized today that GA has logged several hundred views to the root of my website. Paths are mostly things like:
/
/?from=http://social-widget.xyz/
/?from=http://www.traffic2cash.xyz/
Bounce% and exit% both at 100% for all of them.
I realize this looks like referral spam, and there are ways to prevent it. Came across this upon googling:
http://botcrawl.com/block-social-widget-xyz-referral-spam-in-google-analytics/
My question is: how can GA log anything anyway when no tag is up and the website isn't even accessible?
Thank you very much in advance
Because it's spam. They hit Google Analytics directly with random GA codes and don't even go through your website.
GA can't tell if these are real hits (from website visits) or fake hits (from spam bots who hit GA directly calling the same ode as they would if on the website). Though arguably they should do more about this.
Massively annoying - particularly when first starting out as this can be a heavy proportion of your "traffic".
It's easy to set up a filter rule is to catch a lot of this by filtering on hostname. As they are randomly hitting GA and don't even know what website they are hitting GA for, they don't usually set this correctly. Real traffic should only come from yourwebsitedomain.com so add a filter for that.
STRONG piece of advice: abandon the default UA-########-1 tracking code of your new website -- simply do not use it!
Create a second and third property on the Admin screen, then use the tracking code for the third property. You will immediately see a lot less spam. No filters or segments necessary!
If you want the whole sad story about spam visits in GA, I have been maintaining the Definitive Guide article for over a year now:
http://help.analyticsedge.com/spam-filter/definitive-guide-to-removing-google-analytics-spam/
I'm working on a google analytics dashboard for a CMS I've created. I'm trying to decide exactly what information to display to the user. So what information would you want to see at a glance (when you first log in) and what information would you want access to, but don't need to see every time you log in?
Do you have a customer? You might want to ask them.
The time spent on page is the most valuable. You can see what pages result in reading and which pages are ignored.
The referrers and keywords is the next most valuable, because that tells you if your promotions are working or not, if you are getting the right audience.
Google analytics has some integration with adwords' analytics and that is on my periodid checklist as well.
Everything else depends on if you have a specific question in mind, like is it safe to start ignoring MSIE6 users, are there enough users of Opera visiting to care how things render for Opera, do I need to pay attention to international readers and add internationalization features to my website, etc.
A:
Visits count (today, yesterday, this week, this month);
Page views, references, adwords effect;
B:
Bounce rate, effective keywords, browsers usage (in %)... stuff like that.
Sometimes, it's all about the $$.
The Adsense revenue for different pages and for different keywords.