When should the Ecommerce tracking take place?

Question

Hi all,

I am implementing Google analytics onto a ecommerce site. We are already tracking events like adding to cart, removing etc using the event tracking. I would like to know what is the ideal time to use the ecommerce tracking apis (addTrans & addItem). Here are my questions:

1. Should I call these functions for each product being added to cart?

2. Should I call these functions only when the payment is complete and them while displaying receipt screen?

What is the ideal way of implementation? please provide best practices if possible.
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I would track few things,

1.How many got into payment form and failed to buy, which can indicate to you that something wrong with payments or page itself. Count number of visitors in checkout - number of orders.

2.How many users got into site and haven't added at least one product, which will indicate that something wrong with advertisement, landing page or website layout in general. Number of unique visitors - those who added at least one item.

Adding statistics for each product added to cart shows you what? If users buy certain product you can get that this product is most wanted but in cart means noting imho. As for your second question, i would implement my solutions written above.

Answer 2

addTrans & addItem should be used only on sucessful payments, on the receipt/thank you page.

Answer 3

I wonder if your customers should go to an externally hosted page to make a payment. If they do, then GA tracking will not show you the real source of your profitable traffic - it will show you the payment processor page as the source.