GA4 integration

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  • Hikashop Business
3 years 10 months ago #328529

Hello.

I've set up a new GA account for a client and Google activated the new version of Analytics.
Ecommerce tags seems not to be fired. Would like to understand if the Hikashop plugin is still valid ( = my misconfig in Tag Manager) or if it doesn't connect correctly with the new version of GA.
In that case, are you going to update/implement the integration with GA4?

Thank you,
Davide

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3 years 10 months ago #328534

Hi,

The current version of the HikaShop Google Analytics is still valid and works with Universal Analytics.
I don't think it needs any updating to work even with a new GA account.
Now, the setup can be a bit tricky. How idd you setup the plugin in the joomla plugins manager? Could you maybe provide a screenshot ?

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3 years 10 months ago #328557

Hi
Attached the plugin configuration.
The Id is changed and now it links to the stream measurement ID.
If I put the Account ID (that isn't prefixed with UA anymore) I'm still not able to fire the event.
The event I'm trying to fire is the add_to_cart

As said, I'm using Google Tag Manager to create events and triggers.

Here a link to GTM guide (maybe it helps)
developers.google.com/tag-manager/ecommerce-ga4

Thanx
Davide

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3 years 10 months ago #328565

Hi,

The google analytics plugin only track sales (so it sends the order data to GA after the payment). It doesn't track add to cart events.
Also, the plugin uses the API developers.google.com/analytics/devguide...lection/protocol/v1/ for Universal Analytics, as I was saying, not the GA4 API from your link.
To do what you want, it would require the development of another GA plugin from scratch.

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3 years 10 months ago #328593

Hi Nicholas
thank you for quick answer.
Understood. Could it be a new feature request?

Davide

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3 years 9 months ago #328596

Hi,

Well yes. However, while a plugin to track events makes sense, the tracking of purchases is not really ideal with the GA4 API.
This API requires to add javascript to a page displayed by the user.
However, the payment confirmation usually happens in a server to server communication between the payment gateway and the website. So you can't track the "purchase" event properly with it as you can't output javascript when the order is being confirmed (that would just send the javascript to the payment gateway, which doesn't care about it and might even create issues with some of them).
So the plugin we already have is still a good solution to track transactions on your website with GA as the notification of the data to GA is also done with a direct server to server communication, and not through the browser of the customer.
So I guess such plugin would be used to track when a user open a product page and add a product to the cart.
Could you explain why that's an interesting thing to gather in GA over gathering purchases ?
To me, I would suppose that the main thing I would like to know is when someone purchases something while coming from an ad. And such GA4 plugin wouldn't allow me to know that, so I don't see in what way it would be helpful.

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3 years 9 months ago #328647

Good morning.

Interesting explanation!
I mainly asked about the add_to_cart event because it was one of the easiest to implement via Tag Manager and this could allow me to check if it worked or not. In addition to this reason, the add to cart button is one of the most important buttons for an e-commerce and it might be interesting to have the ability to check out different graphic solutions (but there are workarounds for this). Finally, it is the first step of the buying process and I could better visualize how many customers start that process without finishing it.

Anyway, I agree with you that, at the moment, GA4 is still a work in progress with some shortcomings in the e-commerce metrics, so I am studying what is the best solution to have both ga4 and UA to collect data and I'll be relying on the UA for e-commerce measurements, using your plugin.

I'll back maybe to ask info about those boolean fields at the end of the plugin configuration page, if I'll need.

Thank you!
Davide

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  • Hikashop Business
3 years 9 months ago #329500

Hi again.
I'm try to implement your plugin. What I've done
- Activated a UA property wit standard e-commerce enabled
- Created a Tag with GTM that fires when user reach confirm page
Question: is the confirm page the page where the plugin send the Data Layer to GA?
Below the plugin config and the data layer shown by GTM

Thanx
Davide

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