By adding the recommended ecommerce events to your website or app, you can collect data about the products and services you sell online and populate preconfigured reports, dimensions, and metrics with your data. This article explains each type of ecommerce event and how to report on the ecommerce data.
In this article:Collect data about what you sell
You can associate data about the items (i.e., products and services) you sell with each ecommerce event by adding data about the items to an items array. For example, you could create an items array that has data about a pair of jeans and then associate items with an event that's sent when someone views the jeans.
The data you associate with the parameters in items populates the ecommerce dimensions (e.g., Item brand, Item category, Shipping amount) and ecommerce metrics (e.g., Item quantity). The dimensions and metrics provide you with more detailed reports and explorations.
How your data is used
Google Analytics recognizes the recommended events and event parameters and automatically adds the data from those events and event parameters to the preconfigured dimensions and metrics.
In addition to the ecommerce dimensions and metrics, you can see your ecommerce data in the Monetization reports. You can also create custom reports and explorations in Analytics, as well as see your data through BigQuery and the Google Analytics 4 Data API outside of Analytics.
Promotion interactions
Promotions are a way of advertising one part of your site or app from another part of your site or app. For example, you might place a banner on your home page that advertises a 5% discount on shirts. You could use the following events to measure when people view and select the promotion and the revenue you generate through the promotion:
The promotion_id and promotion_name parameters help you identify the promotion you display on your site or app. To identify the items (i.e., the products or services) you sell rather than the promotion you display, use the item_id and item_name parameters instead.
To attribute a purchase to a promotion, add either the promotion_id or promotion_name parameter (at the event or item level) on every ecommerce event.
See the data
To see data about your promotions in Analytics, you can apply the following dimensions:
- Item promotion creative name
- Item promotion creative slot
- Item promotion ID
- Item promotion name
You can also use the following metrics to see data about how often each event is collected:
- Item promotion views
- Item promotion clicks
For example, the following line chart helps you see the promotions with the most views over time:
Item interactions
The following events let you measure how often people view the items you sell and the impact of the order of your item lists on item clicks, views, and purchases. Use the items array to associate data about the item someone views or clicks with the event.
For example, you could run an A/B test with two different orders of a list of items and then use the three events together to see the impact of the order on purchases.
See the data
You can use the following metrics to see data about how often the events are collected:
- Item list clicks
- Item list views
- Item views
For example, the following free-form exploration shows data about the item list clicks, item list views, and item views for a set of products sold on the Google Merchandise Store:
Cart interactions
By measuring how often people add items to their shopping cart and view and remove those items can help you see which items customers are interested in and can inform your strategy to increase average order size. The following events let you measure interactions with a shopping cart:
If your site or app also has a wishlist, you can use the add_to_wishlist event to measure how often people add an item to their wishlist to show interest without intent to purchase.
See the data
You can use the Add-to-carts metric to see data about how often the events are collected. For example, the following bar chart shows data about the number of times customers add items to their cart by the item category:
Checkout process
Customers who decide to proceed with checkout show an interest in purchasing from your site or app. Adding the following can help you understand the interactions in your shopping cart so you can identify strengths and weaknesses. The following events let you measure each step in the checkout process:
Note: Google Analytics doesn't show the discount parameter in reports and explorations, and you can't see the parameter value through the Google Analytics Data API.
See the data
To see data in Analytics, you could add the following dimensions to an exploration:
- First purchase date
- Last purchase date
The following are some of the metrics you can use to see data about the collected events:
- Average purchase revenue
- Average daily purchasers
- Checkouts
- Ecommerce purchases
For example, the following closed funnel exploration shows you the percentage of customers who completed a step in the checkout funnel (compared to customers who completed the previous step in the funnel) and the percentage of customers who abandoned the funnel:
Assign the value parameter
When you assign the value parameter to the purchase event, include only the price and discount of each item and exclude the price of tax and shipping. For example, if you sold a Stan and Friends Tee for $9.99 with a $2.22 discount and a Google Grey Women's Tee for $20.99 with a $3.33 discount, then you would assign a value parameter of $25.43:
value = (Price of Item 1 - Discount of Item 1) + (Price of Item 2 - Discount of Item 2)
= (9.99 - 2.22) + (20.99 - 3.33)
Refunds
The refund event lets you measure how often people who purchase from your site or app end up requesting a refund. You can issue the following types of refunds:
- A full refund includes all the items someone purchased in the
refundevent. - A partial refund includes only some of the items that someone purchased in the
refundevent.