Google Analytics Tracking
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) offers robust tracking capabilities including the tracking of ecommerce events, providing valuable insights into user behavior and transaction performance on your website or application. This document serves as a guide to set up GA4 tracking using both gtag.js or Google Tag Manager (GTM), including the tracking of ecommerce events.
Whether you choose to use standard GA4 or GTM, standard ecommerce event tracking will be available. Google Tag Manager provides a more robust and flexible solution for managing your tracking setup. However, the choice to use GTM ultimately depends on your specific needs and preferences. If you prefer a simpler setup and don't require advanced features like addtional custom events, direct control over tags, version control and custom triggers, standard GA4 is a suitable option for you.
With GA4/GTM you have more control over the events that are captured and reported on. We recommend that you enable "Enhanced measurement" for your GA4 data stream. Enhanced Measurement in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) captures a comprehensive set of user interactions and events. Here's a summary of the key events that Enhanced Measurement can capture:
Page Views: Enhanced Measurement automatically tracks page views, providing insights into which pages users visit and how they navigate through the site.
Scrolling: Tracks user scroll position, helping you understand how far users scroll down the pages and how engaged they are with your content.
Outbound Clicks: Enhanced Measurement records when users click on links that lead them away from the site, providing insights into external referrals.
Video Engagement: Enhanced Measurement captures interactions with embedded videos, including play, pause, seek, and completion events, providing insights into how users engage with your video content. Perhaps most helpful only in our crowdfunding module.
Form Submissions: Tracks when users submit forms on the site, allowing you to measure conversions.
Site Navigation: Enhanced Measurement automatically tracks user interactions with site navigation elements, such as menu clicks and dropdown selections, helping you understand how users navigate the site.
User Timing: It captures timing information for certain user interactions, such as how long it takes for pages to load or for specific actions to occur, providing insights into performance and user experience.
Enhanced Measurement in GA4 provides a comprehensive view of user interactions and events, enabling you to understand user behavior and the overall user experience.
AlumnIQ also supports the standard GA4 Ecommerce event model. Keep in mind that the various AlumnIQ modules offer different paths to a purchase that do not always follow a traditional retail ecommerce shopping expereince. Each module has a unique concept of "shopping cart", "Products/Items", and "Item Lists". We attempted to map each model into the traditional ecommece terminology as closely as possible.
Purchase: Users complete a purchase on your e-commerce platform. This event signifies a successful transaction and includes details such as order ID, transaction value, and purchased items.
Select Item: Users select an item from the website. This event indicates user interest in a specific product/fund/event.
Add To Cart: Users add items to their "shopping cart". This event signifies users' intent to purchase and adds products to their cart. For giving, this is indicative of a fund attachment to the pledge.
View Cart: Users view their "shopping cart", indicating their progress in the purchase process and giving insights into potential purchase decisions.
Remove From Cart: Users remove items from their "shopping cart". This event indicates changes in users' purchase decisions and helps track cart abandonment rates.
Begin Checkout: Users initiate the checkout process. This event occurs when users proceed from "viewing the cart" to starting the "checkout process", showing their readiness to complete the purchase.
Add Payment Info: Users provide billing information during the checkout process. This event occurs when users proceed to the payment step, showing their readiness to complete the purchase.
Add Shipping Info: Users provide shipping information during the checkout process. Although we don't ship physical products, this event occurs when users enter bio/billing details, such as address information, indicating progress in the checkout process.
Note: Currently only implemented this thoroughly for Giving. Events and membership modules will be updated to include these events in Spring 2024. Until that time, the purchase event is the only one we emit for events and membership.
Setup
Google Analytics 4
Even if you choose to use GTM you will still need a GA4 property setup. You can find instructions here.
Be sure to also create the web data stream. Be sure to capture the measurementID of the data stream.
Be sure to enable the "Enhanced measurement" option. If you choose to use GTM you will also need to configure your container by following the instructions here.
GTM is completely optional and up to you to use. It is more advanced and gives you more control but can be more complicated to setup and maintain. With great power comes great responsibility - and a prerequisite understanding of consequence.
If you need assistance with a basic setup of GA4 and GTM, simply open a support ticket with us. We are not able to provide assistance with tracking events outside of the scope of our implementation.
Standard GA4 (using gtag)
In your Google Analytics Admin site, create or configure a GA4 property and setup a web datastream for your AlumnIQ site. Be sure to enable the "Enhanced measurement" option. Open an AlumnIQ support ticket and provide the measurementId the for the data stream. The AlumnIQ team will update your configuration with the information provide in the support ticket. Once we have enabled analytics tracking for your site, it may take 24-48 hours before data will be availble in your Google Analytics reports.
Google Tag Manager (gtm)
In your Google Tag Manager account create a container for your AlumnIQ site. Open a support ticket and provide the containerId. Note you are responsible for configuring the GTM container for tracking the standard GA4 events.
Giving module ecommerce event flow/map
Standard Ecommerce sample dataLayer
Membership
Any questions?
Please file tickets if you find that you're not seeing the expected information in your GA4 Property.
Last updated
