Basic eCommerce dataLayer setup

Hi,

1. yes, the plugin only created the necessary data layer values and plugin users need to setup GTM based on this quide:
https://gtm4wp.com/how-to-articles/how-to-setup-enhanced-ecommerce-tracking

2. define “basic” ??
This plugin has an almost complete enhanced ecommerce implementation. “Almost” means that for example tracking internal promotions is not part of the code currently as WooCommerce does not have a standard UI for this and since there are some many different 3rd party solutions for internal banner usage I am not able to provide a standard way to track this.

The plugin will not send any data to GA directly, you need to setup tags within your GTM container.

3. see the link in #1 ??

Thanks for the guide @duracelltomi just what I needed but now I’m a bit confused…

Once I’ve setup the guide’s helper tag, how can I create individual tags using the “eCommerce helper” events with custom actions and labels for each one?

If I leave it as is, in GA will only appear events with “eCommerce helper” category and the name of the dataLayer variable as action.

What I did before reading your guide was to make different tags for some of your most important dataLayer variables with its own action and label based on each variable for better readability and comprehension.

So, how do I proceed now creating new tags that use your “eCommerce helper” data?

In addition, can I setup an event like “RemoveFromCart” tag manager label like this?:
Label field:Name:{{DLV ProductName}},Quantity:{{DLV ProductQuantity}},Variation:{{DLV ProductVariation}}
if I setup the dataLayer variable name of DLV ProductName and the others like: ecommerce.remove.products.0.name
So in the GA report appears a Label like: Name:T-Shirt,Quantity:2,Variation:Blue

Thanks for your time.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by danescobar. Reason: adding a new question

Hi,

Why do you want to add product data in your event reports if the data is present in your ecommerce reports? ??

Generally you can create separate triggers for every ecommerce action with just one event name instead of listing all available events in one event trigger. Then you can create your separate tags.

Hi,

Apologies if this is repeating the initial question, but I am about to activate your plugin for the first time (for using standard e-commerce) and just want to check a couple of things first:

1. I will need to remove both the UA and GTM script already inserted in the header section to allow the plugin to insert them (or do I just remove the GTM code)? Should I remove the iframe GTM snippet also or does the plugin not add this to capture users blocking javascript?

2. The plugin will create the necessary data layer variables and insert above the GTM script so that all that is required from my end is to create the tag in GTM and set to trigger with the custom event of the transaction (e.g. “gtm4wp.orderCompleted”)

Many thanks for your help and in advance for the plugin!

Matthew

@duracelltomi wrote:

Why do you want to add product data in your event reports if the data is present in your ecommerce reports?

Hi, for several reasons:

• Because I’m new at learning GA and GTM implementation and I really don’t know how the helper tag will pass data to GA eCommerce report, please from now on, if I make an erroneous assumption or mistake correct me. For example, in “eCommerce>Product Performance” there’s no data yet after publishing your helper tag in GTM. This led me to believe there’s an additional step in the configuration of GTM. Strangely enough there’s data in “eCommerce>Product List Performance”, a list of my related and upsell products but no product list in “Product Performance”.
• Because, in your guide, there’s the next paragraph:
  

  Note: this tag is going to be a ‘messenger’. The goal of this tag is not to populate Event reports with useful data but to pass additional enhanced ecommerce product data next to your event settings while users interact with your shop.

  That, again, led me to believe there’s additional configuration step in GTM (“populate Event reports with useful data“) to make everything work as intended in GA.

• Your helper tag will pass the EEC events to GA so I imagine that in “Behavior>Top Events” all eCommerce events will trigger with an action field like: gtm4wp.AddProductToCartEEC If I can setup separate tags with dataLayer variables so this event displays like Action: "Click AddToCart" Label: "Name:T-Shirt, Quantity:1, Variation:Blue,XL" it won’t be that much more work, it will pass data a bit more readable and with more data. Yesterday while waiting for your answer, aside configuring your helper tag, I’ve setup separate tags for:

1. EEC Checkout Initiated -> gtm4wp.checkoutOptionEEC
2. EEC Click AddToCart -> gtm4wp.AddToCartEEC
3. EEC Click RemoveFromCart -> gtm4wp.RemoveFromCartEEC
4. EEC Click Product -> gtm4wp.productClickEEC
5. EEC Purchase -> gtm4wp.orderCompleted (Tracking Type: Transaction)

I know it can duplicate events and eCommerce data but, in the meantime, I wanted to test if the tags will display data as I imagined. By the way, why your helper tag does not need the gtm4wp.orderCompleted event? Is gtm4wp.checkoutOptionEEC its equivalent for Enhanced eCommerce?

It’s hard to learn GTM and GA correctly, there are many guides online for configuring separate steps but few join the puzzle pieces together so novices have a correct view of the whole picture and how it will look in the GA reports. Reading other guides apart from yours on GTM and GA I have the sensation that many skip the most technical steps hiding the fact that the writer doesn’t even know how to configure things correctly, giving the impression as if they limited only to do a copy-paste from other websites. It doesn’t help either that Google’s own guides aren’t very good at explaining their own tools.

Hi,

Thanks for the detailed answer.

I really don’t know how the helper tag will pass data to GA eCommerce report

This is like “behind the scenes”.
Google Analytics sends data from your website to its servers using data packages called the “hits”. Each hit includes lots of data about what happened on your site. There are several types of hits but the most commonly known hit types are the pageview hit and the event hit. Unfortunately there is no such hit type like “ecommerce” hit, if the user on your site does any ecommerce action, we need to pack this into a pageview hit or an event hit.

The pageview hit is quite easy to understand: for example on your product detail page, while the page loads and your main GA tag fires, it will also include the attributes of the product currently being shown.

For ecommerce interactions between two pageviews, we need to use something that initiates a hit send. This is where event tracking comes in. An event hit can happen between two pageviews, sure, it has its parameters (like the category, action, label and value) but for us, this is not the important part. Important is, that we can use this event hit to add additional data sent to GA. This additional data will be the ecommerce action (“add”) and the product attributes. It is indifferent how you name the event parameters since the event hit will be only used to have something that sends data from your website to Google’s servers. This is why I call this the “messenger tag”. It is used to incorporate ecommerce data next to the event data and this is what matters, not the event parameters.

Does this make things more clear?

Yes, it clear things a bit more, thanks @duracelltomi . But in my answer I made two questions you haven’t answered yet:

Why your helper tag does not need the gtm4wp.orderCompleted event? Do I still need to configure it in GTM or is gtm4wp.checkoutOptionEEC its equivalent for Enhanced eCommerce?

I configured your “messenger tag” in GTM with the help of your guide. But despite this, in my GA “eCommerce>Product Performance” section there’s no data yet. But there’s data in “eCommerce>Product List Performance”, a list of my related and upsell products. When I had GA and not GTM there was a list of my products even though there were no eCommerce events. The list was just my products with a performance of $0. Now there’s no list of product names. Is this normal?

Here a post with images to illustrate my question better.

By what I can understand from your answer I’m on the right track setting up separate tags and triggers for each of your plugin’s events and then deleting the original “messenger tag”. Am I correct?

Sorry for missing those two questions.

gtm4wp.orderCompleted: this is an obsolete event, it was important back when many WordPress users had to put GTM related codes in the footer of the page. It will be removed in a future version of the plugin

gtm4wp.checkoutOptionEEC is different, it tracks when a users selects a shipping method or a payment method. It helps you to segment your checkout behavior report based on the selected shipping or payment option.

eCommerce>Product Performance should show you data once you have tracked orders in your eCommerce->Sales Performance report. Do you have some?

eCommerce>Product List Performance should also include a list named “General product list” – don’t you see any such product list in this report?

If you would like to have separate tags for each event GTM4WP provides, you can of course setup different triggers and tags for that, but this will not change the accuracy of your ecommerce report in Google Analytics.

gtm4wp.orderCompleted: this is an obsolete event

Ok, I deleted a tag that used this event “Purchase Completed”.

eCommerce>Product List Performance should also include a list named “General product list” – don’t you see any such product list in this report

I don’t have this list anymore since I made the change to GTM and your plugin setting your messenger/helper tag. Before I had this list; when I had a plugin by Woocommerce that integrated their store with GA.