Analytics:

Why are Google Analytics Ecommerce Reports different from sales figures in WooCommerce?

Posted on September 18, 2020

A question commonly asked by online sellers, and from our own clients here at Engage Web, is “why is there a discrepancy between figures in WooCommerce and Google Analytics reports?” Sometimes, the difference between the two can be substantial, for both number of products sold and revenue – one user on Reddit claimed a Google Analytics underreporting rate of nearly 50% compared to that of WooCommerce.

So, why is this?

Well, first of all, there will always be a discrepancy between sales figures shown in Google Analytics and in the actual sales on your website. This is because your website tracks every sale made on the system, but Google Analytics can only track the sales it is given access to – therefore, it will always miss some of your sales.

Google Analytics can miss sales due to factors on both ends – the customer and the seller. On the customer end, distorted figures can simply be due to the customer using Ad Blocking software that blocks Google Analytics, or the customer leaving the website before the Google Analytics tracking code fires a conversion. Other times, a customer might be using the website without JavaScript enabled, which blocks the Analytics code, or they might have a slow internet connection, meaning the bandwidth has allowed the page to be viewed, but the code has not been able to fire up before the user has left the page.

With factors on the customer end, these are obviously out of your control, but is there anything you can do on the seller end to try and reduce the discrepancy?

1. Check your order received page

With WooCommerce, be aware that some plugins allow you to alter the default ‘order received’ page, and use a custom page instead. Using such a page can, however, prevent Analytics from tracking completed orders. To rectify this, you must either remove the plugin or contact the author for an update that allows the custom page to mimic the default page, thereby allowing Analytics to register orders.

2. Ensure JavaScript is necessary

When using an Analytics for WooCommerce plugin, ensure you only have the necessary JavaScript – the author of the ‘Enhanced Ecommerce Google Analytics Plugin for WooCommerce’, Tatvic, highlighted to one user that two gtag.js scripts running on his page could have been causing his discrepancy issue, as the plugin was tracking correctly, despite the inconsistency in figures.

3. Search for failing modules

In other cases, your “thank you for your order” page may have a failing module. This could be preventing other scripts from working correctly, including Analytics. This can be hard to spot, as in testing it won’t show up. However, by using JavaScript Error Tracking, you should be able to pick up the exact error and rectify the issue.

4. Enable app tracking

Finally, a simpler issue that may be overlooked – if you have a mobile app, it’s worth double checking to ensure that Google Analytics tracking is enabled for in-app purchases.

This list is not exhaustive, on both the customer and seller end. We stress to all of our clients that Google Analytics shouldn’t be used to make decisions based on sales volumes, or on specific sales. Instead, Analytics should be used to offer insights into trends and the types of products being purchased. Its value is obvious, but, unfortunately, it’s not a tool that can be used to monitor every single sale.

If you need help with setting up an online shop, or with creating website in general, contact our team at Engage Web today.

Posted by Emily Jones

How to measure the success of your Twitter campaign

Posted on May 27, 2020

Twitter Analytics was launched in 2014 and represented a big move from the platform towards greater measurement abilities, and ultimately transparency, for all of its users.

In this time, Twitter has continued to upgrade the tool to provide insights into a number of useful metrics, but not everyone knows it’s there as a free, ready-to-use resource for both personal and business accounts.

How do I find Twitter Analytics?

There are two simple ways to find Twitter Analytics. Firstly, when you are logged into the account you want to analyse, you can open a new tab and insert its URL. However, there is a second, quicker way to find the tool. Again, when logged into the account, from the menu, select ‘More’ and ‘Analytics’. This will take you to the tool’s dashboard.

The dashboard

Twitter Analytics’ dashboard acts as an overall summary of the account. Along the top, you will see a 28-day summary, with a comparison to the previous 28 days. This will show how many tweets you’ve posted, the number of collective impressions those tweets have had, the number of profile visits the account has received and the number of followers it has.

Below this is a more in-depth monthly summary, with data being shown per calendar month. It will display those same four metrics, plus the number of mentions the account has for that calendar month, along with some highlights from these periods.

These highlights show what the account’s top tweet was, detailing the tweet and how many impressions it had, as well as the top media tweet. It also shows what the top mention was, if the account was mentioned by another in that timeframe and who the top new follower was.

Tweet Activity

Along the top menu bar, next to the Twitter Analytics logo, you’ll see the options ‘Home’ (which is the dashboard), ‘Tweets’ and ‘More’. The Tweets tab takes you through to Tweet Activity, which goes into a little more depth about each individual tweet. You can change the date range and even export this data to use elsewhere.

Here, you can see every tweet from the selected date range, which defaults to the past 28 days. Analytics will tell you how many impressions the account had in that time and show a graph displaying the number of tweets and impressions for each day of that period.

Underneath the graph, you will see a list of tweets. It will tell you what you tweeted, as well as how many impressions and engagements it had, and an engagement rate percentage.

Why is this data helpful?

These statistics can help you plan your campaign, giving you an insight as to what types of content attract engagement from your audience, and what gets them clicking and interacting with you. It can help you to decide what works and what doesn’t work quite so well.

Why not try approaching your social media in a different manner to normal and see what effect that has on your audience? What time of day is the best time for you to tweet? These questions can be answered by looking at Twitter Analytics.

If you’re struggling with your social media campaigns, why not get in touch with Engage Web today and see how we can help you?

Posted by Alan Littler

Four reasons why Facebook Conversions may not show in Google Analytics

Posted on May 20, 2020

As you may expect, platforms from different companies can report different results on the same or similar metrics. This has already been demonstrated in an earlier article we wrote about the differences between (more…)

Posted by Alan Littler

Our one-stop infographic on Google Search Console vs. Google Analytics results

Posted on May 18, 2020

Last week, our Account Executive Alan gave a detailed account of why data on Google Analytics and Google Search Console can be so different. That’s worth a read in full, but we thought we would follow it up with a visual guide as to why one of these Google tools might be showing higher figures than the other.

Below, you’ll find a punchy list of six different ways in which both GA and GSC can land a telling blow, and how either can be great to have in your corner. Which one can claim the belt for being the more accurate? As you can see, it comes down to a split decision.

We think it’s an absolute knockout (it’s boxing themed, as you’ve probably worked out by now from these dreadful puns), so please take a look. Have you ever been floored by the differences between GSC and GA results? Maybe you’re a real underdog with no experience of either and would like to know more about rankings and how we can improve them for your website? Either way, we’d love to hear your comments.

Posted by John Murray

Why do Google Analytics and Search Console report different results?

Posted on May 11, 2020

When it comes to measuring traffic coming into a website, there are many tools and metrics that can be used, with two of the more popular services being Google Analytics and (more…)

Posted by Alan Littler

Google Analytics 101: How do I know where my site’s traffic comes from?

Posted on November 19, 2019

Google Analytics is a tool many webmasters use to record and report on traffic that comes through to a website.

By inserting a piece of (more…)

Posted by Alan Littler

Twitter offers access to analytics data

Posted on September 1, 2014

Social networking site Twitter has decided to make its analytics access open to the general public, for users to see how other accounts interact with (more…)

Posted by Alan Littler

What does Universal Analytics offer over its traditional counterpart?

Posted on September 3, 2013

Earlier this year, Google made Universal Analytics (UA) available as an alternative to its standard analytics offering. For some, the core differences between the two (more…)