Conversion tracking stopped--looking for a way to test

[sla]

After several months of successful GA conversion tracking using the View Cart tracking code modification outlined here (http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.tracking.htm), all of a sudden the conversions stopped registering at the beginning of February.



This coincides roughly with a site update we made, so I am sure we did something that broke it. However, and this has been confirmed with code diffs, none of the update touched any Analytics or e-junkie code anywhere on the site. It's all still identical to what was working before Feb 1. Additionally, all our other Analytics data appears to be correct. So I am wondering if there is some other dependency that the conversion tracking code has, and how we might try to isolate it.



I can roll back parts of the site update selectively, but I don't know how to test conversion tracking without someone happening to buy something at the time. And there are often random false negatives in the reporting anyway which make me hesitant to rely on the evidence of just one or a few purchases.



Does anyone have any recommendations for how to test the conversion tracking process without making loads of purchases from ourselves? Is there a way to watch the transactions in real-time to see if Analytics is getting hit?



Thanks!

[E-junkie_Guru]

When you updated your site, by any chance did you add or change your Common Thank-you Page URL setting in Seller Admin > Account Preferences? If so, you would need to update the URL for your conversion Goal accordingly in your Google Analytics account (and make sure Match Type is set to Head Match).



Make sure your pages with any cart buttons are using our standard View Cart code, which allows the cart to display as an overlay "inside" your own page, rather than opening a separate window/tab to display the cart. The overlay-style cart is required to enable tracking of cart button clicks and conversions. Also make sure you are using our version of the GA code, and only that version, on every page where you want to use Analytics tracking -- i.e., don't mix-match our GA code with tracking code from Google, neither on the same page nor on different pages. If you've got those codes set up and working fine, could you provide a link to your site's page(s) where you're using our GA tracking code?



To place test orders without actual payment, you can set up a secret discount code for 100% off the total of all cart items, then use that code in your cart to place an order using our Free Checkout. See the "Testing your shopping cart" section here for fuller details:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.test.htm

[sla]

Thanks, I didn't think to check the Thank-you page URL. However, it has not been changed, nor has the landing page it points to.



However, I'm wondering now if I was misunderstanding something about conversion tracking previously, because we never set up a specific Goal for our ecommerce conversions. We just set the profile to "Ecommerce" site, followed your instructions, and a new section appeared in Analytics called "Ecommerce" under the Conversions men. That is where transactions had been showing up, not under "Goals." We never altered out Goals setup in any way to enable to transaction tracking. Were we supposed to have done so?



Our main products page is here: http://pronuncian.com/products.aspx. I have verified that it is using the View Cart code with the overlay display.



Thanks for the testing tip, I should have thought of that! I will roll back some of our other, apparently unrelated, alterations and see if that makes a difference.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Hm, that Ecommerce Tracking aspect is peculiar. Normally, if you use our version of the GA tracking code in your site along with our cart button codes, and if you just use your standard E-junkie-generated thank-you pages (rather than redirecting to a thank-you page URL on your site), the thank-you pages we generate can insert Ecommerce Tracking details for GA to pick up. However, we cannot insert those details into a thank-you page on your own site, so I'm not sure where your Ecommerce Tracking conversions could have been coming from.



I found this related thread from you last year, which seems relevant:

http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/6105



From that, I gather this line that you may have added for AdSense tracking may be the culprit:

<script type="text/javascript">google_analytics_domain_name = "none";</script>



You might try removing that line, or try changing "none" to ".pronuncian.com", as suggested by this related blog post I found:

http://mike-thomson.com/blog/?p=293



However, the real problem may be that snippet of code just conflicts with our version of the GA tracking code. If you really need to use that line, you could just abandon using our GA tracking code entirely, and instead use the standard Analytics tracking code currently provided by Google, which would probably play nicer with other Google tracking codes; in this case, all you'd lose is the ability to track cart button clicks, since you're already forgoing our thank-you pages' Ecommerce Tracking integration by redirecting to a thank-you page on your site, .

[sla]

Thanks for the detailed reply, lots of good detail there to mull over... very interesting.



We hadn't realized that we should be relying on your thank-you page in order for the Ecommerce tracking to work. It's not explicitly mentioned in your Tracking help page. But that might explain a lot about what is happening, possibly including why we had, in the past, even using our own on-site thank-you page, registered some conversions.



As I go back through the logs, I realize that all the conversions we have ever registered have been for DOWNLOADABLE PRODUCTS. So, that implies that, at some point, those purchasers, even after having been re-directed to our thank-you page, would have visited the e-junkie file download page to get their product. Other purchasers, who bought physical items, would ONLY have seen our thank-you page and never ended up on the e-junkie site.



So that leads to my next question: was the ecommerce tracking code at some point included on the download page that purchasers receive in their purchase e-mail link? And was that removed, or is it still there? Or is that download link page in fact the same as the e-junkie default thank-you page?



I'm not entirely discounting the possibility that the AdSense modification might be causing the problem, but we hadn't changed that recently, and we saw plenty of conversions appear even after we inserted it. I'll revisit that code snippet if I don't get anywhere with the thank-you page experiments.



For now, I've removed the redirect to our on-site thank-you page and left the e-junkie default, and made some test purchases to see if they will register. I imagine it will take a couple days to see if they show up. I feel like we're making some headway on the problem now, thank you!

[E-junkie_Guru]

When you use our version of the GA tracking code in your site along with our cart button codes, and if your GA tracking cookie (set by that tracking code) is detected in the buyer's browser when they reach any thank-you/download pages we generate for you, those pages will include Ecommerce Tracking details for GA to pick up.



When you redirect to a Common Thank-you Page URL on your site, the buyer reaches that page after checkout instead of an E-junkie-generated thank-you page. Download buyers would then receive a product-specific thank-you email for each download item they purchased, providing a link to their E-junkie-generated thank-you page for that product, where we provide their actual download link. That explains why your download buyers have tracked conversions for you before, as those are the only buyers who viewed an E-junkie-generated thank-you page for you at any point.



Another reason not to redirect to a Common Thank-you Page URL if you're selling downloads is that when buyers proceed past the end of checkout, if the payment processor completed their payment right away, the buyer would reach a consolidated E-junkie thank-you page for all items in their order, providing links for all of their download items together on that one page. If they obtain all their downloads there, they won't need to use the links provided in those items' thank-you emails to visit a separate thank-you/download page for each item individually.

[sla]

Well, this is getting even weirder.



Neither of my tests from yesterday showed up in conversions, either with the Common Thank-you page, or without it. However, a purchase by someone else, entirely unrelated to my testing, did show up.



These purchases were for three separate products, so I went digging in a bit to see if there were any differences between the products that could explain the problem. What I found was that, for both of the products I tested--which were not tracked--we have text entered in the Custom HTML - OPTIONAL box on the product "Customize your product Thank-you/Download page." For the product which was purchased separately, which DID appear in conversions, no text had been entered in the customization box.



Is there something about the HTML we have entered in the customization box that could be preventing the ecommerce tracking data from appearing, even on the E-junkie-generated thank-you page? And is it possible that could have happened recently? Both the products I tested were ones that have, in the past, successfully shown conversions. We haven't changed that customized text since the products were originally created.



I'm going to remove it from one of them and re-run my tests today to see if I can narrow it down further. However, is there any markup in particular we should avoid there that might cause a problem for the tracking data?

[E-junkie_Guru]

If you are using our version of the GA tracking code, make sure you have not pasted any GA tracking code in your E-junkie thank-you page customization fields (the "Message (HTML)" field for individual products, nor the Common Thank-you Page HTML field in your Account Preferences) -- doing so would conflict with the tracking code our thank-you pages automatically include when the buyer's browser has tracking cookie set by our version of the GA code.

[sla]

Okay, thanks for all your help. I think we are back to more-or-less the regular level of reliability on the conversion tracking.



The Analytics/AdSense snippet does not appear to be causing any problems. We will gradually add back in markup to the customization fields on the thank-you page, avoiding any GA tracking codes in the process.