E junkie is Limiting Us

[matty]

Does anyone else have a problem with e junkie not being compatible with GA e-commerce tracking?



For example -



If customer buys product A through a Google Adwords Ad, I want to know the return on my marketing dollars. If the same customer uses Paypal or CC provider (not Google Checkout), Google Analytics does not reflect the amount of total revenue (the number I need to figure out profit). If the customer uses Google Checkout to buy the product, revenue tracks. The problem is, 90% of my customers use other forms of payment.



In other words, the whole "context transfer" is limited and a little deceptive. Okay, great, I can track goals. But how much are they worth to me?



To me, if E-Junkie can't allow us to put the javascript code necessary to perform this task, E-Junkie's utility becomes very limited. If I don't know how my advertising segments are performing, how is that making me sell better online?



To add some context to my comments, please find this helpful link:

http://www.epikone.com/blog/2008/01/13/google-analytics-e-commerce-tracking-pt-1-how-it-works/



Let's talk about this and get it implemented.



Matt

[E-junkie_Guru]

I am assigning this to Development, as they are more familiar with the relevant issues involved here.



I can at least say that if you are depending on tracking code in the thank-you page to register your sale conversions, it's not a given that page will always be displayed, because some payment processors do not auto-redirect buyers to any thank-you page after finishing checkout, and they instead only present a return/continue/finish link that buyers must choose to click manually in order for them to reach a thank-you page with tracking code. PayPal is the most notable case of that behavior, so it's simply a tradeoff inherent in accepting PayPal checkouts that you may not be able to track a significant portion of your conversions for analytics/e-commerce purposes.



If you really need to track every single sale with full e-commerce data, then limiting your checkout methods to accept Google Checkout only is really your only reliable option.

[matty]

Any time frame on this???

[robbie]

Hey everyone,



Any progress on this? I'd like to track revenue as a parameter in the URL string on the thank-you page. I'm using Website Payments Pro and hoping most conversions will be captured in goal tracking.



Thanks,



Robbie

[E-junkie_Guru]

You may want to consider the information in this recent reply:

http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/4366#post14356



If you are serious about using Google E-commerce Tracking to the fullest and with the best possible accuracy, then we would really recommend using ONLY Google Checkout, which can communicate to Google E-commerce Tracking directly via Google's back-end system without depending on cookies or unreliable thank-you page visits (Goals).

[robbie]

Hi,



I've seen the recent replies, and I have two counterthoughts:



- Shouldn't it be up to me whether I'm getting the value I need out of PayPal thank-you tracking? We already have offline sales we track, so it will never be perfect, but even tracking direction/trending would be helpful.



- More broadly, tracking in GA is not the only potential reason we want revenue in the URL string. From my perspective, it's my our data, and there are plenty of potential uses for it aside from GA goal tracking. Is not providing it a technical limitation or business decision?



Thanks,



Robbie

[E-junkie_Ninja]

We will send your request to our development team for consideration as an upgrade to our service.