Google Analytics - PayPal Pro (Express Checkout)

[bunkbedking]

Hi



I noticed that recently in google analytics, my transaction counts were down and transactions were not appearing that do appear on the e-junkie transaction log and also at the transaction logs for specific ppc accounts ie Nextag.



The common factor is that when the Payment Processor is indicated on e-junkie as PayPal Pro (Express Checkout) this transaction does not appear in google analytics. When I see Payment Processor PayPal Pro (DirectPayment) or Google Checkout it appears in google analytics.



As an example for this month to date, I have had 484 transactions as shown in e-junkie - (117 are paypal pro) - GA is showing 366 transactions. (I checked the same period in 2009 and the PayPal Pro (Express Checkout) transactions were appearing in GA then)



Obviously this is making my ga data worthless - Is this an e-junkie cart issue?



Help please



Regards



Denis

[E-junkie_Guru]

That's just an inherent problem with checkouts going through PayPal's site (such as PayPal Pro Express Checkout), as they do not automatically redirect the buyer to a post-checkout thank-you page where GA tracking code could be triggered to track the conversion. If you are not selling downloads, the buyer has no incentive to load the thank-you page at any point (where we normally provide download links), so those conversions may never get tracked.



Google Checkout can transmit conversion data to Google E-commerce Tracking and thence to Analytics directly via their backend even though they also do not auto-redirect the buyer to a thank-you page, and we can auto-redirect buyers who pay directly with a credit card using either Authorize.Net or PayPal Pro Direct Payment.



If you want reliable, consistent conversion tracking, you would simply need to give up on accepting PayPal at all, and only accept Google Checkout or direct card-based payments via Authorize.Net.



More information about how tracking works and what factors can interfere with it are discussed on this FAQ page:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/faq.tracking-how-why.htm

[bunkbedking]

I understand this concept - but until recently google analytics were tracking all of my conversions thru PayPal Pro Express Checkout - so either something changed at google or something changed with the e-junkie cart code - I will go back in to GA and determine what date the change occurred

[bunkbedking]

it looks like something happened around the 5th October last year - prior to that date all of my PayPal Pro Express Checkout transactions were recorded in google analytics after that date zero so it is nothing to do with customers opting not to go to the "thank you page"



(see transaction id 8WR636947E0168150 not in GA - transaction id 10D90963TS9266526 a couple of days earlier and all previous transaction are in GA)



so did google change something - or paypal or e-junkie?

[E-junkie_Ninja]

Sorry for the delay in responding to your forum post. We did not make any changes in October of last year or even since then that would cause a change in the way Google Analytics work with our system. If you made any changes in your thank you page at that time it is possible that a conflict caused the different scripts on the page to not work as they are suppose to.