Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking for recurring payments

Discussion in 'Integration' started by tomingles, Aug 21, 2013.

  1. tomingles

    tomingles Member

    Joined:
    Mar 27, 2013
    Messages:
    52
    Hi,

    I have just got the Analytics Ecommerce tracking to successfully track a live transaction - the first month's payment for a recurring subscription product.

    My question is, how does the Analytics integration ensure that the Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking script executes for subsequent monthly payments? Are subscribers somehow redirected to the /amember/thanks page after each monthly payment?

    Could someone please explain how this works?

    Thank you
  2. proudthemes

    proudthemes New Member

    Joined:
    May 3, 2010
    Messages:
    10
    Hello,

    I don't think you will see monthly payments in your Ecommerce tab.
    Subscriptions are probably handled off-site, so Analytics code is not involved in any way.

    I might be mistaken.
  3. tomingles

    tomingles Member

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    Mar 27, 2013
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    Thanks for your reply proudthemes. That's a shame as it means despite the integration with GA Ecommerce tracking, the figures will be completely incorrect for anyone accepting recurring payments.

    I'm sure that using PayPal (or in fact whatever payment system is in use), the website will still receive notification of a successful subscription payment (in PayPal's case through the IPN which notifies https://mysite.com/amember/payment/paypal/ipn).

    Wouldn't it be possible to execute the Google Analytics Ecommerce tracking script at that point to update Google Analytics with the new "payment received" information?

    Perhaps it already does this - it would be great if a Amember developer could clarify this.

    Thanks!
  4. davidm1

    davidm1 aMember User & Partner

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    You wont see recurring payments as the google system requires an html request of some sort to record the transaction. I had asked them about an API to help record this sort of payment at a developers conference. Said we'll put it in as a feature request....

    David
  5. tomingles

    tomingles Member

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    Mar 27, 2013
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    Hi David, thanks for your reply - I did some research on this as I thought there must be a way to achieve this, and it turns out that with the new (beta) version of Google Analytics - 'Universal Analytics' - there is an API through which it is possible to execute ecommerce tracking code "behind the scenes".

    It "...allows developers to make HTTP requests to send raw user interaction data directly to Google Analytics servers. This allows developers to measure how users interact with their business from almost any environment."

    There's a well-written article on this page showing an implementation that was written for tracking subscriptions using PayPal IPN:

    http://www.stumiller.me/implementing-google-analytics-measurement-protocol-in-php-and-wordpress/

    Do you know if there is some way of adding this to a "feature request" list for when the GA Measurement Protocol comes out of Beta? I'm sure it will be incredibly useful for lots of Amember customers to be able to track all their recurring payments automatically in Analytics...
  6. davidm1

    davidm1 aMember User & Partner

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    Sounds gooooood!!!! Ask amember support about it- should be very useful!!!

    David
    tomingles likes this.

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