This is an implementation guide for Google Analytics 4. The guide is aimed at Google Tag Manager users and has been designed to complement the official documentation

Why every online ecommerce shop must set up ecommerce reports? Its needs to understand how users interact with the products and services you sell through the funnel.

Understanding how users interact with the products and services you sell can help you optimize the shopping experience on your ecommerce website or mobile app. For example, you can measure the products your users view most frequently and how product placement, promotions, and marketing sources impact conversions.

  1. Make documentation – highlight ecommerce funnel and dimensions

At the beginning, before proceeding with the technical implementation, you need to describe the events that you want to receive as a result.

This is necessary in order to 1) structure information and not miss anything, 2) create a convenient tracking management system and make it understandable for the whole team.

It is best to choose a Google Spreadsheet table for this and create rows like:

Event Category – a type of event flow

Event ID – number

Event Name – the name of the event

Events Type – Conversion/Microconversion/Funnel Step

Event Description – When an event triggered

Screenshot Link – Link to Figma which page where exactly the event should fire

Event Page URL – Page URL where exactly the event should fire

Platform – Mobile/Web

Status – Implementation status of every event (Backlog/QA/Done/To fix/ect)

Property name – Name of additional parameters

Sample values – Example of the parameter value

Property Description – What value should be passed to the property

Status –  Implementation status of every property (Backlog/QA/Done/To fix/ect)

Here is an example of a template for implementing such documentation:

Think over each ecommerce Funnel step and describe it in the table. This official documentation article describes each ecommerce event and when to set up the event. – https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/ga4/ecommerce?client_type=gtm

2. Make tech speck for devs

Next, following the steps of the documentation, describe each step in a language understandable for the developer, and give him a clear task. The description for each event should include

  • Where the event is triggered
  • When the event is triggered
  • Attach a picture
  • And an example of code that should get into Google Analytics.

Simply – customize the official Google documentation for your ecommerce funnel.

For example:

After setting up events by the developer, it is necessary to add the appropriate tags and triggers of GTM in order to catch events in the code and transfer them to Google Analytics 4.

Tags and triggers will need to be created for all funnel step. They have the same structure, so setting them up is very simple.

Example of funnel events:

Let’s take the View Item Tag as an example.

The list of recommended event names can be viewed at the link – https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9267735

We add a parameter “items” to reads an array of products from the datalayer and pass it to Google Analytics 4.

As a trigger, we also use the custom event string from the datalayer.

In general, this structure will be the same for all datalayers. To a greater extent, the purchase date will be different. There it is necessary to transfer especially many mandatory parameters that will be collected. Such review options are below.

Let’s take a closer look at the currency parameter. It, like the rest of the parameters, is read from the datalayer.

After the settings, test the tags and publish the Google Tag Manager container.

3. Make adjustments in Google Analytics

Google Analytics 4 automatically receives ecommerce events, but in order to collect parameter data, you need to configure them in the GA4 interface.

Add here any parameters that you pass additionally. Parameters currency, value, tax, shipping, transaction_id, coupon, items – GA4 reads automatically.

4. Create reports

After the data starts coming in, for the convenience of data analysis, create custom reports that will allow you to explore the entire user funnel, as well as its individual parts.

Here is an example of a user funnel report by steps, broken down into different variables.

When setting up the Funnel report, the following dimensions and metrics were used.

dimensions highlighted in green – applied one on each tab of the report.

Here we can see the breakdown of the funnel for each product, category, brand, list title, and position in the product list. Thanks to this, we can better analyze the path that users go through, and track bottlenecks through every product type.

Ecommerce data can also be used to evaluate the effectiveness of traffic channels and Google Ads.

You can also make such reports on other parameters and indicators of Google Analytics 4.

Thanks to ecommerce tracking settings, we now don’t just see raw sales data from the site, we highlight the entire user journey. And what we can measure, we can improve!