How Ecommerce Tracking in GA4 is Different from UA

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Dec 12, 2022

Collecting data on ecommerce activities in Universal Analytics (UA) was probably one of the more complicated Google Analytics implementations. First, was regular ecommerce, then “enhanced ecommerce” – They were definitely advanced implementations.

With GA4, tracking ecommerce interactions is less confusing and complex compared to UA. Nevertheless, careful and diligent effort is still needed, both for data layer pushes and analytics tagging.

GA4 is still an evolving product. As of now, you need to take note of ecommerce tracking changes in these 2 areas:

Naming convention and event structure
Some of the underlying variables sent in those events have changed

In UA, the tags for enhanced ecommerce events look like this in Google Tag Manager:

If the correct variables were set for enhanced ecommerce, event category and action names can be set independently. The variable contained a parameter that identified the type of ecommerce event. This was accompanied by ecommerce and custom product-scoped dimensions used to pass detailed information.

Google lists recommended terms in their UA ecommerce instructions but use of these recommended terms is not mandatory.

The GTM tag for GA4 ecommerce is much shorter and simpler:

That is because we specify only Event Name and some required, optional, and custom parameters. There is no special ecommerce data variable to configure.

GA4 supplies events for more activities compared to UA’s actions, helping isolate the user’s exact stage in the conversion journey.

The new GA4 ecommerce events are:

view_cart – when a user views the cart

add_payment_info, add_shipping_info – when a user has entered their payment and shipping information respectively

earn_virtual_currency , spend_virtual_currency – let’s say we are a retailer with a rewards program. If your stores allow rewards to be used in place of currency, reward usage can now be tied directly with other ecommerce events with virtual currency events.

begin_checkout – when a user has begun a checkout

add_to_wishlist – when items are added to a wish list

refund – when a user successfully requests a refund

There are also some other events that have equivalents in UA, but the names have changed.

Use the recommended event names and parameters to ensure data flows into GA4 ecommerce built-in reports smoothly.

Although you can use your own custom events to collect ecommerce data, data from your custom events won’t appear in the standard, built-in ecommerce reports.

Google Analytics 4 Has Different Variables and Names for Product Arrays

Firstly, GA4 has one main data variable array. Called the items object, this array works with all GA4 ecommerce events. There are also some new variables you can use in the items array that introduce new functionality in GA4.

item_list_id
UA had list names, but not a list id. In GA4, we have the added id which can be helpful if you have lots of lists to keep track of.

item_category2 … up to item_category5
Now, instead of cramming a complete product hierarchy with delineation symbols into one variable and then create complex segments in GA for drill downs, we can have five separate levels of product categories.

discount
Discounts used to only be at a transaction level. Now they can be tracked at an item level. This is especially useful if the discounts are dynamic or differ for various products.

checkout_step
The key variable we had in UA that doesn’t exist in GA4 is checkout_step, which was used when there were multiple steps in checkout. To be fair, multistep checkout tracking existed to track interactions like cart view, a shipping info step, and a payment info step.

We now have specific events to use for them.

This also reflects the new reality of GA4 where users will spend more time creating custom explorations rather than pre-set reports and funnels.

Wrapping Up

We covered the main differences between GA4 and UA when it comes to ecommerce. If you are ready to dive in, you can find the official documentation here.

While there’s still a lot of work involved in building an Ecommerce setup, it is a relatively clear-cut and less intimidating process in GA4 than we faced in UA.

If you run into any issues with your GA4 Ecommerce implementations, do drop us a comment below.

Got questions? Drop us a comment, and/or describe your biggest challenge or frustration.

How Ecommerce Tracking in GA4 is Different from UA

Google Analytics 4 Has Different Variables and Names for Product Arrays

Wrapping Up

Other posts in our 12 Days of Google Analytics 4 series:

By Vinay Jagannath | December 12, 2022