Your GA4 E-Commerce Revenue Might Be Inaccurate
Some GA4 Revenue and Conversion may be hidden due to GA4 Property Settings
You may be unaware of when this happens, but the e-commerce data you see in your GA4 report could be inaccurate.
There is a chance some transactions are ‘hidden’ and missing from your reports. This phenomenon is caused by attempts by Google to restrict data access because it thinks this access might be capable of compromising user privacy.
So perhaps you’re not happy with the seemingly low performance of a recent campaign. If this data holdback by Google causes e-commerce revenue to be under-reported, your marketing campaigns may seem less successful than they actually are, leading to wrong conclusions about the success of your marketing. That doesn’t sound good, right?
Before you start to panic, there is a solution for this issue, and we will discuss it in this article. To start, answer this important question. Your response to this question is where our troubleshooting begins.
The question:
"Which reporting identity are you using for your GA4 property?"
Reporting Identity is the method GA4 uses to identify your users across devices and platforms. If you need help determining your Reporting Identity, read this Google help article. And if you’re still lost about how reporting identity works, or which reporting identity you are using, leave us a comment below.
There are three Reporting Identity options: Blended, Observed, and Device-based. Usually, most people use Blended or Observed reporting identity because of its distinct advantage, which is the ability to unify user interactions into a single cross-device user journey with the use of a UserID and/or Google Signals data.
Sadly, they come with a disadvantage unknown to most users. Recently, we noticed that using Blended or Observed reporting identity settings could affect how your e-commerce data is being reported. You may find some transactions are missing from your reports.
If you suspect that you’re experiencing this issue, switch to the Device-based Reporting Identity to uncover those missing transactions. Don’t fret, switching your Reporting identity has no permanent change on your data. You can switch between different reporting identities at any time.
A case study to drive the point home
Here is an example from one of our clients:
Using Blended reporting identity:
After switching to the Device-based reporting identity, we uncover 27 more transactions the Blended reporting identity omitted!
Once again, switching your reporting identity has no permanent change on your data.
So do go ahead and switch your reporting identity to Device-based – do you see more transaction data being uncovered?
Does this give you a clearer picture of what’s truly happening?
And if you noticed that this causes some of your events and other conversions like lead generation signups to change, pat yourself on the back.
Let us know here if you have further questions about how GA4 reporting identity can affect your data.