Google Analytics
NOTE: This documentation describes the procedures for Google’s Universal Analytics which will be replaced in the short term by Google Analytics 4. Standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023. If you still use Universal Analytics, we recommend that you prepare to switch to Google Analytics 4 going forward.
Google Analytics is a free web service that allows website owners to monitor traffic on their websites. You can also use Google Analytics with StoreFront to track the activities of your storefront visitors. For example:
•How did your visitors find your website?
•Which products are popular?
•How many visits are converted to sales?
•When did a shopper decide to abort a purchase?
If you are serious about your web-to-print activity with public or private storefronts, we recommend that you sign up for an account on the
Google Analytics website. This is where you generate an Analytics ID that needs to be added to your storefront. Once you have this ID, you can easily insert it on all the pages of your storefront with a single setting in StoreCenter.
Step 1: Create an Analytics ID
2 Sign in to Google Analytics if you have a Google account, or create a Google account first.
3 Click the Sign Up button to create a new Analytics account.
NOTE: If you already have an Analytics account, click Admin, select an account, and set up a new property in the existing account.
4 Complete the New Account form.
•track a Website
•Google Analytics 4
5 In the Setting up your account section, enter an account name.
6 In the Setting up your property section, set up a new property for this account:
•Enter a Website Name; this is a name used in Google Analytics to refer to your website.
•Enter a Website URL: choose http:// in the drop-down list, and then copy the domain name of your storefront in the adjacent field; you can find the domain name in the General tab: this will be something like mystore.apogeestorefront.com/storefront if you are using the default URL, or mystore.com if you are using your own domain name.
•Choose an Industry Category and Reporting Time Zone from the drop-down lists.
7 Click the Get Tracking ID button.
Your tracking ID is displayed, for example UA-12345678-00.
8 Copy the tracking ID.
Step 2: Set the Analytics ID in StoreCenter
1 In StoreCenter, choose the store you want to monitor and click the General tab.
2 Click the Edit button in the Analytics ID field and paste the ID you obtained on the Google Analytics website in the dialog.
3 Navigate back to your Analytics account to add the URL of your storefront to the Referral Exclusion List: choose Admin > Tracking Info > Referral List, and enter the domain name or names listed in the StoreCenter dialog (e.g. mystore.apogeestorefront.com). You can read why this is important in the information on the
Analytics Help Center. 4 Save your changes to the store in StoreCenter.
Your storefront is now published with the Analytics ID on every page of the storefront.
NOTE: If you change any of these details for this store (Site ID, Custom Domain Name, Payment Method), you must update the Referral Exclusion List in Google Analytics.
Step 3: Tracking
Once the Analytics ID has been added to your storefront, you are ready to track your visitors on the Google Analytics website. Read the information on the
Analytics Help Center for getting started with Google Analytics and consulting your traffic statistics. The data provided by
StoreFront allows you to set up Goals (basic analytics) and Funnels (advanced analytics).
The analytics data refer to the URLs of your storefront. These URLs can be quite complex and consist of programming parameters which are appended to the domain name. The following tables can help you decipher the URLs.
URL parts
The following URL parts help you track the actions of a shopper. For example, the receipt parameter in the URL indicates that an order has actually been placed.
URL part | Description |
|---|
/billing-and-review.ep | The second step in the checkout. If a payment gateway is used this is also the third step in the checkout before being redirected to the payment gateway. |
/customers/impersonate | Impersonate user page is viewed. |
/customers/login | Login page is viewed. |
/customers/new | Registration page of public store is viewed. |
/order-details.ep | An order’s details were viewed via a user’s account page. |
/shipping.ep | The first step in the checkout. |
/view-cart.ep | Cart is viewed. The user can arrive here via several paths, for example by adding a product to his cart or by clicking the cart link at the top-right. |
c.*-p1.html | Category page is viewed. |
cancel= | This parameter is appended to billing-and-review.ep when a checkout is canceled by the user and he is redirected back to billing-and-review.ep. |
error= | This parameter is appended to bill ling-and-review.ep when a checkout fails and the user is redirected back to billing-and-review.ep. |
product-view.ep|prod.*\.html | Product page is viewed |
receipt= | This parameter is appended to order-details.ep when a checkout is completed and the order details are shown. |
Example:
The shopper has put an item in her shopping cart and proceeds to checkout:
https://mystore.apogeestorefront/storefront/view-cart.ep
The shopper has placed and finalized the order with ID 1900363:
https://mystore.apogeestorefront/storefront/order-details.ep?oID=1900363&receipt=nopaymentCheckout
Online Editor Events
User interaction in the Online Editor can also be monitored.
NOTE: In Google Analytics 4, the StoreFront categories and actions in the table below can be used as Event Tracking Parameters in Tag Configuration of Google Analytics Tag Manager.
Description | Category | Action | Label | Value |
|---|
Start Editing is clicked on product page (data-tid=”product-content-addToCartCmd”. If the editor and document are successfully loaded an editorLoaded event followed by a documentLoaded event will be logged after this event. | product-content | addToCartCmd | | |
Editor has loaded. A documentLoaded event will be logged next. | product-chili | editorLoaded | product name | time (millisec) to launch the Editor |
Document has loaded in the editor. The workspace will be loaded next (not tracked because Chili does not send an event for this). | product-chili | documentLoaded | product name | time (millisec) to launch Editor & load document |
Save button is clicked in the editor. When the document has been successfully saved the documentSaved event will be logged. | product-chili | documentSaveCmd | product name | |
Document has been saved. | product-chili | documentSaved | product name | |
Editor was closed by clicking a breadcrumbs link, back navigation, or closing the window/tab. Unless a documentSaved event was previously logged, the document was not saved before closing the editor. | product-chili | editorClosed | product name | |
Go to Shopping Cart button clicked in editor. This closes the editor, prompting the user to save the document if it has not been saved. If the user saves the document, a documentSaved event will be logged after this event. Once the editor is closed an editorClosed event will be logged. | product-chili | editorCloseAnd GoToCartCmd | product name | |
Edit... link of a product clicked in the shopping cart (data-tid=”cart-shoppingItem-editDocumentCmd”. If the editor and document are successfully loaded, an editorLoaded event followed by a documentLoaded event will be logged after this event. | cart-shopping
Item | editDocumentCmd | | |
Example:
A shopper has a customizable product in the cart and decides she wants to edit it before proceeding to checkout; this is indicated in the URL with the editDocument action:
https://mystore.apogeestorefront/storefront/a/shoppingItems/4829947/editDocument
UTM parameters (customized)
You can use UTM parameters to see how a visitor found a URL, and typically to monitor the hit rate of e-mail campaigns. Different types of UTM parameters (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, etc.) can be added to the URL of links, and these parameters are also visible in Google Analytics. URLs with UTM parameters can easily be created with a tool like Google Campaign URL Builder.
Example:
A potential customer clicked a link to your storefront which was sent to her in a newsletter e-mail. The link not only points to a product on the storefront, but also includes 3 UTM parameters which identify the source, medium and campaign name:
https://mystore.apogeestorefront/storefront/catalogs/mycatalog/prod0D0078F7_2CDF_7B76_1FC7_52DC94F085B0.html?utm_source=Newsletter_02_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=teaser
UTM parameters (system)
The StoreFront system also uses UTM parameters in the e-mails it generates. You can also monitor this traffic once you have set up Google Analytics.
The following parameters are used:
•utm_medium=email
•utm_source= identifies the type of e-mail, e.g. orderConfirmation
•utm_campaign= identifies the object, e.g. order ID, store, printer account
Example:
https://mynewprivatestore.apogeestaging.local/storefront/order-details.ep?oID=1900679&utm_source=orderConfHtml&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=02014-MyStore&cdt=0fM6HlRBPzqdu6QV8GrLZM6dCA7XiJ1tqg0e3zSa
Step 4: Setting Goals and Funnels
Google Analytics allows you to define goals. The primary goal of any store is to convert visitors to buyers, so defining the conversion rate as a goal in Google Analytics is very useful. When defining such a goal:
•Set the goal type to 'Destination'
•The goal destination should be a regular expression that matches this syntax: /storefront/order-details.{1,}receipt=.{1,}
•Defining a funnel also makes sense. The suggested setup is:
•Step 1 has the name 'Cart'. The Screen/Page field is set to '/storefront/view-cart.ep'. It is not required.
•Step 2 has the name 'Checkout - Shipping'. The Screen/Page field is set to '/storefront/shipping.ep'.
•Step 3 has the name 'Checkout - Review'. The Screen/Page field is set to '/storefront/billing-and-review.ep'.