Google Analytics Goal Conversion and eCommerce Transaction Counting

By Beacon News | Published September 8, 2015 | Categories: Google Analytics

Did you know that goal conversions and eCommerce transactions are counted differently in Google Analytics?

Goal Conversions

Each Google Analytics goal conversion will count a maximum of one time per user per session. While the All Pages report may show three pageviews of the goal URL by the same user, there will only be one goal completion counted. Similarly, a user could trigger the same event multiple times in a session. If that event is also configured as a goal, that session will only show that goal converting one time for that user. This is important to know, especially if you reconcile email submissions against your goal total in Google Analytics.

eCommerce Transactions

Unlike goal completions, a user can register multiple transactions in Google Analytics during the same session. This is intended to account for instances when a user decides to complete more than one purchase without leaving the website in between purchases, keeping your revenue information as accurate as possible.

Duplicate eCommerce Transactions

While it is great that every eCommerce transaction will count in Google Analytics, this truth extends to unintended duplicate transactions. Here are examples of how an unintended duplicate transaction can occur:

• The user refreshes the purchase confirmation page.
• The user exits the browser on a mobile device, opens the browser later, and the browserautomatically reloads the purchase confirmation page.
• The user bookmarks the purchase confirmation page and visits the page one or more times untilthe purchased products are received.
• The user emails the purchase confirmation page link, and the page is accessed through thelink.

In each of these cases, another transaction, with all the same product and transaction information, registers in Google Analytics. There is no setting in Google Analytics to prevent duplicate eCommerce transactions.

An easy way to check for duplicate transactions over a given date range is to import this custom report from the Google Analytics Solutions Gallery. The report will display all transaction IDs with more than one count.

In order to prevent duplicate transactions from occurring, you need to: a) not allow the confirmation page to load more than once, or b) make a server-side update that only allows the Google Analytics eCommerce tracking code to load once. Need help with this type of fix? Beacon is one of the longest active Google Analytics Consultants in the market.