GA E-Commerce Transactions Inconsistent

Question

Has anyone experienced this, where transactions as recorded in Magento are sometimes higher than what Google Analytics reports for transactions? The margin of error is typically ~10%, and I've read a number of articles which explain this to be common by the very nature of how GA e-commerce tracking works.

In other words, the tracking code in Magento -- as I've seen -- is implemented asynchronously, and sometimes initialization is bound to the window's load event. This would imply that the tracking code might not be sent out until many seconds after the success page has been displayed. And that some people navigate away from or else close this page before that tracking beacon can be dispatched.

Has anyone had any experience with this? I've also see different versions of Magento add the tracking code block to both before_body_end and after_body_start. Have you had better results with either one?

What steps have you taken to reconcile these differences?

Answer 1

Yes, I've seen this before years ago at my last job. There are a number of contributing factors. Between people that disable JS, block GA, use Do Not Track, or just have slower connections and navigate away before the code fires, you will never achieve a 100% match. The problem is you are trying to use GA as an accounting tool when it is not one. GA is analytics. It's about averages, not precise numbers. 10% sounds like the same number we had experienced. And when you are trying to use GA for accounting purposes that number seems really high. But as I said, GA is not an accounting tool. As long as that number stays consistent month over month, there is not much you can do about it (as you said yourself, it's a common problem with how GA works).