Overview

We support eCommerce text variables to allow you to connect your ACME environment to your GA4 account. The process will change slightly depending on if you are only using Google Analytics (GA4) or if you are also using Google Tag Manager.


TABLE OF CONTENTS


Custom API eCommerce Sites

The GTM tracking codes configured in the ACME Theme simply trigger the necessary scripts to be placed on all ACME eCommerce (B2C) pages. If you have implemented a custom API site, you do not need to configure these tracking variables in ACME.


For those implementing a custom eCommerce site with the ACME APIs, refer to the Google Tag Manager documentation to implement this on your end.

Connect GA4 with ACME

  1. Log into ACME Backoffice
  2. Navigate to the "Themes" section on the left hand pane. There are 2 new variables to add to your Theme:  "google-analytics-ga4-tracking-code-test": "G-XXXXXXXXXX",
     "google-analytics-ga4-tracking-code": "G-XXXXXXXXXX",
  3. Paste your Measurement ID for your GA4 stream into the variable. 
  4. Update and wait for the success confirmation to show and dismiss.

Note: If you had previously implemented Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) with ACME, remove the following variables, as they have been deprecated. If these are left in place, they will prevent GA4 data from flowing through.

"google-analytics-tracking-code": "UA-XXXXXXXX-X",

  "google-analytics-tracking-code-test": "UA-XXXXXXXX-X",


These can be configured in addition to the existing GA theme variable.


Connect Google Tag Manager with ACME

In addition to adding the two new variables above, to use GTM, you will need to also add

  • "gtm-tracking-code": "YOUR PRODUCTION GTM CODE HERE",
  • "gtm-tracking-code-test": "YOUR QA/TESTING GTM CODE HERE",



Because GTM supports preview and versioning there is no danger in using the same test code and production code, however, this is only recommended for power users. If your code is not published then you will not see any data flowing, only after placing the tag in preview mode will you be able to see the debugger show up on the website. Once the code is published you will not need to turn on preview but data will be flowing to your published tag.

Configure User-defined Variables and Purchase Event


After connecting your analytics environment with ACME, you will need to complete the following steps for ACME data to flow to your analytics environment.

  1. Create (or use an existing) Account and Container(s).

  2. Configure the GA4 connection in GTM (not in ACME). You can reference Step 1 in the Google documentation. Before beginning step 2.3 in those instructions, proceed to the next step below.

  3. Due to a known issue, you cannot complete step 2.3 by checking the box to "Send Ecommerce data". Instead, you will need to configure the new User-defined Variables and Purchase Event that we are pumping over in the data layer. We have standardized on the Google “purchase” event and the corresponding parameters.

    1. Purchase event

    2. Refer to the ACME Mappings: ACME Google Analytics Mapping: UA > GA4 to see how the parameters play out for GA4. A tab is included in that document with the original fields that would have been used before UA was replaced with GA4.

Testing

Navigate to your ACME Online Ticketing site, such as:


You should now switch over to your Real-Time tab in Google Analytics for the Production or Sandbox  and see the data flowing. 

  • Note: it may take a moment the first time but it will speed up thereafter.
  • If you are not seeing data flowing then you can use the tool below to debug and see if and why the data is not propagating.


Useful Tools

  • Getting your Measurement ID in Google Analytics 4

Known Limitations

We have been alerted to the fact that our items array is not under the eCommerce object as expected. We are tracking a ticket in our backlog to improve this. Until this is improved, you'll want to configure Variables for the data layer fields you want to track as Event Parameters.