Google Analytics - Revisited

[gmotion]

We've just gotten our invite for GA. I found the OUI code to put in to allow GA to track the pages. Do you all that have this use it on just the invoice screen or can we use it on others, say the storefront or certain categories/products? Also, our customer has OUI, but no template mods. How do I go about editing the src - I'm assuming we'll need a page template mod or is there somewhere w/in oui that I haven't seen yet, that will allow me to update the code?

Tonya Gray
Graphics & Motion
[email protected]

[d_host]

If anything, I'd stay clear of GA these days... They have hugely underestimated how many people would give this option a try now that they made it free (used to be $499/month, then $199/month, then $0). The problem is that the servers they have set up for GA are so terribly overloaded that many of your store pages will never load completely as the process gets stuck trying to connect to GA servers. Many people have reported that by putting the code on the invoice page they have customers who never see the invoice page as they check out, or email confirmations, etc. In addition, because their servers are overloaded - if you log on to check on your stats you may be looking at data from a few days or a week+ before, not your current stats.

Check with your host to see if they perhaps offer something better, more reliable, that can do a similar job - but runs on their own servers so they can provide some sort of assurance it will be updated in real time and response time will not slow your own store down.

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

I would disagree. Analytics is being offered slowly to people who signed up, allowing Google time to add resources to accomodate the load.

We've had fairly good results from those that have used it.

Tonya, to answer your question, you shouldnt need anything other than OpenUI to use Analytics.

Place the tracking code in your Global Footer under Stores -> Storename -> Headers/Footers Global.

However, you may want to use a conditional to execute the code securely to avoid SSL warnings in the browser:

%begin_secure%
<!-- Secure Google Analytics Code Tag -->
<script src=" https://ssl.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"> 
</script> 
<script type="text/javascript"> 
_uacct = "UA-XXXXX-X"; 
urchinTracker(); 
</script>
<!-- End Secure Google Analytics Code Tag -->
%end_secure%
%begin_notsecure%
<!-- Non-Secure Google Analytics Code Tag -->
<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "UA-XXXXX-X";
urchinTracker();
</script>
<!-- End Google Analytics Code Tag -->
%end_notsecure%

If you need to track static pages, add it as the last line to your HTML just before the </BODY> tag. Without the OUI stuff of course.

If you want to use the E-commerce tracking ability, there is a completely different code you need to paste into your INVC screen footer:

%OUI%
<form style="display:none;" name="utmform">
<textarea id="utmtrans">UTM:T|%ORDERNUM%||%TOTAL%|%order_tax%|%order_shipping%|%order_bill_city%|%order_bill_state%|%order_ship_cntry%
UTM:I|%ORDERNUM%|||||
</textarea>
</form>

[d_host]

Vic,

We've been Urchin partners for years and have been beta testing Google Analytics for well over a year before its official launch. The day they launched it to the public is the day when we've started seeing huge performance problems. Case in point, we have a few of our own web sites (personal) set up on GA from way before the official launch. There are times when we log in and the stats haven't updated in 2, 3, 5 days. They eventually stopped taking new signups, as you mentioned, and are now slowly inviting people back in. Overall, if you only have a few accounts, you may not notice this or may not run into all these problems, but with the number of sites we have that use GA, including our own sites, we see and hear about this rather frequently. They HAVE improved recently, yes, but they still can't match the level of updates and response time that a host can offer on their own network, with much more controlled server loads and distributing all Urchin accounts across multiple servers. Google is good, but Google Analytics, Google Video, and a few of their other recent ventures are pretty weak considering the alternatives. That's all I was trying to convey. Your code probably works just fine, my point was about performance and having your stats available and being up-to-date every time you log in. That is very important to clients that spend thousands of dollars a day or a week on adwords and marketing - if you can't see the stats for 5 days, you may blow $50K in adwords for no reason at all, just empty clicks. That's why performance and up-to-date stats are crucial, and that's where GA falls way short... at least for the time being.

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

I am not disputing the initial release was poorly handled nor that Urchin hosted locally is a better product.

I'm simply stating they have throttled the current release of the account signup to be better prepared going forward.

Its a nice statistics package. Not without its flaws, but for free - its very nice.

[d_host]

Yes, but "free" is not always the best solution... especially if you stand to waste many thousands of dollars in campaigns and adwords and don't have a clue how well it's working - if at all. Let's just say - "free Google Analytics" is great if you just want stats from your site and don't particularly stand to lose much because you don't do a lot of adwords. If you do, it's not the best solution for the job. The big item in GA is campaign tracking, but it's of little value if you don't get the info from it in t a timely fashion. No amount of "free" is going to fix things, or put $50K back into a web site owner's pocket when they discover that the keywords they picked are not converting and they could have tried something else instead.

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

Remik,

Are you just arguing for the sake of arguing?

I never said it was the best solution. I said it was a nice solution for being free.

Yes, there are tons of statistics tracking softwares out there that are much better, most for a price.

I am simply stating my opinion. Feel free to agree that we disagree on this and just let it go rather than twisting my statements.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Just wanted to throw my conspiracy theory of Google Analytics into the thread; I don't like it because I don't trust Google to be completely honest, or pretty much any company with more cash in the bank than most countries that operates so mysteriously. Running Google Analytics gives Google information on how much of your traffic comes from their competitors, depending on the competitor and their URL structure, they may know if the click through was a natural search or a pay per click and they can even figure out the conversion rates you are seeing from clicks from Google competitors if you have the checkout code added. And Google is not stupid, they are very smart and can likely figure out what you're paying their competitors to get those clicks and the conversion percentages. If you use their conversion tracking, they even know how much revenue you're generating.

I know I don't want them having every piece of information they need to determine just how much they can charge me for clicks before it would make more sense to only use their competition. :) When it was Urchin, no problem, they were an independent third party selling a service to everyone; now it's Google who bought them and offers the same service for free. Hmm...

[Wesley Copple]

I got my invite last week and pasted the code into my store.

The interface told me that it was " Receiving Data".

Well, it's been "Receiving Data" for over a week now. I was wondering if anyone has been successfully running it, and how long it took before it produced something useful?

Also, for all you need "Re-Miva-al" lessons like myself, I posted the code into the end of my Global Screen Footer. That made it show up at the end of the body tag. Seems when I pasted it directly into the body tag, it discombobulated the layout.

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

I got my invite last week and pasted the code into my store.

The interface told me that it was " Receiving Data".

Well, it's been "Receiving Data" for over a week now. I was wondering if anyone has been successfully running it, and how long it took before it produced something useful?

Also, for all you need "Re-Miva-al" lessons like myself, I posted the code into the end of my Global Screen Footer. That made it show up at the end of the body tag. Seems when I pasted it directly into the body tag, it discombobulated the layout.

That depends on what you consider useful. I'm getting good statistics information on visitors, hits, traffic, usage, etc. Still tweaking things to get ROI type info or e-commerce conversion data to come up.

And yes, I had lots of problems initially with putting the code anywhere else other than as they said...right above the </BODY> tag. It too rendered our pages useless at first - until I moved it to where Google says to put it.

[Wesley Copple]

And yes, I had lots of problems initially with putting the code anywhere else other than as they said...right above the </BODY> tag. It too rendered our pages useless at first - until I moved it to where Google says to put it.

I originally assumed that location would be in the HTML Tags/BodyTag Insert screen as opposed to the Global Footer.

It was entertaining in a beating my head into the desk until bloody sort of way.

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

I originally assumed that location would be in the HTML Tags/BodyTag Insert screen as opposed to the Global Footer.

It was entertaining in a beating my head into the desk until bloody sort of way.

Must be typical of us code monkeys or maybe guys in general...RTFM AFTER you break something ;)

[TrishRedhop]

Well, don't leave us in suspense...

Originally Posted by Wesley Copple
I originally assumed that location would be in the HTML Tags/BodyTag Insert screen as opposed to the Global Footer.

It was entertaining in a beating my head into the desk until bloody sort of way.

Must be typical of us code monkeys or maybe guys in general...RTFM AFTER you break something ;)

...where DO you put the GA code in MIVA Merchant OUI??

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

Originally Posted by Wesley Copple
I originally assumed that location would be in the HTML Tags/BodyTag Insert screen as opposed to the Global Footer.

It was entertaining in a beating my head into the desk until bloody sort of way.


...where DO you put the GA code in MIVA Merchant OUI??

In your global footer.

[TrishRedhop]

In your global footer.

Global Screen Footer? sorry if I'm sounding dense, but I am dense.:)