My Step-By-Step Blueprint For Learning and Mastering Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Get the FREE e-book on Google Analytics 4 – GA4 (126 Pages)

Yes I want the FREE ebook

Last Updated: August 20, 2022

Maintaining the accuracy and consistency of your data, especially e-commerce data, is a critical aspect of your analysis.

So how confident are you on a scale of 1 to 10 that ecommerce data in your GA reports is accurate?

Imagine a scenario where a large part of the website sales is made up of sales data from test orders.

Imagine a scenario where you determined the top 10 regions for directing your marketing efforts and budget on the basis of corrupted ecommerce data.

Now imagine where this flawed analysis will take you over time in terms of time spent, budget and resource allocation.

Skewed ecommerce data is more common than you may think. 

I once discovered test orders worth $40k in one of the GA views. This $40k figure misled me in many ways for a while and made me think that something is working or is important when it isn’t.

I want you to avoid being misled by corrupted ecommerce data.

The number one way of avoiding being misled is by making your shopping cart software your best friend.

If you do not have access to the shopping cart of your client then get one. Even ‘view only’ access will work just fine. But get that access and periodically match the sales data between your Google Analytics account and Shopping Cart account.

Data Discrepancy between Google Analytics and Shopping Cart Sales Data

Google Analytics and shopping cart sales data generally do not match. There can be many reasons for that.

But one of the main reason is, shopping carts (like Shopify) handles sales data (cancelled orders, unfulfilled orders, test orders, promotions, and refunds) much better than Google Analytics.

To learn more about the discrepancies between Google Analytics and shopping cart sales data, read this article: Why Google Analytics and Shopping Cart Sales data don’t match and how to fix it.

Get this 70 page detailed checklist containing screenshots, step-by-step instructions and links to articles

Do you want to set up Google Analytics 4 (GA4) fast and correctly?

Yes I want the ebook

Fixing Duplicate Orders in Google Analytics

Duplicate orders/transactions can take place when the order confirmation page (receipt page) can be loaded more than once by the same user without placing any new order.

With each new page load, the ecommerce data is resent to the GA server. Within a session, Google Analytics will filter out duplicate transactions. But if a user comes back later in a different session and revisits the order confirmation page then the transaction data could be sent again to the GA server thus creating duplicate orders.

These duplicate transactions will then show up in your report and inflate your sales data. So you need to ask your developer to:

#1 Make sure a user can not access the order confirmation page more than once without placing a new order.

#2 Make sure a user can not refresh the order confirmation page. If this is not possible then make sure the ecommerce tracking code is not executed on a reload/refresh.

#3 If you maintain the exact same code on your staging website, there is a possibility that test orders are inflating your sales data. In order to make sure that this doesn’t happen, the ecommerce tracking code should not fire on the staging website.

So if someone visits the order confirmation page on the staging website or place a test order, no ecommerce data should go to the Google Analytics server. This can only be done by stopping the ecommerce tracking code from being executed in the first place.

Here is how you can find duplicate transactions (duplicate orders) in Google Analytics:

Step-1: Download this custom report in your GA view and then select your reporting view:

Step-2: Set the time period of the custom report to the last one month and then look at the transactions column. They should all be 1.

If you find any value greater than 1, then you have got duplicate transactions issue:

Step-3: Check this report at least once a week, to make sure that no duplicate orders have been placed on the website.

Get this 70 page detailed checklist containing screenshots, step-by-step instructions and links to articles

Do you want to set up Google Analytics 4 (GA4) fast and correctly?

Yes I want the ebook

Fixing Cancelled and Test Orders in Google Analytics

You can fix canceled and test orders in Google Analytics by reversing ecommerce transactions. To learn more about such reversal, read the followings articles:

#1 How to reverse an ecommerce transaction in Google Analytics.

#2 How to remove/modify Google Analytics ecommerce transaction in one click

#3 How to identify negative transactions in Google Analytics

Dealing with Refunds in Google Analytics

If your business, issues a lot of refunds, then you need to adjust your sales data accordingly, in Google Analytics, to reflect the refunded sales amount in your ecommerce reports.

There are a couple of methods to do that.

One is by making changes to your ecommerce tracking code as explained in great detail, in the article: How to reverse an ecommerce transaction in Google Analytics 

The other method is to use the ‘Refund Data Import‘ feature which is explained in great detail in the article: Dealing with refunds in Google Analytics

Other articles on Google Analytics Ecommerce

1. Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking Tutorial
2. Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking in Google Analytics – Tutorial
3. Set up Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking in Google Analytics
4. Using Enhanced Ecommerce segments for Remarketing in Google Analytics
5. Using Cohort Analysis & Enhanced Ecommerce to Understand User Behavior
6. Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking via Google Tag Manager
7. Ecommerce Tracking Google Tag Manager (GTM) – Tutorial
8. Shopify Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking in Google Analytics – Tutorial
9. GA4 (Google Analytics 4) Ecommerce Tracking via GTM – Tutorial
10. Why Google Analytics and Shopping Cart Sales data don’t match and how to fix it
11. How to remove / modify Google Analytics ecommerce transaction in one click
12. Tracking Google Analytics Paypal Referral and other payment gateways
13. Subscription & Recurring Revenue Analytics in Google Analytics
14. Understanding Google Analytics Product Data Import
15. Shopping Cart Analytics Tutorial
16. Learn To Read E-Commerce Reports In Google Analytics
17. Dealing with Google Analytics Refund – Reverse Transaction
18. How to reverse transaction in Google Analytics for gtag.js and analytics.js
19. How to Fix Missing Ecommerce Data in Google Analytics