Google Analytics Recurring Revenue and Subscriptions Tracking Guide

Specialized Tracking

Since subscription payments (other than the first payment) are not triggered by users’ action, they need to be tracked server side.

When a user first sign up, assign him a unique user id.

You can use login id as user id.

Just make sure that the id does not contain Personally Identifiable data like name, email address, IP address etc.

Any data that allows Google to personally identify an individual or data that permanently identifies a particular device (such as a unique device identifier, if such an identifier cannot be reset) is Personally Identifiable data.

If you upload any data that allows Google to personally identify an individual, your Google Analytics account can be terminated, and you may lose your Google Analytics data as this is against Google Terms of Service.

The user id is used to sum up the recurring revenue by a user.

When a user make the first initial purchase you can set a unique user id for him and note down his transaction ID.

For second and subsequent purchases, send transaction data (with unique transaction ID) to Google Analytics via measurement protocol whenever you process payment.

When a subscription stops then stop sending the transaction data via measurement protocol for a particular user.

About Measurement protocol

Measurement protocol is a set of rules which your application must follow in order to send raw hit data directly to Google Analytics server.

Through this protocol you can collect and send raw user interaction data (hits) directly to GA server from any device/system which can be connected to the internet.

This device/system can be a smart phone, tablet PC, digital appliances (washing machine, coffee machine, slot machine), point of purchase systems etc.

However, you need to format your data according to the measurement protocol before you can send it to the Google Analytics server.

So for example, if you want to send data from a cash counter machine, coffee machine or slot machine then you first need to format the data according to the measurement protocol.

Without such formatting, you can’t send data to GA.

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In order to make an HTTP request to the GA server (for sending the raw hit data directly), you need to format your HTTP request according to the measurement protocol.

This formatted HTTP request is called the measurement protocol request.

Here is how the measurement protocol request looks like:

protocol-request The measurement protocol request is made up of: user agent, transport and payload data:

user-agent-transport Payload data is the data you send to Google Analytics server using the measurement protocol.

In other words, the payload data is the data which has been formatted according to Measurement Protocol.

Following is an example of payload data:

v=1&tid=UA-123456-2&cid=36009a59-2a05-49e7-b826-2b884d0f935b&t=pageview&dp=%2Fhome

The payload data resembles a URL query string.

Payload data is made up of multiple parameters.

Each parameter is made up of ‘key = value’ pairs.

Each parameter is separated from another parameter via & character.

Since each parameter is made up of ‘key = value‘ pairs, so each ‘key=value’ pair is separated by ‘&’ character.

Syntax of payload data:

parameter1&parameter2&parameter3

key1=value1&key2=value2&key3=value3

Example of payload data:

v=1&tid=UA-123456-2&cid=36009a59-2a05-49e7-b826-2b884d0f935b&t=pageview&dp=%2Fhome

Here v, tid, cid, t and dp are called the keys.

‘1’, ‘UA-123456-2’, ‘36009a59-2a05-49e7-b826-2b884d0f935b’, ‘pageview’ and ‘%2Fhome’ are called the values.

For example, following are the parameters for measuring purchases via measurement protocol:

Source: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/devguide

Click on the link ‘view this hit in the measurement protocol hit builder‘ to see how this hit actually looks like.

All values you sent via measurement protocol to GA, must be both UTF-8 encoded and URL encoded.

For example, / is encoded to %2F

If the values are not encoded correctly then they will be replaced with unicode replacement character xFFFD

Note (1): You can learn more about URL encoding from here: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp

Note (2): All protocol parameters must be set on the same line. They should not have any spaces between them. Comments are not allowed in protocol parameters.

The measurement protocol supports following data types for the values in the ‘key = value’ pairs of the payload data:

Integer – used to represent a number
Text – used to represent a string
Boolean – used to represent a boolean value (true or false)
Currency – used to represent the total value of a currency in up to 6 decimal points.

Transport defines where and how to send the payload data.

Following is an example of transport:

POST http://www.google-analytics.com/collect

transport

A transport is made up of:

#1 GET/POST method – which defines how to send the payload data

#2 Location of the GA server – which defines where to send the payload data

#3 URL endpoint – this is used to define whether a single or multiple hits should be sent to the GA server or whether to send the payload data to measurement protocol validation server.

There are rules regarding which parameters can be sent together and which parameters can’t be sent together. There are rules regarding the length and format of parameters.

Each parameter has specific type that requires a particular format.

Each payload data must contain a valid hit type.

Each hit type must have its own set of required parameters set.

For more details, regarding these rules, refer to Measurement Protocol Parameter Reference: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/parameters?hl=en

You can get complete list of all of the measurement protocols from here: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/parameters

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You can send payload data by either using the GET method or POST method.

Google recommends using POST method, as then you can send larger payload data to GA server.

The location of the GA server is: https://www.google-analytics.com

This is where we send the payload data.

The payload data need to be URL encoded, if you are making HTTP POST request to the GA server.

The size of Payload data, if you are making HTTP POST request to the GA server can be maximum of 8191 Bytes.

However, if you make HTTP GET request to the GA server, then the size of payload data cannot be more than 2000 Bytes.

Write a script to make the following similar HTTP POST request to the GA server in order to send the payload data:

User-Agent: user_agent_string

POST https://www.google-analytics.com/collect?payload_data

Use measurement protocol hit builder to validate hits: https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/hit-builder/

Note: GA hit builder use only one URL endpoint, /collect

To use the measurement protocol, you need to do following three things:

#1 Ask your developer to write an application (program) that can pull data from your desired data source (could be your database/backend):

application-pull-data

#2 Your application must convert the retrieved data into the payload data according to the measurement protocol:

application-generate

#3 Your application must make a HTTP POST request to the end point (Google Analytics server) in order to send the payload data to the GA server. The HTTP request should be made up of user agent, transport and payload data:

make-http-request

When GA receives the HTTP request from your application, it try to process the payload data in the HTTP request.

If GA successfully processes the payload data then its server will send 2XX response code back to your application:

send-2xx-code
If GA is not successful, in processing the payload data, then its server does not send any error code back to your application.

As you create monthly invoices for our customers, you could have a request sent through the measurement protocol which specifies the invoice details as soon as the payment comes in as successfully processed.

Recommendation regarding updating the original transaction

Do not update the original transaction every month.

Assign a unique transaction ID for each new transaction for a particular user.

If you update the original transaction with new value then you won’t be able to see individual transactions for a particular user over time.

If you don’t assign an unique transaction ID for each new transaction for a particular user then you will have duplicate transaction issues.

You can segment the data by user id and should be able to see all of the transactions for a particular user in the user explorer report in the user id view :

In addition to that you can create a custom dimension and pass user id value to it.

Then you create a user id custom segment.

By doing that you can segment any GA report by user id custom segment and do detailed analysis for a particular user.
If some of your customers book well in advance, say 2 months in advance then send transaction data via measurement protocol after 2 months to maintain the accuracy of the sales data.

Record sales only on the day of the actual sales whether the sales is user generated or generated by you in response to billing.

Recommendation for refunds, chargebacks and unsuccessful payments

When sending transaction data via measurement protocol, add negative amount for the sales.

This is known as reversing the transaction.

When you reverse a transaction in Google Analytics, it does not remove it.

GA simply deduct a particular amount from the revenue total.

So what is removed is the revenue/sales associated with the reversal transaction.

No other information associated with the transaction is removed.

For example,

Lets say User ‘A’ placed an order of $200 on Monday.

Lets say the total website sales on Monday was $500.

Now if you reverse the transaction on Monday, then the total sales amount for Monday would be reported to be: $500 – $200 = $300

If you reverse the same transaction on say Tuesday, thenthe total sales amount for Monday would remain $500

the total sales amount for Tuesday would be: Total website sales for Tuesday – $200

So if the original transaction occurred on Monday and you reversed it on Tuesday then make sure that you are analyzing a date range that includes both Monday and Tuesday.Google in fact recommends to do the reversal on the same day as the original transaction.

Note: Both original and reversal transaction will be included and reported in the transaction count.

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