Google Analytics Issues with Ecommerce Tracking

Question

I manage a website that sells business cards: Oubly.com

I believe the previous developer did not install the Google e-commerce tracking correctly.

Every single transaction since 2014 has been attributed to Direct.

Coming from previous experience working with another e-commerce site I know that this is impossible. The previous e-commerce site I worked with had various transactions from various sources.

conversions

The amount of transactions is correct, I just know that they all cant be coming from Direct.

How can the current developer tell if the tracking code was installed correctly?

Answer 1

Right now there's not enough information to tell you 100% what is your problem. But likely you are losing the cookie when tracking the transaction.

The most common cause is that the hostname of the page that tracks the transaction is different than the hostname on your website. Google Analytics stores a unique and random clientId in a cookie when a user visits your website. If your site suddenly changes to a new domain such as a payment partner domain the cookie won't be accessible anymore, so GA thinks this is a new user and recreates a cookie. That starts a new User and a new Session in GA often with the trafficSource of (direct).

The solution is to implement cross-domain tracking for GA . Cross-Domain tracking helps you pass cookies from one domain to another so GA knows that it's the same user.