Unleashing the Power of Ecommerce Custom Parameters: Maximizing Insights and Boosting Sales

May 18, 2023

3 Minutes Read

By Rajvi Shah

GA4

Everyone’s favorite new Google product, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) has come up with new item scope custom dimensions and metrics for ecommerce.

The ability to track and analyze Enhanced Ecommerce product parameters such as product categories, customer segments, marketing campaigns, and conversion funnels empowers you to make data-driven decisions that drive sales and improve the overall customer experience.

By embracing the power of ecommerce parameters, you can gain a competitive edge in the ever-evolving enhanced ecommerce landscape.

Custom dimensions provide additional information and at the same time, it is useful to know your customer/user better. For instance, user_id value is associated with each user to distinguish the user journey across devices for logged-in vs. non-loggedin users.

Enhanced Ecommerce has indeed been a widely popular feature in Universal Analytics (UA/GA3), providing extensive reporting capabilities specifically tailored for ecommerce businesses. Its detailed insights into the customer journey, product performance, and transactional data have been invaluable for optimizing online stores and driving revenue growth.

With the introduction of Google Analytics 4 (GA4), there has been great anticipation for advanced analysis capabilities that match or surpass the functionalities offered by Enhanced Ecommerce in UA/GA3. GA4 aims to provide a more holistic and customer-centric approach to analytics, focusing on the entire user journey across multiple touchpoints.

Let’s dive into detail about additional custom dimensions to be carried with Ecommerce Product journey:

  • A transaction occurs on a website and app. The below dimensions can be sent with the hit:
  • Billing City
  • Shipping City
  • Traffic Source
  • User Type
  • User ID
  • Registration Country
  • First Purchasers
  • Login Method
  • A user logs in to a website and app, we send the event login to Google Analytics. That event’s custom dimensions might be:
  • Login method
  • User ID
  • Login status
  • Membership type (for subscription site)
  • A new item/product level custom dimensions can be utilized now in GA4, additional parameters could be added:
  • Product size
  • Product stock
  • Product discount (in %)
  • Total cart value
  • Product pricing plan (for subscription)
  • Product ratings
  • Product reviews
  • Product labels (hot seller, best seller, new etc.)
  • Product type (customized, default available)

Note: If your account is out of custom dimensions limits, utilizing default dimensions such as the item_category levels is a great alternative.

For example, if the item_category levels are currently unused in your setup, you can assign them specific values to capture relevant information about items. You could use the levels to indicate product attributes like color, size, material, or any other relevant dimensions in item_category2, item_category3, item_list_id, location_id etc.

For a detailed parameter list, here is the Ecommerce parameters list available.

Additionally, it is not recommended to enable a custom dimension for parameter that is already defined as a dimension and available within GA4, such as page and screen dimensions or transaction ID, item ID. It will consume part of your custom dimension quota.

How to Configure Item Scope in GA4, custom dimension created to measure stock availability of the product named as item_stock_status. This names can be varies as per standard naming convention.

In dataLayer snippet of enhanced Ecommerce, the key name should be same to capture item scope. Here, the product map is having item_stock_status key to measure stock details:

items: [
      {
       
item_id: "SKU_12345",
       
item_name: "Stan and Friends Tee",
       
affiliation: "Google Merchandise Store",
       
coupon: "SUMMER_FUN",
       
discount: 2.22,
       
index: 0,
       
item_brand: "Google",
       
item_category: "Apparel",
       
item_category2: "Adult",
       
item_category3: "Shirts",
       
item_stock_status: "Out of stock",
       
item_list_id: "related_products",
       
item_list_name: "Related Products",
       
item_variant: "green",
       
location_id: "ChIJIQBpAG2ahYAR_6128GcTUEo",
       
price: 9.99,
       
quantity: 1
     }

In Explore Reporting, Custom dimension of item scope is available to utilize with any item level parameters to measure the product performance and utilize it to make decisions related to product. Custom reports, Funnel reports can be created to measure product behvaior closely. Here, custom report is created to see item stock data:

Quota Limits, Google Suggests utilizing it in an optimistic way so that you will not cross the limits.

Item

Standard property limits

Analytics 360 property limits

Event-scoped custom dimensions

50

125

User-scoped custom dimensions

25

100

Item-scoped custom dimensions

10

25

All custom metrics

50

125

In conclusion, leveraging the full potential of ecommerce parameters can be a game-changer for your online business. By strategically utilizing these parameters, you can unlock valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and purchasing patterns.

Remember to plan your parameter strategy carefully, ensuring consistency and accuracy across your website/app and analytics setup.

So, start harnessing the power of ecommerce parameters today, and watch as your insights deepen, your sales soar, and your online business thrives in the dynamic world of ecommerce.