Hello,
I apologize if this question has an obvious answer, but I'm currently exploring the new GA4, particularly the Monetisation > E-Commerce Purchases section.
While reviewing the data, I noticed that I can see my product information, and there is data in the 'items purchased' column. However, 'items viewed', 'items added to cart', and 'revenue' all appear as 0.
Could someone kindly explain the reason behind this?
Thank you.
Hello, I understand that finding the solution to the missing data in GA can be challenging, especially if you're working alone in a small company. Here are some steps you can take to troubleshoot and resolve the issue:
Ensure that your GA4 property, GTM (if you use it), and website are properly connected.
Verify that all required attributes, as mentioned in the documentation (e.g., developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/ga4/reference/events?client_type=gtag#add_to_cart), are correctly implemented in the data layer and have valid values when sending data to GA4.
Wait for 24 to 48 hours to allow for GA4's processing delay.
If you have items purchased but no revenue recorded, check if the currency variable is missing or incorrectly named in the data layer or GTM event setup.
For items added to the cart, the issue can be more complex depending on your website's implementation. Here's what we experienced when facing similar problems:
a. The client website uses Shopware with a Tag Manager Plugin, which resets the data layer once an item is added to the cart, and the quantity value becomes available only after the add-to-cart event.
b. We encountered a situation where items added to the cart showed incorrect values or appeared as zero. In the GTM preview, everything seemed fine, and the event was triggering correctly. Interestingly, this problem occurred only on the live site, not on our test instance.
c. After using the Google Analytics Debugger Extension for Chrome (not sure if it's updated for GA4, but it still functions), we discovered that the event sequencing was incorrect. The event data was being sent to GA4 before the data layer push, resulting in the quantity value being undefined when sent to GA4.
d. Our GTM event was over-engineered, triggered on button clicks, and not connected to the Tag Manager Plugin (for Shopware) that handled the data layer push.
To fix this, we modified the GTM event trigger for "add_to_cart" to be fired via a custom event (the one defined in the Tag Manager Plugin), and this resolved the issue.
I hope this information proves helpful to you. Good luck with troubleshooting your GA implementation!