Google provides several free tools for webmasters, managers, and advertisers to take full advantage of everything that happens on the internet.

Imagine that you advertise your products using sponsored links from google adwords. How do I know which clicks are generating sales? Which product converts more? Which is the most lucrative?

All of this can be measured using google analytics, provided that you enable the system – as shown below.

Ecommerce Tracking

Once you have an account in google analytics and have your module enabled in Magento , go back to your analytics account and click on the menu “Admin“, then click “View Settings“.

Just select the default monetary value of your system, and then check the “Enabled” in the following e-commerce tracking.

This will allow you to track your sales by google analytics. To know which adwords ads are converting into sales you need to associate your analytics with the account adwords.

You find this setting just below the ecommerce tracking.

Changes in Magento

Once you’ve enabled ecommerce tracking in google analytics, What do I need to change the in Magento code?

NOTHING

Absolutely nothing, Magento is ready to meet the advanced google analytics settings in data capture (orders and products).

So if your system is not sending sales conversion data to analytics it’s very likely that the “successful order” page has been changed by some payment module or even your custom theme has removed the code monitoring.

If it is necessary, or if you are curious, let’s see below how the system prepared to send this data.

3 in 1

We have 3 (three) files in Magento that reproduce this result – this from the 1.7.x version. The first of these is googleanalytics.xml:

app > design > frontend > base > default > layout > googleanalytics.xml

This is the file that builds the page layout, so this is the XML that indicates which files will be used, see template=”googleanalytics/ga.phtml”. This file is located at:

app > design > frontend > base > default > template > googleanalytics > ga.phtml

When analyzing the code you will find the following call:

_getOrdersTrackingCode() ?>

Therefore, this method that is set in the block type=”googleanalytics/ga” should run whenever a request is made.

app > code > core > Mage > GoogleAnalytics > Block > Ga.php

And finally, within this class we find the method reported there in phtml:

protected function _getOrdersTrackingCode() {
    $orderIds = $this->getOrderIds();
    if (empty($orderIds) || !is_array($orderIds)) {
        return;
    }
    $collection = Mage::getResourceModel('sales/order_collection')->addFieldToFilter('entity_id', array('in' => $orderIds));
    $result = array();
    foreach ($collection as $order) {
        if ($order->getIsVirtual()) {
            $address = $order->getBillingAddress();
        } else {
            $address = $order->getShippingAddress();
        }
        $result[] = sprintf("_gaq.push(['_addTrans', '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s']);",
        $order->getIncrementId(),
        $this->jsQuoteEscape(Mage::app()->getStore()->getFrontendName()),
        $order->getBaseGrandTotal(),
        $order->getBaseTaxAmount(),
        $order->getBaseShippingAmount(),
        $this->jsQuoteEscape(Mage::helper('core')->escapeHtml($address->getCity())),
        $this->jsQuoteEscape(Mage::helper('core')->escapeHtml($address->getRegion())),
        $this->jsQuoteEscape(Mage::helper('core')->escapeHtml($address->getCountry()))
        );
    foreach ($order->getAllVisibleItems() as $item) {
        $result[] = sprintf("_gaq.push(['_addItem', '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s']);",
        $order->getIncrementId(),
        $this->jsQuoteEscape($item->getSku()), $this->jsQuoteEscape($item->getName()),
        null, // there is no "category" defined for the order item
        $item->getBasePrice(), $item->getQtyOrdered()
        );
        }
        $result[] = "_gaq.push(['_trackTrans']);";
    }
    return implode("\n", $result);
}

To understand what the above code is doing, read the procedure on the official google analytics: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gaJS/gaJSApiEcommerce.html#_gat.GA_Tracker_._addTrans

Accompaniments

If you do not already have google analytics enabled on your system, read the post : Google Analytics in Magento, where you can monitor the movement of your store virtual.

Also read the post: Event Tracking in Magento, which are advanced settings for monitor the actions that happen in the navigation (without submit).

See also a Google explanation of ecommerce tracking:

And never make decisions in the dark again.

Success!