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how to configure BV 5.8 to populate category field in Google analytics
Rank: Member
Joined: 8/22/2011(UTC)
Posts: 6
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anyone help me figure out how to populate the category field for google analytics ecommerce reporting? i see the empty field in the cms in BV but no explanation how to populate. i read the brief help here: http://help.bvcommerce.c...pages/analytics-settings but it didnt really clarify anything. isnt the category a dynamically passed value like the others? any ideas would help. thanks jay wilner File Attachment(s):  BVCommerce-GoogleAnalyticsEcommerceTracking.pdf (316kb) downloaded 53 time(s).You cannot view/download attachments. Try to login or register.
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Rank: Administration
Joined: 4/2/2004(UTC) Posts: 2,393 ![United States]( "United States") Location: Hummelstown, PA Thanks: 6 times
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It's kind of useless because whatever you enter will show up for every product. Ideally what you should do is dynamically populate this value for each product in the order. You could use the category to which the product is assigned, but if you assign a product to more than one category then you would need to be able to determine which of those categories to use for analytics. I think the Product Type is the best way to go, assuming your data is setup to use them. |
Aaron Sherrick
BV Commerce
Toll-free 888-665-8637 - Int'l +1 717-220-0012 |
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Rank: Member
Joined: 11/25/2003(UTC)
Posts: 370
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"Product Type is the best way to go"
I agree for sure.
Question though would we want to use our category or the google category as used in the google base feeds which is different? I have a Google Category type already I use for the feeds. Suppose you could use the same for analytics. |
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Rank: Administration
Joined: 4/2/2004(UTC) Posts: 2,393 ![United States]( "United States") Location: Hummelstown, PA Thanks: 6 times
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Originally Posted by: "Kim (Kman)"  Question though would we want to use our category or the google category as used in the google base feeds which is different? I don't think the Google category would be as helpful to a merchant. Really it comes down to getting the information that a merchant needs to make actionable decisions. Yet another possibility would be to use the top-level category that a product belongs to... |
Aaron Sherrick
BV Commerce
Toll-free 888-665-8637 - Int'l +1 717-220-0012 |
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Rank: Member
Joined: 8/22/2011(UTC)
Posts: 6
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aaron and Kim; thanks for response! Aaron, so why in the world would BV have that admin area in the analytics option tab (that i showed above) with a form field titled: "Category"?? So are you saying that the developer needs to write some code to populate that category field in the google analytics script? is there a particular file in the framework we can edit to do that? here is a snapshot of the correctly rendered google analytics page: http://code.google.com/a...ngEcommerce.html#Example
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Rank: Member
Joined: 8/22/2011(UTC)
Posts: 6
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also how do you use those product types? would you recommend defining one product type for each category and then just doing a quick query to update that new field with the products associated category? then if there is more than one category per product you then just choose one?
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Rank: Administration
Joined: 4/2/2004(UTC) Posts: 2,393 ![United States]( "United States") Location: Hummelstown, PA Thanks: 6 times
Was thanked: 163 time(s) in 158 post(s)
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Originally Posted by: "jaywilner" Aaron, so why in the world would BV have that admin area in the analytics option tab (that i showed above) with a form field titled: "Category"?? This is one of those cases where it probably isn't worth the development time of the software company to build something that won't work or make sense for a large percentage of their customers. Generally the more detailed reporting information you require, the more development work and integration that is required. Even this simple implementation is better than nothing. Where it could be helpful is if you are reporting sales to analytics from multiple sources, you could use a category call "storefront" to denote that the sale came from your ecommerce store. Originally Posted by: "jaywilner" So are you saying that the developer needs to write some code to populate that category field in the google analytics script? is there a particular file in the framework we can edit to do that? Yes. The file that must be modified is /BVModules/Controls/AnalyticsTags.ascx. |
Aaron Sherrick
BV Commerce
Toll-free 888-665-8637 - Int'l +1 717-220-0012 |
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Rank: Administration
Joined: 4/2/2004(UTC) Posts: 2,393 ![United States]( "United States") Location: Hummelstown, PA Thanks: 6 times
Was thanked: 163 time(s) in 158 post(s)
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Originally Posted by: "jaywilner" also how do you use those product types? would you recommend defining one product type for each category and then just doing a quick query to update that new field with the products associated category? then if there is more than one category per product you then just choose one? Product Types and categories are not the same thing, although many people seem to treat them as such. How you use them depends greatly on your product catalog. On a niche store the Product Types will be very granular (e.g. screwdriver, drill, saw) whereas with a large store the Product Types will be more general (e.g. tools). The reason to use Product Types is because you can define custom fields for each Product Type; these custom fields are called Type Properties. I could wax philosophical on this topic for hours, but I'll spare you. ;-) |
Aaron Sherrick
BV Commerce
Toll-free 888-665-8637 - Int'l +1 717-220-0012 |
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