Google Analytics 4 - Recommended Custom Events For E-Commerce Sites/Apps

GA 4 documentation has lots of pointers on the implementation setup. One of the aspects covered is: Type of events to track for e-commerce sites [recommended + standard + custom events]. Let’s have a look at what’s doable in the context of e-commerce sites/apps.

From the list of Standard events, these can be the most relevant to e-commerce.

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9267735

• Login

• Purchase

• Share

• Search

• Sign_up

From the list of e-commerce specific events: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9268036

I’m not going to list them here but you have the usual suspects related to product views and shopping carts.

What’s missing from the above two lists needs to be covered under Custom events. Note: GA 4 recommends using Standard/Recommended events [with their syntax before going for custom events as reporting is easier with the former. Will cover this in a separate blog post].

Custom e-commerce events that you should setup for GA 4:

• Review_seen: It’s safe to say that reviews influence decision making. In some cases, I’ve seen 3-5X better conversion rates for users who viewed reviews compared to site averages. As reviews get added to the site, you can start seeing how review_seen metric correlates with conversion metrics.

• Review_created: These are audiences who can help you with word-of-mouth marketing. Lookalikes of these audiences could be equally powerful. Note: All reviews may not be glowing and rightly so, even Amazon shows a mix and that’s ok. As long as it aids in decision making, it could be helpful. Here, your event parameter can be the rating stars given.

• Out_of_stock: There’s nothing more frustrating for a user than to view an out-of-stock product on an e-commerce site. By documenting this [along with the SKU details inc. value as params], you are now able to calculate the lost opportunity. i.e. Users who saw that a product was out - of - stock from the thumbnail and still viewed the product detail page [that’s when the event fires]. While every product detail page would not result in a sale, you could run some v quick analysis to know what’s the relation between product page views events and revenues. This will help determine the appx. $ value of your out - of - stock items.

• Homepage_banners: IMO, carousel banners on e-commerce sites are quite important as 20-40% of your traffic could still start from the homepage. Providing extra visibility to offers/campaigns via homepage banners could help provide that extra push. As a result, you may consider tracking them under custom events in GA 4 with the banner details being in the event parameters.

That’s all I can think of right now. Would you like to add any custom events? Do let me know via comments.