Squarespace now added support for Google Analytics 4 – Here's a tutorial for it

Blog post with video here How to install Google Analytics to Squarespace (UPDATED METHOD 2022)

I was waiting for this, as it was scheduled to come out in november 2021, but just now I noticed the update live so we can finally add GA4 to SQSP. It was of course possible to do before, but a manual code injection method will NOT track e-commerce transactions so this is a super welcome update. It's easy and will track e-commerce transactions automatically. 

I hope you'll find it useful 🙂

-Fenix

hello Fenix!

how have GA4 analytics worked for you? I installed them since the beginning of February using the Squarespace integration and use them parallel to my Universal Analytics platform, and they are correctly identifying everything *except* e-commerce transactions. I've lost all the info on sales, conversions and value, and I can't seem to find any fix. this have been specially troublesome to my Google Ads campaign, as I used to have great insight with the UA info, but not anymore with the GA4 integration.

have you run into these or have any insight about it?

thanks!

12 hours ago, axelvargas said:

How have GA4 analytics worked for you?

To be 100% honest I'm currently still using Universal Analytics. My click tracking plugin is a lot easier to work with UA. In GA4 navigating and filtering events has not been as smooth. The ecommerce support should be there. In the Squarespace+Google webinar when they revealed the details it was confirmed to be included. So perhaps ask Squarespace support. You can also hit me up if you want me to take a look at what might be causing the issue. However debugging analytics stuff is always a bit painful 😅

On 4/13/2022 at 12:20 PM, codeandtonic said:

I'm currently still using Universal Analytics. My click tracking plugin is a lot easier to work with UA.

Bear in mind that Google plan to sunset Universal Analytics and want users to move to Google Analytics 4. They currently plan to stop processing UA hits from July next year so they are encouraging UA users to start gathering from GA 4 now so that historical insights are available to measure later.

14 hours ago, paul2009 said:

Bear in mind that Google plan to sunset Universal Analytics and want users to move to Google Analytics 4.

Thanks! 

Yeah, I've noticed this alert in my UA dashboard, and you're 100% right... However I'm still a little unsure what's the plan gonna be, as EU has pretty much stated that all Google Analytics usage is illegal.

I've tried some cookieless legal options like Plausible and Fathom, and they're great except with the e-commerce stuff which is important 😞

On 2/1/2022 at 2:12 AM, codeandtonic said:

Blog post with video here How to install Google Analytics to Squarespace (UPDATED METHOD 2022)

 

I was waiting for this, as it was scheduled to come out in november 2021, but just now I noticed the update live so we can finally add GA4 to SQSP. It was of course possible to do before, but a manual code injection method will NOT track e-commerce transactions so this is a super welcome update. It's easy and will track e-commerce transactions automatically. 

I hope you'll find it useful 🙂

-Fenix

 @codeandtonic

Hey Fenix

Great vid, interesting about the code injection. I recently added the GA4 property to two existing websites along with UA in the correct format and it wasn't picking up any data. Once I added in the gtag.js, it started to show data.

Any thoughts on this? Neither of the two sites I tested with have eCom so I can't test this portion but I would like to implement correctly for the rest of my client sites. SS support couldn't see any issues at their end and when I reported what worked for me, they said they would pass this along to the team.

Cheers

Jen

Hi jenq 👋

Try the tagasisstant.google.com to make sure the GA4 is installed correctly and getting data. Here's video showing how

Get in touch if you want me to help you with this!

On 4/21/2022 at 11:49 PM, codeandtonic said:

Hi jenq 👋

Try the tagasisstant.google.com to make sure the GA4 is installed correctly and getting data. Here's video showing how

 

 

Get in touch if you want me to help you with this!

 

Thanks, will this also work if I'm not using Google Tag Manager?

Either way, still not quite sure how I get around the issue I had with gtag.js, where adding it resulted it collecting data.

There is something wrong with their implementation... it's tracking e-commerce purchases but it's not registering the transaction revenue:

On 6/3/2022 at 1:53 AM, 1957Goldtop said:

There is something wrong with their implementation... it's tracking e-commerce purchases but it's not registering the transaction revenue:

You're right. I've seen other report this as well and also do not see sales in my own GA4 / Squarespace. 

I wonder if GA4 is so unpopular that no one has complained to Squarespace..? Personally I've had very hard time using the data compared to UA. 

Any updates to this issue? Should we install some script on the order confirmation page?

Also looking for an update here. I've tried a script on the order confirmation page that I configured with GTM, so now I have both the integration and GTM running, but so far, it's still not working.

My understanding is that GTM won't work with Squarespace bc it drops the code injection on the checkout page. Does the update introducing an Order Status Page allow for complete user journey tracking across the site & transaction completion? 

I've been working to resolve the ecommerce revenue reporting issue for the last week now. I've been able to get some revenue data to populate by creating an event modification for the purchase event directly in GA4 (see attached image).

I think the problem is that SQS does not send the currency type with the purchase event, which is required by GA4 to display the data. By modifying the currency parameter for the event, you can set the currency type. 

On 2/7/2023 at 1:31 PM, marlatallime said:

Does the update introducing an Order Status Page allow for complete user journey tracking across the site & transaction completion? 

 

Not as far as I can tell. I am using GTM to track purchase conversions and it clearly drops the code. I don't see the  <head> snippet when I inspect the page, and the Tag Assistant doesn't show any pages after the product page.

A purchase conversion will only be transmitted if

a) You can fire GTM or GTAG on the checkout page.

b) You know the variables that SquareSpace uses to write the sale information to the field to transmit to GA4.

You may be able to setup a goal in GA4 that captures when a purchase if it is possible to add that code to the page where the checkout happens, or maybe after payment there is a thank you page which you can define and then set as a destination URL to trigger a purchase event. You may then (I've not checked but you could in Google UA) if you have an average order value, hard-code the value of a goal conversion into your goal.

This will bring some information into Google Analytics.

I hope that can help.

I've been having an issue with my GA4 Analytics picking up my IP address even with the filters properly installed, so I am unable to get clear data, has anyone had this issue and resolved it?It's even picking it up in Google Analytics when I am logged in at edit mode!

Their current GA4 integration is poor at best. 

The purchase event they pass over via the measurement protocol will report as "direct" for every single one. If you're trying to measure attribution for these events you won't be able to until they fix these issues.

I find it crazy that after all this time they still have not fixed this issue!!

Makes you wonder how they take e-commerce seriously...

I contacted the support and they argue it is a glitch with GA (what a joke...)

Here is a good video on the topic: 

On 2/8/2023 at 2:49 PM, PeterPots said:

I've been working to resolve the ecommerce revenue reporting issue for the last week now. I've been able to get some revenue data to populate by creating an event modification for the purchase event directly in GA4 (see attached image).

I think the problem is that SQS does not send the currency type with the purchase event, which is required by GA4 to display the data. By modifying the currency parameter for the event, you can set the currency type. 

Thank you so much for sharing this screen shot. Going to try this out on my ecommerce site and see if it works!