Excluding Payment Gateways From Google Analytics – Semalt Practice

It is important to track the source of any online business transaction effectively. The source of internet sales and purchases is an important issue that should be monitored by the business managers who intend to promote their trade activities using an online page or website. Monitoring the source of the internet sales is critical in determining the effectiveness of the budget allocation process. More finances should be allocated to the online sales strategies that generate the highest return on investments. The popular internet sales platforms include the direct approach, organic method, paid method, referral system, and social approach.

Michael Brown, the Semalt Customer Success Manager, says that purchasing products and services online entails several procedures. It is more than just identifying the website of the internet merchant, clicking the purchase icon or link, and then waiting for the delivery of the product or service. The online purchasing is a complex process that entails monitoring the website on several occasions and from different sources. Effective study of the website and the purchase details should be done before making the final decision.

Attribution is the method where credit is provided to every channel. The credit is given based on the level of the sales conversion. The default setting of Google Analytics allocates 100% credit to the previous non-direct click. Therefore, the users can locate the website using the paid click initially. However, when they attempt to complete the purchase transaction at a later time, they may find that the Google Analytics system has identified a sale from another source. Hence this approach is frustrating for the Pay Per Click (PPC) user.

It is necessary for the business owners to understand the complex relationships that exist between the various online sales or purchase channels. The business owners can study the general results of the diverse attribution strategies using the Google Analytics platform. The most effective attribution strategy can be easily determined by selecting the most effective attribution model. The process of choosing the best model entails the following navigation procedure: Conversion – Attribution – Model Comparison – Model Change. The PPC users should understand that it is quite simple to illustrate the 50% uplift, through the AdWords system, by just changing the attribution model to the one that generates the high sales performance.

One key issue that online business individuals experience on several occasions is the attribution of the sales to a single referral platform. The referral source is usually the payment gateway as demonstrated in the following two examples: paypal.com/referral and checkout.sagepay.com/referral. The two referral source examples are referral spam because they indicate that the sales did not emanate from the gateway. However, the data interchange involving the website and the gateway enables the Google Analytics process to track the two referral sources examples as the payment gateway. This challenge can be addressed using a simple method. The business owner should use the following procedure to solve the payment gateway problem: Admin - Property – Tracking Info – Referral Exclusion. An option for excluding the domains will be illustrated. The user will then select the Add Referral Exclusion icon and then choose the gateway domain, for example, paypal.com. After the selection of the gateway domain, the user should save the changes. This procedure is effective in excluding the payment gateway. The desired result from the process entails having the referral sources list that is simple and not cluttered.