Gathering information about how your customers interact with your website and complete their orders is integral to making your business decisions. This practice, called "ecommerce tracking," is a part of most modern commercial websites and can be expanded to include other data as well.
Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool that over 50 million websites worldwide use to track and analyze website traffic. It allows you to track how people find your site, how they use it, and how they become customers ("conversion"). Google Analytics tracking technology lets you see trends for page views, visits, bounce rates, conversion rates, geographical locations, and other metrics.
The Google Analytics Addon
WHMCS's Google Analytics addon has automated the processes of gathering and working with this data for several years, integrating full support for ecommerce tracking into WHMCS. It's also simple to implement: it's shipped with and is built into WHMCS by default, is free, and can be easily enabled from
Configuration > Apps & Integrations.
When you use the Google Analytics addon, you'll be able to track customer movement throughout the Client Area. Then, WHMCS lets you combine it with extensive reporting on traffic sources and other demographics. Shopping cart and purchase metrics are helpful to find the right ways to expand your business and monitor revenue streams. WHMCS can also combine its data about order contents and products with the Google-tracked Client Area traffic. It will give you a great picture of your current conversion rates and the success of your marketing campaigns.
Google Analytics 4
Recently, we updated the Google Analytics addon to support Google Analytics 4, referred to as Global Site Tag in the addon, in additon to the previously-supported Google Analytics and Universal Analytics versions.
Google introduced Google Analytics 4 in
fall of 2020, replacing the previous default,
Universal Analytics. It's a new kind of analytics that features smarter reporting capabilities compared to Universal Analytics. Data calculations like churn probability and other predictive measures will give you additional foresight into your customers' next choices. Other improvements make it easier to use advertising and allow you to view data in customer-centric reports rather than in reports focused on platforms or devices used.
Moving to Google Analytics 4 (Global Site Tag) doesn't change much in the WHMCS addon itself. The main change is simply that Google encourages conversion to Google Analytics 4 and defaults to creating Google Analytics 4 IDs for new tracking. Switching your existing use of the addon to Google Site Tag will also let you take advantage of the smarter reporting available through Google.
Making The Switch
You can tell the version of Google Analytics you're currently using in WHMCS at
Configuration > System Settings > Addon Modules. Just click
Configure for the Google Analytics addon.
Analytics Version will indicate the version you're using. You can further verify the version by checking the
Tracking Code: If it starts with
UA-, it's for Universal Analytics or the older version of Google Analytics. (Global Site Tag codes start with
G-.)
When you're ready to move over, all you need to do is log in to
Google Analytics, click
Admin in the bottom-left corner, and then click
GA4 Setup Assistant in the
Property column.
Click
Get Started and then
Create Property, and Google will take care of everything for you.
One easy way of finding your new ID is to search "Measurement ID" or "Tracking ID" in the top search bar. You'll see something like this appear in the search menu:
Then, all you have to do is go to
Configuration > System Settings > Addon Modules in WHMCS. Just click
Configure for the Google Analytics addon, set
Global Site Tag as your
Analytics Version, and update your
Tracking Code to use the new
Measurement ID.
We hope that you enjoy the new benefits of
Google Analytics 4. You can find more about the Google Analytics addon for WHMCS in
our documentation.
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