Although Google Analytics is an amazing service that helps in tracking e-commerce, many times it counts a transaction more than once.
These duplicate transactions are caused because there is the possibility of logging the same transaction more than once. Such issues are to be addressed manually because Google Analytics doesn’t try to fix this error but considers a unique transaction more than once.
This error could lead to many problems such as seeing excessive number of transactions. It can also have an impact on e-commerce conversion rate, sales quantity, and revenue totals. In addition, it will show a higher average order value than it is in reality. All the issues will then lead to questioning the credibility of data, and with incorrect data, the probability of making bad decisions increases.
When Do Duplicate Transactions Occur?
Duplicate transactions can occur because of a myriad of reasons. The following are the most commons causes for a duplicate transaction:
- Whenever a user revisits an e-commerce website through an emailed or bookmarked link
- Whenever a user refreshes an e-commerce website
- When a user browses to a different website, and then returns to the e-commerce website using the back button
- When a user restores an e-commerce website from an incorrectly closed browser session or on a Smartphone
In a nutshell, such behavior by customers wherein they visit the same website multiple times is one of the major causes of duplicate transactions. Consequently, there will be a rise in the number of transactions because every time such websites are visited, they trigger an e-commerce script. The following examples can help to better understand that concept.
- A user visits a website. They liked some items and made a purchase. They will be able to see the inventory of purchased items on a confirmation page. Now once they have completed their transaction, those users often receive an email thanking them for their purchase and providing them a link to view their order. If that link again redirects to the same confirmation page, then Google Analytics will track those visits also as a transaction.
- A user bookmarks the confirmation page and views it again sometimes later. Google Analytics will again count this visit as a transaction.
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- Thus, using these methods, you can successfully de-duplicate identical transactions. And by fixing duplicate e-commerce transactions, which is the most common issue with e-commerce sites, you can prevent revenue from inflating and your attribution reports from being altered, thus protecting data integrity.
