• Resolved FlickerKimberly

    (@flickerkimberly)


    We have a WordPress site and use the Ecwid plugin to embed our Ecwid storefront into it. The url for each individual product page looks like this:

    https://www.oursite.com/classic-movies/#!/Title-of-Movie/p/12345678

    I am trying to use google analytics url builder to add campaign parameters to the url so I can track the performance of ads. (Source, medium, etc.)

    When I put the product page url into the url builder, it says the url is invalid. I think it is because of the #!. I have tried escaping out the special characters, which made the url look like this:

    https://www.oursite.com/classic-movies/23%21%/Title-of-Movie/p/12345678

    It appears valid in the url builder, and it generates a link with utm tags, BUT when you paste the tagged link into the browser, it does not take you to our product page. It takes you to our website, but gives a “sorry does not exist” message.

    Is this a way to fix this and make the product page valid for google analytics url builder?

    Would updating to a newer version of the Ecwid plugin change the url structure to make it more useful for Google Analytics? What would be the url structure (if different)?

    Thanks in advance!

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/ecwid-shopping-cart/

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • Hi,

    Sorry for the delay in replying to you.

    Short answer
    You should use the URL without fragment (hash part) as a base for building URLs with queries (the part starting with ‘?’) and then append the hash part to the end of URL.

    Example:
    1) Take “https://www.oursite.com/classic-movies/#!/Title-of-Movie/p/12345678”
    2) Remove hash part: “https://www.oursite.com/classic-movies/”
    3) Use this hash-free URL as a base and add query paramteres yourself or use any automatic builder. Example: “https://www.oursite.com/classic-movies/?utm_source=myblog&utm_campaign=xyz&abc=def”
    4) Append the hash part to the end of teh URL: “https://www.oursite.com/classic-movies/?utm_source=myblog&utm_campaign=xyz&abc=def#!/Title-of-Movie/p/12345678”

    You’re done – the final URL is valid URL which will work fine for browser/customer, your site server and tracking tools like Google Analytics

    Long answer

    1) URLs could be very different, but their structure is actually quite the same and that’s a part of the web standards.
    URL is built this way:
    protocol://site/path?query#fragment

    (I simplified it and take in consideration only the parts we’re talking about, the actual scheme is a bit more sophisticated)

    Taking your product page URL, that will be:
    protocol: “http”
    site: “www.oursite.com”
    path: “classic-movies/”
    query: (empty)
    fragment: “!/Title-of-Movie/p/12345678”

    Now, if you want to add query parameters, you know where to insert them. As to the fragment part, it should be always in the end, regardless of whether it contains “!”

    2) Google Analytics doesn’t track the fragment parts of the URLs.
    Urls like “https://www.mysite.com/coolpage” and “https://www.mysite.com/coolpage#!anyparameter=anyvalue” are the same for Goolgle Analytics. That’s likely the reason why their URL builder tool doesn’t accept that.

    By the way, Ecwid uses fragment part of the URL all the time to address the product and category pages, but that’s not an issue if you want to track your product pages in Google Analytics. We solved that problem by sending special ‘virtual’ page views to Google Analytics every time a customer browses your store. So in your GA reports you will see your store pages – we take care of that.

    3) If you use Google Adwords for your ad campaigns, I’d suggest linking your Google Analytics and Google Adwords profiles to have better picture of customer behavior and the campaig performance. Check out this thread on our forums for the details:
    https://www.ecwid.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10835

    Please let me know if that doesn’t help.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
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