Google Analytics Integration Guide

After you have created your wecantrack account, connected your affiliate networks and websites our system will be able to track your traffic data and attribute your conversion data to it. This enables us to push your conversion data to other tools such as Google Analytics.

We have integrations with both Google Analytics versions available. The GA4 integration feature is currently in beta.

Google Analytics 4 Integration Guide (BETA)

Requirements
Step by step guide
  • In GA4, go to Admin > Data Streams
  • Click on your available website property
  • You can find your Measurement ID on the top right
  • Place it in the GA 4 Measurement ID field within your website settings in the wecantrack interface (currently under ‘show more integrations’)
  • Within the same section, click on ‘Measurement Protocol API secrets’
  • Click on ‘Create’
  • Give the API connection a nickname, e.g. ‘wecantrack’
  • Click on ‘Create’
  • Copy the API secret
  • Place it in the GA 4 API Secret field within your website settings in the wecantrack interface (currently under ‘show more integrations’)
  • Click on ‘Save’ or ‘Save and Integrate’

In order to gain more precision in terms of sales attribution, you can increase the Google Analytics session timeout to 7 hours (which is the maximum).

  • Go to Data Streams > Configure tag settings > Show all > Adjust session timeout
  • Set it to 7 hours

By standard GA4 sets 2 months data retention, we recommend to increase that to 14 months in order to collect more data.

  • Go to Admin > Data Settings > Data Retention
  • Select 14 months
  • Within the wecantrack interface, go to Features
  • Activate the Google Analytics 4 Integration feature
Activate Feature

That was it! From now on your affiliate conversions will be integrated in your Google Analytics 4 account.
Please note that only conversions coming from clicks that happened after the installation of wecantrack will be integrated in Google Analytics. This means it will take some time to have a full coverage because sales from older clicks will still be registered in the networks because of the cookie duration but cannot be imported to Google Analytics due to the missing SubIDs. Moreover, GA4 requires around 12 hours for data to get registered.

Custom Definitions (optional)

Through custom definitions (Configure > Custom Definitions) you can set up custom dimensions and metrics to gain additional information regarding clicks and conversions from the data we integrate in your GA4 accounts. Here we will list the custom dimensions and metrics you will be able to set up with our standard integration:

Custom Dimensions
Dimension Name (example)
User Property/Parameter
Description
Advertiser Name
parameter
wct_advertiser_name
description
advertiser names as a dimension for wct_conversion events
Affiliate Link
parameter
wct_affiliate_url
description
affiliate links as a dimension for wct_conversion and wct_click events​
Clickout URL
parameter
wct_clickout_url
description
clickout url as a dimension for wct_conversion and wct_click events​
Network ID
parameter
wct_network_id
description
network id as a dimension for wct_conversion and wct_click events​
WCT ID
parameter
wct_click_id
description
WCT ID as a dimension for wct_conversion and wct_click events​
Custom Metrics
Metric Name (example)
Parameter name
Unit of measurement
Description
Affiliate Clicks
parameter
wct_click_count
unit of measurement
Standard
description
number of clicks on affiliate URLs
WCT Conversion Value
parameter
wct_conversion
unit of measurement
Currency (revenue)
description
value of conversions in selected currency of GA account
WCT Conversions
parameter
wct_conversion_count
unit of measurement
Standard
description
number of affiliate conversions

Universal Analytics Integration Guide

Requirements
Step by step guide
  • Activating Ecommerce within Google Analytics is very simple but does require you to have admin rights of the account.
  • Go to Admin – Ecommerce Settings
  • Turn on “Enable Ecommerce”
    Please do not enable Enhanced Ecommerce
    If you want to make use of Enhanced Ecommerce, please send us an email.

In order to gain more precision in terms of sales attribution, you can increase the Google Analytics session duration to 4 hours (which is the maximum).

  • Go to Admin – Tracking Info – Session Settings
  • Set Session timeout to 4 hours and 0 minutes

Go to Features and click on the “Enable” button of the Google Analytics Integration feature.

Activate Feature

That was it! From now on your affiliate sales will be integrated in your Google Analytics account.
Please note that only conversions coming from clicks that happened after the installation of wecantrack will be integrated in Google Analytics. This means it will take some time to have a full coverage because sales from older clicks will still be registered in the networks because of the cookie duration but cannot be imported to Google Analytics due to the missing SubIDs.

Please note that Universal Analytics will be sunset in summer 2023, so we recommend to also set up the GA4 integration feature.

Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) Integration Guide Video
Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce (Universal Analytics)

If you are using our Clickout API to pass click data to us we can also set up an Enhanced Ecommerce integration which could contain information regarding products, brands, categories, lists, affiliate networks, SKUs and transaction IDs. You will need to provide us the information you want integrated via our metadata parameter within the Clickout API. Please contact us if you are interested in this functionality and we will give you additional information.

How to exclude URL query parameters (Universal Analytics)

If you are making use of other ad networks than Google Ads you will notice that the click ID parameters placed by these ad networks will cause your landing page URL to be split. There is a simple way to prevent that and let Google Analytics remove these parameters from the URLs in your reporting.

  • Go to Admin > View Settings
  • You will find an optional field called ‘Exclude URL Query Parameters’
  • Here you simply place the URL parameters you want Google Analytics to remove from the URLs
  • For example you can use: msclkid, fbclid, tblci, obclid, obOrigUrl, ttclid, atclid
Affiliate Link Click Goal in Google Analytics (Universal Analytics)

Once you have fully connect your networks, websites and analytics integration, the clicks on your affiliate links will be tracked in Google Analytics under events. Due to that you can also set up a Click goal next to the Ecommerce goal. This will help you analise click through rates for your website content.

  • To set up the click goal, go to Admin > Goals
  • Click on “+ New Goal”
  • As goal setup select “Custom” and click on “Continue”
  • As goal setup select “Custom” and click on “Continue”
  • Give your goal a name (e.g. “Click”, “Click Through” or “Click-out”)
  • As type select “Event” and click on “Continue”
  • Please set “Category Equals to WCT” “Action Equals to Click”
  • Leave the other fields empty and click on “Save”

You’re all set. Now you can go and select the Click goal within your Acquisition section in Google Analytics.

Frequently Asked Questions

Once we receive a conversion containing our click ID from the affiliate network we send it to Google Analytics within 5 minutes. Google Analytics then requires some time to process and attribute the data. In Universal Analytics the attribution process is pretty quick and usually only takes around 30 minutes while in GA4 it takes above 12 hours.
Yes, you only need to make sure that you activate “Migrate from JavaScript Managed Client ID, under: GTM SS > Clients > GA4 or Universal Analytics > More Settings > Migrate from JavaScript Managed Client ID
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