E-commerce tracking GA4 set up with GTM4WP WordPress plugin - no developer needed

Fortunately, there is a solution to that: e-commerce tracking for your WordPress website with the plugin GTM4WP. And that's what this article is about.

This item consists of 2 parts:

• Part 1: Installing and setting up GTM4WP
• Part 2: Setting up Google Tag Manager

Let's start with part 1.

Part 1

We're going to start by installing GTM4WP. Sounds complicated, but it's only a few minutes work for which you don't need any technical knowledge.

Step 1.1: Log into your WordPress website and download GTM4WP

Log in to your WordPress website, go to the plugins heading on the left and then click 'new plugin' at the top.

Enter GTM4WP in the upper right corner, click enter and then the 'Install Now' button.

Once you have installed the plugin, the "Activate" button will appear in the same place. Click this one as well.

Step 1.2: setting up GTM4WP

The GTM4WP plugin can be found under the "Settings" heading. Once you've clicked on that, you first need to add the Google Tag Manager ID. This can be found in the upper right corner of Tag Manager.

Find it here:

And this is where you should place it:

Next, you need to set Container Code to "on. Personally, I always turn compatibility mode off, but this doesn't work equally well with every WordPress website. So test with that for a while.

Step 1.3: Actually turn on Datalayers / e-commerce tracking

In the GTM4WP plugin, click on "Integration" in the bar and then click on "WooCommerce.

To turn on GA4 e-commerce tracking, all you need to do is check the "Register enhanced e-commerce" box.

So this is the checkmark that matters:

Basically, you don't have to do anything with the remaining checkmarks and settings, but you can still turn some knobs.

For example:

• Exclude shipping costs
• Shopping cart as the first step
• Adding customer data in the datalayer

All of these options are not mandatory and are not actually important for further setup.

Before you finish, don't forget to at least click 'Save Changes'.

Well, part 1 was that simple. On to part 2.

Part 2

Your website has Tag Manager enabled, GTM4WP is set up properly, and you are now ready to set up Tag Manager.

Step 2.1: Loading Google Analytics 4 with Google Tag Manager

Loading Google Analytics 4 with Google Tag manager was so important to me that I wrote a blog about it earlier: https://onlinemarketingagency.com/handleidingen/google-analytics-4-inladen-tag-manager/.

Step 1 of Part 2 is therefore to follow that article and then come back to this one.

Step 2.2: Import GA4 container template

E-commerce tracking consists of 2 major components:

1. Making sure there are datalayers (the plugin GTM4WP takes that out of your hands)
2. Ensuring the data is extracted from the datalayers with Tag Manager and shot into GA4

Point 1 is solved by setting up the plugin correctly (we already did that). Point 2 is solved by importing the file below into Tag Manager:

ecommerce.json

Once you've downloaded the file, go to your Google Tag Manager account. From there, click 'manage' and then 'import container'.

Click 'Choose container file' and upload the file you just downloaded there.

Next, choose a new workspace. For example, name it "E-commerce tracking GTM4WP.

Then choose the "Merge" option.

And lastly, choose "Change names of conflicting tags, triggers and variables.

That will look like this:

Now you may be wondering what you just did.... Well, you've just loaded a ready-made solution that causes all variables to be prepared in Tag Manager.

These are all the variables that GTM4WP creates that are in your datalayer. These are all the variables you want to see reflected in GA4.

• Ecommerce:
• Ecommerce Items
• Ecommerce Transaction ID
• Ecommerce Value
• Ecommerce Tax:
• Ecommerce Affiliation
• Ecommerce Shipping
• Ecommerce Coupon
• Ecommerce Currency

Step 2.3: Make sure GA4 is linked to the GA4 purchase event

Because you ran the above import, you should also now see an additional tag in Tag Manager. Namely:

GA4 - Event - Ecommerce Events

It is very important that you click it and then at configuration tag add the GA4 tag still. If you do not do this, the implementation will not work.

Once you've done that, then click save at the top right.

Then click submit at the top right to publish your Tag Manager container.

Step 2.4: Make sure it works

We have arrived at the final step. GTM4WP is up and Tag Manager is set up properly. The important thing now is to go to GA4 and go to the 'Realtime' report.

Next, do a test order. If everything went well, you should see a 1 at purchase. That will look like this:

Then, the next day, you need to see if the revenue is also reflected under the revenue generation heading.

If that's the case, you can be sure your e-commerce tracking is set....

Then now is the time for a pat on the back ;-)!