Google analytics not registering 'add to cart' button

[jxm28788]

The 'site overlay' feature of google analytics does not appear to be registering clicks on the add to cart button - which would probably be one of the most useful things to no about from this feature!

it does register the 'back' buttons, so I assume the reason is that the 'add to cart' button is not a link to another page, but rather to the ca000002.pl file, which doesn't have the google code in so presumably that's why GA doesn't realise the buttons been pressed.

Does anyone know if this is the case, and if so is there any way of fixing it (is there any way of embedding the GA html code into the perl file...?)

[Duncan Rounding]

You could try adding the GA code into the cart page.

[jxm28788]

It's already in there (the cart is the sites 8th most popular page ), but I think the problem is that because the button links to the .pl file rather than cart page directly it seems to lose it's way.

[Mike Hughes]

Probably.

I haven't looked at the overlay stuff but wouldn't be surprised if it adds a reference to the link that Google can pick up on the destination page to see what was clicked to get there.

If the link goes to a perl script then it's very unlikely that the script will include the reference when it writes or redirects to the new page.

Mike

[jxm28788]

Is there anyway to embed html into the perl script?

[Mike Hughes]

It seems site overlay is simpler than I thought.

It doesn't add any reference to links. Just looks at the number of destination page views that came from the source page (using the http referrer info) and then reports those (as a percentage of source page views) to any (and all) links it can find on the source page.

The browser should still hold the referrer info on the cart page (you can check with firebug) so I wonder if it's just that google doesn't recognise the add to cart link. Does Google recognise the add to cart as a link with zero clicks or doesn't it show anything?

Mike

[jxm28788]

it's not showing anything.

I've just looked at the source code on the page the link isn't visible so no wonder google is getting confused -

<Actinic:ACTIONS><INPUT TYPE="IMAGE" NAME="150" SRC="add-to-basket.gif"  HEIGHT="22" WIDTH="81" ONMOUSEOVER= src="add-to-basket-pushed.GIF" ONMOUSEOUT= src="add-to-basket.gif" ALT="Add item to basket"> </Actinic:ACTIONS>

[Mike Hughes]

Yes, actinic is using a form to submit the product data to the cart script. The link (form statement) is at the start of the product(s).

I'm surprised Google doesn't recognise it as a link as most browsers do. I've had a quick look but can't find any reference to this being a problem.

Not knowing quite why this is happening makes it hard to think of a solution to this.

Mike

[jxm28788]

yeah, but bit of a pain as out of all the things you want to know if people are doing or not, adding the item to the basket is probably the most important one!

[jxm28788]

Any actinic programmers want to make any suggestions on this one, regarding the embedding of GA HTML code into the perl script, or other workaround?

[Mike Hughes]

Google might already be logging the clicks, just not able to display them on the site overlay as it doesn't see the 'add to cart' link. What happens if you look at your 'view cart' link in site overlay? To google this is the same as 'add to cart' so you might be able to see the clicks there.

If you want to specifically track the clicks on the add to cart button then this can be done by adding some javascript to the link: http://www.google.com/support/google...n&answer=55527

You would probably need to create a 'virtual page name' for the pageview such as 'addtocart.html' and you'll still need to find a way for google to see the link on the site overlay if you want the stats to be displayed there.

Mike