A transaction is the simultaneous purchase of one or more products. The Frosmo Platform registers each transaction, irrespective of the number of products purchased, as a single conversion.

What is transaction tracking?

Transaction tracking is the process of monitoring visitors for actions that qualify as transactions and collecting the data about those actions (transaction data). Transaction tracking also involves counting transactions as conversions and attributing those conversions to modifications, which the Frosmo Platform does automatically when it receives transaction data from a site. The data is stored in the Frosmo back end.

Transaction tracking allows you to monitor the revenue generated by your site and measure Frosmo's impact on that revenue. Transaction tracking is also a prerequisite for implementing features that rely on transaction data, such as generating product recommendations and segmenting visitors based on the products they have purchased, which in turn feed into revenue generation.

Figure: Transaction tracking in the Frosmo Platform (click to enlarge)

Transaction tracking generates transaction and modification statistics, which you can view in the Frosmo Control Panel.

For more information about conversions and conversion attribution, see the conversions user guide.

Tracking transactions with the data layer

Tracking transactions with the data layer means triggering a transaction event whenever a visitor successfully completes an action that qualifies as a transaction. The data you pass in the transaction event defines the transaction.

You can trigger transaction events from:

• Modifications (either from custom content or, if you're using a template, from the template content)
• Shared code
• Page code (meaning directly from your site source code)

Figure: Tracking transactions by triggering a transaction event from shared code (click to enlarge)

Triggering transaction events

To trigger a transaction event, call the dataLayer.push() function with a transaction object containing the transaction data:

dataLayer.push({
    transactionProducts: [{
        id: 'string',
        name: 'string',
        price: 0,
        sku: 'string',
        /* Optional */
        quantity: 0
    }],
    /* Optional */
    transactionId: 'string',
    transactionTotal: 0
});

Transaction object

The transaction object contains the data of a transaction event.

Table: Transaction object properties

Table: Transaction product object properties

Transaction examples

dataLayer.push({
    transactionId: '1010101010',
    transactionProducts: [{
        id: '123456',
        name: 'Cheetah Plushy',
        price: 9.99,
        quantity: 3
    }]
});

dataLayer.push({
    transactionId: '1010101011',
    transactionProducts: [{
        id: '123456',
        name: 'Cheetah Plushy',
        price: 9.99,
        quantity: 3
    }, {
        id: '123457',
        name: 'Lion Plushy',
        price: 19.99,
        quantity: 2
    }]
});

Testing transaction tracking

To test that transactions are correctly tracked with the data layer:

1. Go to the site.
2. Enable console logging for Frosmo Core.

3. Go to a page where transactions are tracked. If transaction events are successfully triggered with the data layer, the browser console displays the following messages for each event:

   • EASY [events] info:: conversion (contains the transaction data parsed from the transaction object)
   • EASY [events] info:: product.purchase (contains the ID and price for a single purchased product item)
   • EASY [events] info:: dataLayer (contains the transaction object passed to the data layer)

   The following figure shows an example of the transaction event messages.

   

   Transaction events log a dedicated product.purchase message for each individual purchased item. For example:

   • If a transaction contains three copies of one product, the transaction event logs three product.purchase messages.
   • If a transaction contains three copies of one product and two copies of another product, the transaction event logs five product.purchase messages.

4. If you want more details on a data layer call, select the Network tab in the developer tools, and check the transaction request to the Optimizer API. If the status is 200, the request completed successfully.