Google Analytics - Measurement Protocol - Hits not recognized/visible in Enhanced Ecommerce Reports

Question

Google referred me to this forum, since they did not have a solution to the following issue.

So the issue we are facing is that hits send via the measurement protocol are registered by Google Analytics in the real-time- and events reports, but those hits are not captured in the Enhanced Ecommerce reports (especially the shopping/checkout reports). However, hits that are send via the hit builder are reported by GA in both the event and real-time reports as in all the Enhanced Ecommerce reports.

Detailed description

• 20th of June: An user (ClientID: 945403652.1592644568/userID 1234567890) completed an application (checkout step 1, application) on the website for the vacancy with name 'developer' and id '12345'.
• 2th of July: With use of the measurement protocol an offline event for completing the job interview stage (checkout step 3, 'gesprek') is send to Google Analytics. The hit is recorded and visible in the events and real-time reports but is not visible in the enhanced ecommerce reports. The following hit was send via the measurement protocol with a GET request:

v=1&t=event&tid=UA-123456-1&cid=945403652.1592644568&cd20=945403652.1592644568&uid=1234567890&cd8=1234567890&cd7=gesprek&ec=measurement%20protocol&ea=checkout&el=step_3&ev=1234&ni=1&pa=checkout&pr1id=12345&pr1nm=developer&pr1br=12345&pr1ca=development&pr1va=amsterdam&pr1cd10=3771&pr1cd11=hbo&pr1cd12=5-10%20jaar&pr1cd13=32-40%20uur&pr1cd15=2019-07-04%2016%3A23%3A24&pr1cd18=3500%20-%205000%20euro&pr1cd19=gesprek&cos=3

• 7th of July: We send the same hit for completing step 3 of the checkout via the hit builder. The hit is visible in the real-time and events report and is somehow captured by all the Enhanced Ecommerce reports as well.

Other notes:

• Enhanced Ecommerce is enabled in GA
• Checkout steps are defined in GA.
• We currently see some transaction hits that are send with the MP coming into the GA enhanced ecommerce - sales reports, but those hits are also not visible in the checkout/shopping behaviour reports.

Does anyone knows what causes this issue and how this issue can be solved?

Many thanks.

Answer 1

I did some testing with your hit, both with the hit builder and a system I created in Apps Script and, as I imagined, there is no difference as the parameters are the same.

The result was always that the events were in Real Time report and in the Events report but not in the Enhanced Ecommerce report.

However, looking at the parameters I noticed that the event is non-interaction. By removing the ni parameter and sending a new hit, the information also appeared in the Enhanced Ecommerce report.

This is because the checkout report is session based but a non-interaction event does not generate any session (here you can find a study I did some time ago: https://www.analyticstraps.com/utenti-senza-sessioni/).

So, so what I hypothesize may have happened is that in one case (2th of July) only the non-interaction event was sent (and did not appear in the ecommerce report), while in the other case (7th of July) it was sent either before or after an interaction hit (for example a pageview or other event) or a session of that user was in progress, therefore the event was associated with that session and appeared in the Enhanced Ecommerce reports.