How to set up Google Analytics with conversion tracking

Question

I've been tasked with enabling Google Analytics ecommerce tracking on a client's website. I've read Google's documentation on the subject, but it made little reference to tracking conversion data, which is a feature that our client has asked for.

My question is this: on which page(s) do I need to add information regarding items/transactions? We have pages for shopping cart, payment info, confirmation, and receipt. The Google documentation only mentions putting this code on the receipt page, but I feel as though this wouldn't give us the information necessary to track conversions. Is Google Analytics able to track this information simply by virtue of having the general page tracking code on each page, or does transaction info need to be tracked across all of our checkout pages?

Answer 1

You only need the item/transaction tracking code (_addTrans(), _addItem(), & _trackTrans()) on one page, after the purchase has occurred -- in your case it sounds like the receipt page.

You do need to make sure that the general analytics code is on every page, including the checkout and receipt pages, otherwise you can lose the chain of tracking data leading up to the conversion.