What is E-commerce tracking?

Ecommerce tracking in Force24 links the sales that happen on your website with the marketing campaigns that influenced them. This article explains how it works, how to add the tracking script, and what you will see in your reports.

What is ecommerce tracking?

The goal is to identify which contacts engaged with your campaigns, and whether that engagement resulted in a purchase.

Force24 does not attempt to record every sale made on your website. Instead, it measures campaign-driven sales, which are purchases made by people who have interacted with your marketing emails.

How does ecommerce tracking work?

Cookies and identification

When a contact clicks a link in a Force24 email campaign, a tracking cookie is placed in their browser on that specific device.

This cookie connects their website activity to their Force24 contact record. Once the ecommerce tracking script is added, any purchases they make can also be linked to that contact record, provided the purchase happens within the attribution window below.

Without this cookie, Force24 cannot identify the visitor, and so cannot track their website activity or purchase activity.

Attribution window

When a contact opens or clicks a campaign, any purchase they make within 7 days of that interaction is attributed to the campaign that was most recently engaged with.

Web data flow

A typical tracked customer journey might look like this:

Product Page → Basket → Checkout → Thank You Page

As contacts move through tracked pages, Force24 records those page visits. When the ecommerce tracking script is triggered after a successful purchase, Force24 also records the transaction value.

When a purchase is recorded

Your developer should add the ecommerce tracking script to the order confirmation or thank you page. The script should fire on that page after the transaction information has loaded, so that Force24 can receive the purchase data. Technically, this is a standard web tracking event with additional transaction data attached.

The purchase will not be registered if Force24 cannot see the activity, for example because:

• The cookie was blocked.
• The contact never clicked a Force24 tracked link.
• The thank you page is not being tracked.

How do I add the ecommerce tracking script?

This is the script your developer needs to add:

Your developer should add this script so that it fires on the order confirmation or thank you page after the transaction data has loaded.

Replace amountgoeshere with the transaction value. This can come from:

• A variable defined on the page.
• Your website's data layer.

The CheckOutAmount field is currency agnostic and accepts any float value.

What will I see in reports?

Ecommerce statistics by campaign

Purchases are only visible in campaign ecommerce reports if they can be linked to a campaign interaction. For example, if someone visits your website directly and makes a purchase without interacting with a Force24 email, that purchase will not appear in your Force24 ecommerce campaign reporting.

Contact level detail

Within an individual contact record, you can see:

• Whether the contact was cookied.
• Which pages they visited.
• Whether Force24 recorded a purchase.

If purchase data appears to be missing, the most common reasons are:

• The cookie was never set.
• Tracking was not present on one or more pages.
• The purchase happened outside the attribution window.

What are the common pitfalls?

No cookie, no data

If someone makes a purchase but has never clicked a Force24 campaign link, Force24 cannot connect that purchase to their contact record.

Cross-domain issues

Cookies are tied to tracked domains. Tracking will not take place if the checkout process happens on a different, untracked domain, or if the user only has a cookie associated with one of the domains. For example:

• example.com
• shop.example.com

Ad blockers and privacy tools

Some users block cookies or tracking scripts. In these cases, purchases may never appear in Force24, even if the user clicked a campaign link.

Untracked thank you pages

If the order confirmation or thank you page is not tracked by Force24, purchases will not be recorded.

Why does ecommerce tracking matter?

• Measure true campaign ROI: you can measure the revenue generated by your campaigns, not just opens, clicks or website visits.
• Identify revenue generating campaigns: you can see which campaigns are driving actual sales, which helps you understand which emails contribute most effectively to revenue.

What do some examples look like?

Jane

Jane receives your "Autumn Sale" email.

1. She clicks a tracked link in the email.
2. Force24 places a cookie in her browser.
3. She browses your website and leaves.
4. Three days later, she returns and makes a purchase.
5. The ecommerce tracking script fires on the confirmation page.
6. Force24 receives the page view and CheckOutAmount.

The purchase is attributed to the "Autumn Sale" campaign and appears in that campaign's ecommerce reporting.

Joan

Joan receives your "Autumn Sale" email.

1. She clicks a tracked link in the email.
2. Force24 places a cookie in her browser.
3. She browses and leaves.
4. Two days later, she engages with a previous "Hot Products" email that was sent four days earlier.
5. She then makes a purchase.
6. The ecommerce tracking script fires on the confirmation page.
7. Force24 receives the page view and CheckOutAmount.

The purchase is attributed to "Hot Products", because it was the most recently engaged campaign.

Jill

Jill receives your "Autumn Sale" email.

1. She clicks a tracked link in the email.
2. Force24 places a cookie in her browser.
3. She browses and leaves.
4. She later engages with another email called "Autumn Sale Reminder".
5. She then makes a purchase.
6. The ecommerce tracking script fires on the confirmation page.
7. Force24 receives the page view and CheckOutAmount.

The purchase is attributed to "Autumn Sale Reminder", because it was the most recently engaged campaign.

Jenny

Jenny receives your "Autumn Sale" email.

1. She clicks a tracked link in the email.
2. Force24 places a cookie in her browser.
3. She browses and leaves.
4. Nine days later, she returns and makes a purchase without engaging with any further campaigns.
5. The ecommerce tracking script fires on the confirmation page.
6. Force24 receives the page view and CheckOutAmount.

The purchase is not attributed to any campaign because it happened outside the 7 day attribution window.

What should I check before relying on ecommerce reporting?

For reliable ecommerce reporting, make sure that:

• All campaign links are Force24 tracked.
• The checkout and thank you pages contain the standard Force24 tracking script.
• The ecommerce tracking script is implemented on the order confirmation or thank you page.
• Test purchases are completed and verified within Force24 reporting.