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Importing external tracking data (legacy document)

If you don't want to use Productsup Tracking, but you still want to use the ROI Strategy feature and/or see your tracking data in Reporting, you can integrate your own tracking from a third party platform (Marin, Google Analytics, etc.).

You can choose to use external tracking data for ROI Strategy only, or to import them in our Database to see the data in the Reporting tab.

Using external tracking data for ROI Strategy only:

Step 1: Create a feed with the tracking data

  • Tracking data can only be uploaded in the platform in the form of a data feed. The platform requires a URL in order to import the feed.

  • We recommend that in your feed you provide the product ID to match the data with your product feed in order to get tracking data on product level.

  • If you can't provide data on a product level, you can provide data at a category level instead.

  • If you want to provide data for a different export channel, make sure to provide unique column names, e.g. Google_clicks, Nextag_costs.

  • You can choose the time range that you want for the data. Be sure to use a dynamic time range, e.g. "last 30 days" instead of a static time range, e.g. "from 2015-09-20 to 2015-10-20". The tracking data should be updated on a daily basis.

  • Tracking data must be aggregated for its applicable time ranges. Do not provide the same ID twice in the feed for two different periods. Rather, combine these.

e.g. do not provide

product_id

day

clicks

1234

2015-12-15

5

1234

2015-12-16

12

but

product_id

clicks

1234

17

Step 2: Upload the feed in the platform

Here, you want to upload the tracking data feed as an additional feed.

For more information, see Enhance your products with additional data sources.

Step 3: Implement ROI Management

After importing the data feed in the platform, you can now use ROI Strategy

Read our guide here, for more information on ROI tracking.

Using external tracking data for both ROI Strategy and Reporting:

Data for ROI Strategy comes from a feed in DataSource, whether you use Productsup Tracking (in this case the feed will be automatically generated) or not (and you import your own tracking data).

The Reporting tab takes the information from the Productsup database.

For this, you need to be able to:

  1. Import tracking data into the relevant site on the platform.

  2. Create a feed using the export channel "External Tracking" to convert your tracking data to the correct format.

  3. Upload the feed directly in the Productsup database.

Step 1: Create a feed with the tracking data

This time, rather than providing aggregate data for a time range, you'll need to provide a feed that only contains the tracking data from yesterday. Everyday the platform will import the data from the day before and upload the in the database.

Be sure, as before, that the feed does not contain the same product ID twice, but also only that it only contains the data for one day.

product_id

day

clicks

orders

1234

2015-12-15

5

1

Step 2: Activate the "External Tracking" template and create a feed

Warning: you'll need to import the data into a site that is different to the one where you want to see the tracking data in reporting.

E.g. All my active export channels are in website 123456. I need to create a new site '123457', where in the "External Tracking" template, I can provide my site 123456. Now the tracking data will be saved for this site with my live channels.

Activate the export channel External Tracking

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Product_id: the product's ID. These should match the product IDs provided in your main product feed.

Site_id: enter the site ID of the site you want to track. Use the Static Value Box to create the value.

Costs_cpo: costs per order for a product for yesterday. optional

Costs_cpc: costs per click for a product for yesterday. optional

Site_channel_id: the channel ID is the sub-ID of an export if you activate more than one Dataflow (see A/B Testing)

Costs: costs for a product for yesterday.

Profit: profit for a product for yesterday. optional

Revenue: revenue for a product for yesterday.

Click: clicks for a product for yesterday.

Order: orders for a product for yesterday.

Campaign_id: this is unique ID every Productsup export template has, e.g. '1' for Google Merchant Center. Please reach out to our Client Solutions department to receive this information for your particular channel.

Date: yesterday's date. If you don't have this information in your feed, you can create it with a box combination:

  1. Using 'Timestamp', show today's day

  2. Using 'Math', subtract one day

  3. Convert the format into Y-M-D. this is the format you need to export. Ex: 2015-08-16

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Step 3: Export the tracking data in Productsup database

As feed destination in Exports> Setup, select External Tracking

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Click on export.

A few minutes later, you will see the tracking data in the reporting tab of the other site.

What happens if I export more than once?

The last export will overwrite the previous export for this date, but only for IDs contained in the tracking feed. It won't delete any data, only overwrite them.

Example #1:

  1. I export first 20 clicks for the product ID 12345 for the date 2015-08-15. The reporting shows 20 clicks.

  2. I export again but this time 25 clicks for the date 2015-08-15.The reporting will now show 25 clicks.

Example #2:

  1. I export first 20 clicks for the product ID ABC789 for the date 2015-08-15. The reporting shows 20 clicks.

  2. I export again for the date 2015-08-15, but this time the product is no longer in the tracking feed. The reporting still shows 20 clicks

This also means that you can't delete data (only overwrite them). Please contact our support if you want to erase tracking data.

Import from Google Analytics (legacy document)

This article describes the steps you need to follow whenever you want to import your tracking data from Google Analytics Universal into Productsup. This might be the case whenever you want to add KPI based rules or include them into the ROI Management. This import option is for GA advanced users.

Notes:

  • To import from Google Analytics, add authentication first. See Add OAuth authentication to external systems for more details.

  • Import data from Google Analytics is only possible if you know your Google Analytics Universal settings (you need to know the dimensions and metrics available in your account). They are also listed in the Product Performance table based on the chosen dimensions.

  • If you use Google Analytics 4 and not Universal Analytics, you need to use the data source Google Analytics 4 (GA4). See Import tracking data from Google Analytics 4 for more information.

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In Data Sources, click on Add Data Source.

Select Google Universal Analytics (UA) by scrolling down to the Trackings Systems section or type in the keywords.

First enter the time period (in days).

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Enter your Web Property ID, which is the ID of your account.

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Enter the profile ID which has access to the View containing your desired Dimension & Metrics.

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Enter the Dimensions and Metrics that Productsup needs to downoad.

Productsup can only download existing dimensions and metrics. The dimensions and metrics need also to be compatible.

You can download several dimensions and metrics, as long as they are compatible with each other and available in your Google Analytics account. Enter the values separated by a comma (like on the screenshot below).

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Check the dimension/metric compatibility on this page.

Learn more about dimensions and metrics here.

For example:

  • You can't download the dimensions"ga:currencyCode" and "ga:productName" at the same time.

  • If you download "ga:productName" and "ga:productCategory", the metric"ga:localTransactionRevenue" is not available.

Please Note: not all the combinations that Google states on the page above are really possible.

For example in some case product SKU is not compatible with transaction revenue.

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Enter dimension or metric filters that restrict the data returned for your request (optional).

The type of filter depends on if you are filtering for a dimension or a metric:

Metric filters

==: Equals - e.g. ga:timeOnPage==10 !=: Does not equal - e.g. ga:timeOnPage!=10 >: Greater than - e.g. ga:timeOnPage>10 <: Less than - e.g. ga:timeOnPage<10 >=: Greater than or equal to - e.g. ga:timeOnPage>=10 <=: Less than or equal to - e.g. ga:timeOnPage<=10

Dimension Filters

==: Exact match - e.g. ga:city==Berlin !=: Does not match - e.g. ga:city!=Berlin =@: Contains Substring - e.g. ga:city=@strelitz !@: Does not contain substring - e.g. ga:city!@strelitz =~: Contains a match for the regular expression - e.g. ga:city=~Neu.!~: Does not match regular expression - e.g. ga:city!~Neu.

Filtering for all entries where the on page time was larger than 10 seconds and the category contains "womens":

ga:timeOnPage>10;ga:category=@womens

You can find a list of the supported filters here.

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Select the right Authentication to use. In this example the Authentication is also named "Google Analytics".

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Add a description if you want to. Click on Save to save the settings for that data source.

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Import from Webtrekk (legacy document)

If you want to upload your Webtrekk tracking data into the platform you can use this import service.

How to set it up in Webtrekk:

Before adding the URL and other optional information in our platform the following steps need to be done in your Webtrekk account: 1. Log in to your Webtrekk Q3 account. 2. Click onto the section Feeds. 3. Choose from one of the existing feeds or set up a new one by clicking on New feed. 4. On the following page adjust the configuration of the feed according to your needs. 5. Click on Save when you finalized the changes and want to save them. 6. Copy the given URL from your Webtrekk account.

How to import the data into Productsup:

Now you need to go back to your Productsup account:

  1. Click on Add Data Source in the Data Sources menu.

  2. Search for Webtrekk and select it as data source type.

  3. Paste the copied URL from your Webtrekk account to the bracket beneath Source URL in Productsup platform.

  4. Fill in the information into the optional fields if needed.

  5. Click on Save at the bottom of the page.

  6. Import your data by clicking on** Import** at the top of the page in the Data Sources tab to manually import your data or the feed will be imported with the next scheduled import. See Import dynamic URLs for more information.

More information about the adjustments in Webtrekk and general help regarding Webtrekk can be found here and hier (German version).

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