What GA4 e-commerce events should every store send?
At minimum view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout, and purchase. Add view_item_list, select_item, add_shipping_info, and add_payment_info to diagnose where in the funnel buyers drop.
What is E-commerce tracking?
Also called: enhanced ecommerce, GA4 ecommerce, purchase event, ecommerce dataLayer
The purchase event is the one that has to be perfect. It needs a transaction_id (for deduplication), a value, a currency, and an items array with per-item id, name, price, and quantity. Any missing piece degrades revenue reporting, ROAS calculation, and ad bidding at the same time.
transaction_id is the deduplication key. Without it, a customer refreshing the order-confirmation page books a second purchase, and a returning customer bookmarking that page books more. Sites without transaction IDs routinely over-report revenue by double digits.
The funnel events matter for diagnosis, not just completeness. Without begin_checkout you cannot distinguish a checkout that nobody starts from a checkout that everybody abandons — two problems with entirely different fixes.
Why it matters
E-commerce events are the only tracking that maps directly to money, which makes them both the highest-value thing to get right and the most expensive thing to get wrong.
Common questions about E-commerce tracking
Why is GA4 revenue lower than my store's reported revenue?
Standard causes, in order: consent denial suppressing tags for some visitors, ad blockers, the purchase event failing on some payment methods that skip the confirmation page, and missing or malformed currency values. A 5–15% gap is normal; more than that indicates a specific fault.
How do I stop duplicate purchase events?
Send transaction_id on every purchase event and let the platform deduplicate. Additionally, fire the event from server-confirmed order data rather than on page load of the thank-you page, so a refresh cannot resend it.
Related terms
- dataLayerThe dataLayer is a JavaScript array on the page (window.dataLayer) that a website uses to hand structured information to a tag manager.
- Event parameterAn event parameter is a named value sent alongside an analytics event to describe it — value and currency on a purchase, item_name on a product view, method on a login.
- GA4 key eventsKey events are the GA4 events you have marked as business-critical — purchases, sign-ups, qualified leads.
- Meta Conversions API (CAPI)The Meta Conversions API (CAPI) sends conversion events to Meta from your server instead of from the browser.
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