How To Perform a Test Transaction To Verify That Your Conversion and Dynamic Remarketing Tracking is Working
Conversion tracking tags are used to track how your advertising campaigns are. Similarly, dynamic remarketing tags are used to measure how customers interact with your site prior to purchasing. It is important that these be correctly installed to ensure reporting is accurate and your advertising is as effective as possible. To ensure that your tags are working, we recommend you do a test transaction. This will prove that the right product IDs, amounts, etc are being reported. Here's how…
Note: This procedure assumes your tags are set up inside of Google Tag Manager, which is our recommended method. If you are not using Google Tag Manager, you can skip those steps.
Tools needed for checking:
Install the Tag Assistant Extension for Google Chrome.
Install the Data Layer Checker Extension for Google Chrome.
- Login to Google Tag Manager and select the container for your site.
- Click preview in the top right corner.
You will be redirected with the page below:
Enter the website URL of the product page and click connect, this should open the page in a new window or tab. Wait for Tag Manager to connect and then click continue.
In the new tab/window that was opened select the Tag Assistant extension (in the top right corner of chrome) click enable and record and then refresh the page.
Then follow the normal flow of purchasing the item until you reach the purchase success page.
Tip: Depending on your platform, you may be able to define a coupon code to apply a 100% discount on your order, to avoid having to make a credit card transaction and then refund it.
After this, open the Tag Assistant extension and click “Stop Recording” then “Show Full Report”. Click “Google Analytics Report” and then “Save” this will download a ‘.harz” file.
Back in Tag Manager see what tags have fired. If successful, you should be able to see the conversion tags for each of the platforms you are tracking conversion on (e.g. "Google Conversion Tracking Tag”).
You may want to check the values being passed on the following parameters you have set on each of the tags and if these values are correct. See examples below:
Google Conversion Tracking - Purchase event tag
Google Analytics 4 - Purchase event tag
If the conversion tag has not fired you can collect the following information to find the issue:
- First take a screenshot from the summary page of all the tags that were fired, then switch to the data layer tab and take another screenshot.
- Then go to the confirmation page and save the source code by right clicking > “View Page Source” then right click > “Save As..”.
- The “.harz” file created by the Tag Assistant plugin
Forward this information to whoever installed your tracking tags for assistance in diagnosing the issue. Once this is done, you can cancel/refund the purchase.