We have just released Snowplow version 0.4.7. This release bumps the Snowplow JavaScript tracker to version 0.6, with two significant new features:
- The ability to set a site ID for your tracking – useful for multi-site publishers
- The ability to log ecommerce transactions – useful for merchants wanting to track orders
A huge thanks to community member Simon Andersson from Qwaya for contributing the ecommerce tracking functionality – thank you Simon!
We’ll take a look at both of these new features in turn:
Site ID
The Snowplow JavaScript tracker now lets you set a site identifier before you start logging events. The new method for this is called setSiteId() – it takes one argument, the identifier you have assigned to this site. For example:
_snaq.push(['setAccount', 'd3rkrsqld9gmqf'<span class="p">]); _snaq.push(['setSiteId', 'CFe23a'<span class="p">]); _snaq.push(['trackPageView'<span class="p">]);The querystring passed to your Snowplow collector will now include the following parameter:
...&said=CFe23a&... where said stands for Site or App ID – because we plan on using the same parameter for mobile and desktop app tracking as well.
This new feature should be helpful for anyone running multiple sites (or perhaps clients) against the same Snowplow collector – it means that you can easily partition your Snowplow events by site, whilst still being able to run cross-site analyses should you so wish.
Note that we haven’t yet added extracting said to our ETL process, but we have an open ticket for this.
Ecommerce transactions
To date, we have been analysing e-commerce transactions using Snowplow by:
- Logging every product add to basket event
- Logging every product remove from basket event
- Netting these events off to determine the final contents of the order
This approach works, but it adds complexity in the analysis step. Happily community member Simon Andersson has contributed an alternative solution: dedicated Snowplow e-commerce transaction tracking, similar to the functionality found in the Google Analytics JavaScript API.
The idea is that you add the new tracking code to your shop’s checkout confirmation page, so that the completed order can be sent to Snowplow. A complete example of the new tracking code looks like this:
var orderId = 'order-123'<span class="p">; // addTrans sets up the transaction, should be called first. _snaq.push(['addTrans', orderId, // order ID - required '', // affiliation or store name '8000', // total - required '', // tax '', // shipping '', // city '', // state or province '' // country <span class="p">]); // addItem is called for each item in the shopping cart. _snaq.push(['addItem', orderId, // order ID - required '1001', // SKU - required 'Blue t-shirt', // product name '', // category '2000', // unit price - required '2' // quantity - required <span class="p">]); _snaq.push(['addItem', orderId, // order ID - required '1002', // SKU - required 'Red shoes', // product name '', // category '4000', // unit price - required '1' // quantity - required <span class="p">]); // trackTrans sends the transaction to Snowplow tracking servers. // Must be called last to commit the transaction. _snaq.push(['trackTrans'<span class="p">]);The above example creates an order (aka “transaction”) with ID order-123 and then adds two line items (two blue t-shirts and one pair of red shoes) as line items to the order. The final trackTrans call sends this complete order to Snowplow as three separate events – one each for the order and its line items.
This new functionali
ty should be useful for anybody who wants to track orders transacted in a online shopping cart such as Magento, PrestaShop or Spree.
Note that we haven’t yet added extracting these e-commerce orders to our ETL process, but we have an open ticket for this.
Upgrading
We have made the minified JavaScript tracker version 0.6 available on this URL:
http://d1fc8wv8zag5ca.cloudfront.net/0.6/sp.js There are no breaking changes with the previous version 0.5, so you can upgrade your existing Snowplow JavaScript tracker without issue.
Note that we have now added versioning to the JavaScript tracker’s URL. This is because we have “breaking changes” to the JavaScript tracker in the pipeline (see e.g. issues #29 and #32).
Thanks
A final note to say thanks again to Simon Andersson for contributing the ecommerce tracking functionality! Community contributors like Simon A and Simon R(umble) are helping us to quickly make the Snowplow vision a reality.
And of course, we welcome contributions across the five Snowplow sub-systems. If you would like help implementing a new tracker, trying a different ETL approach or loading Snowplow events into an alternative database, please get in touch!
