Google Analytics Integration

Table of Contents

1. Getting Started
2. Overview
3. Referral Attribution
4. Pageviews and Events
5. GA Event Structure
6. GA PageView Structure
7. Flows
8. Cross Domain Measurements
9. Older versions
10. Support
11. Known Limitations
12. Changelog

Getting Started

First, the dealer team member or marketing agent should create or identify their preferred Google Analytics tracking page and get the "UA" ID for the property where they want Modal Checkout-related usage data to be sent. The team member should send this UA ID to the Modal team In the required forms during the dealer onboarding process, or by sending a request to support@modalup.com, and Modal can register that UA account to receive usage data from the appropriate Modal-integrated website(s).

Overview

Modal Checkout will send pageviews and events to the recipient's Google Analytics (GA) account for analysis. The legacy version of Modal Analytics only sent pageviews to GA. 

Pageviews are sent to GA Pageview using virtual pageviews. Virtual pageviews represent dynamically loaded content within the Checkout flow. 

User and system actions are sent as GA Events. The user action events include actions taken by the user such as clicking a button or selecting a checklist item. The system action events include leads sent to the dealer.

Included with every pageview and event sent to GA is a property identifying the flow the user is following through Modal Checkout. See below for more information.

Cross-domain tracking across the dealer's website and Modal Checkout can also be enabled.

This document describes the beta release of Version 2 of Modal's GA pageviews and new user/system action events. The legacy pageviews will continue to be supported for dealers who are using them. The improvements are:

• Pageviews have more meaningful names.
• There are more Pageviews giving more granular insight.
• All Pageviews and Events include the Checkout flow. This enables flow-specific analysis For example, one can create funnels for flows using ePrice and Lead.
• User action events have been completely separated from Pageviews and are sent to GA Event.
• A lot more User action events.
• A few “system” actions events (Leads).
• All Pageviews and Events are sent to the GA account associated with the website. The legacy GA Pageviews are sent to the GA account associated with the vehicle (the dealer who has the vehicle in their inventory) which may be different than the website.

Referral Attribution

• Modal's script will detect and use these standard UTM parameters whenever they're available from the host page: Source, Medium, Campaign, Term, and Content
• In this way, you can see which campaigns lead to conversions and lead events
• NOTE: Modal's script can only pickup campaign attributions where the script is present. Therefore, your website provider must install Modal's script on any and all pages in your domain where you want attribution parameters to be captured, even if there are no Modal user-facing products on that page.

Pageviews and Events

Please refer to this guide for our full library of virtual pages and events.

Event Structure

For GA Events, these properties are attached as Google Analytic Event properties where:

Pageview Structure

For GA Pageviews, the properties are encoded in the page URL path as follows.

modalup.com/<siteId>/<product>/<virtualPage>/<flow>

For example:

modalup.com/1234/CHECKOUT/LeadForm/CHECKOUT%3APURCHASE%3ALEAD

Flows

The order events occur varies based on the flow the user takes through Checkout. The flow informs the analytics consumer about the CTA the user engaged to initiate Checkout and whether or not lead collection was required to unlock the price. Each event sent to GA includes the flow label as a property. The form of the flow label is:

<product>:<lead-mode>:<cta-type>

Where

<product> is currently always CHECKOUT.

<cta-type> is the button the user clicked to launch Checkout. It is one of:

<lead-mode> is the type of the button the user clicked to launch Checkout. It is one of:

The complete list of possible flow labels currently available are:

• CHECKOUT:PAYMENT:LEAD
• CHECKOUT:PAYMENT:REGULAR
• CHECKOUT:PAYMENT:SAVINGS
• CHECKOUT:TRADE:LEAD
• CHECKOUT:TRADE:REGULAR
• CHECKOUT:TRADE:SAVINGS
• CHECKOUT:PURCHASE:LEAD
• CHECKOUT:PURCHASE:REGULAR
• CHECKOUT:PURCHASE:SAVINGS
• CHECKOUT:TESTDRIVE:LEAD
• CHECKOUT:TESTDRIVE:REGULAR
• CHECKOUT:TESTDRIVE:SAVINGS
• UNKNOWN

In practice, dealers should never see UNKNOWN.

Cross Domain Measurements

In order to combine the GA events from the (dealer's) parent website and the Modal iFrame in analytics both must be sent using the parent website's GA clientId. This is done by the Modal button script reading the the clientId  on the parent page and sending it to the iFrame page.

Older versions

• Modal's currently supported GA integration is referred to as Gen-2, which includes page views, page events, and Checkout Flow data.
• Modal previously offered a GA integration that included page views only.
• Customers using our legacy implementation should contact their Customer Success Manager to migrate and upgrade to the Gen-2 version to obtain the latest benefits.

Support

• Before opening a support case, please verify that you have sent Modal the correct GA UA ID during the onboarding process.
• Modal does not offer dealer-specific customizations or Google Analytics consulting.  We recommend customers work with a certified partner for these services.
• There can be a 2-hour delay before tracking starts after the GA ID has been entered into Modal's database.

Known Limitations

• Modal Trade does not have GA Analytics

Changelog

• September 14, 2020: Initial release
• September 21, 2020: Updated Known Limitations
• December 2, 2020: Update Pageviews and Events based on latest updates to Modal Checkout window
• December 20, 2020: Move Pageviews and Events to separate article
• May 26, 2021: UTM attribution section