If you are using the content management system Joomla, you might also be using the Virtuemart ecommerce plugin. I was looking for a way to integrate Google Analytics into Virtuemart so that I could specify a goal and track the number of converted sales.

For the most part you don’t need to worry about doing anything if you just want Google Analytics to measure your traffic in Virtuemart. Slap the code in your main Joomla template and it will work away happily.

If however you want to set a goal to track sales conversions, then you need to provide Google Analytics with a unique URL for the thank-you page in Virtuemart. I found that Virtuemart was simply returning index.php as the thank you page, so had to find a work around to get that unique URL.

Here’s how i did it.

- Create a normal html page called analytics-result.htm

- Into the body of this page, put your analytics code. Make sure you are using the Analytics code for secure sites rather than the standard code if your shopping basket is secure

- Save it in a location accessible through https (if you are using a secure checkout) e.g. https://www.yourdomain.com/analytics-result.htm

- Search for /administrator/components/Virtuemart/html/checkout.thankyou.php

- At the end of the php file, add this code:
<iframe src="analytics-result.htm" width="5" height="5"
frameborder="0" scrolling="no" name="Analytics"></iframe>

- Setup a goal in Analytics and give it your new page as the unique URL: https://www.yourdomain.com/analytics-result.htm

What this method does is to put an Iframe into the thank you page after a customer has ordered. This Iframe contains a standard HTML file with a unique URL that you can setup as a goal page in Analytics. As long as everything is done through SSL your customer hopefully wont get any security errors.
It’s probably far from being the best way to do it, but seems to be working for me.

Anyone running a business these days can usually benefit from high quality market research in their field. Often the question is “how do I do it?”. The Business to Business Market Research blog is probably where you want to start looking for answers. It is a huge repository of high quality market research information and will keep you reading for hours. Visit www.b2binternational.com/b2b-blog/.

A couple of weeks ago, when Google Analytics anounced it was going to a free for all model, everyone was happy about it. Then we all tried to sign-up on one day and the entire system got overloaded. I managed to get a few sites registered before they stopped new registrations and from what I’ve seen the reporting is rather good – although it hasn’t picked up any of my Adwords clicks on one account. Also the reporting seems to be a couple of days behind. I’m sure this is just due to the backlog from the startup and eventually we’ll get close to real-time reporting.
In the meantime though I want to see what’s happening today, so I continue to use Statcounter.com. Statcounter analyses the last 100 pageviews for free, more if you want to pay. For sites that are not that busy it’s a great way to analyse traffic on a daily basis for free. You can also have multiple sites on the one account.