Intro to Retail Variables and Events

If you have a retail site, there are some variables and events that were created just for you (aren’t you special)! This video will give you a quick intro to understanding those retail-specific variables and events.

Transcript
Hey everybody, this is Doug. In this video, I want to introduce you to retail variables and events. So, if you do not have a retail site, you can skip past this video. But, if you do, then you’re going to want to know this stuff. There are special variables and events associated with the retail process and the checkout process. So, you will want to use these as you code the checkout process on your site. And what it really boils down to is telling Adobe analytics which product that a visitor is interacting with and what they’re doing. What is the action associated with the product? So, some examples here as they move through your checkout process. First, they’ll probably view a product. So, the product is this cup and the event is a product view, they’re going to look at it. And then the second one is, of course, still the cup. And then they add it to the cart. And the last one is that they purchase the cup, so in addition to the event being purchase and the product being cup, we also need to say how many cups and what is the price. So, that’s the basic idea of what you’re going to be coding onto the pages. Now, how does that actually work? Well, if you are doing this by hand in JavaScript and you’ll see I’m giving it away at the bottom that we’re not going to have to do this by hand. But, just so you know what’s going on in the background, the product string, or the product’s variable, is being set to a number of fields that are semi-colon delimited. So, a category field which is very seldom used, but then the product name or SKU, which is always used, and then the quantity and the price are added when you purchase, like I showed you on the last slide, and then sometimes incrementor and merchandising variables and we’ll go over those more complicated variables on a different video. But, this is going to be some basic product stuff here. So, in essence, you’re going to use, if I backup a slide, you’re going to use the product name or SKU, and you’re going to use an event on things like a view or an add to cart. But, again, when they do a purchase, you need to add a little more information including the quantity and price. That is the product string, again, you’re not going to need to know all of it. And you’re not really going to need to remember this format because the extension in Launch will build it for you as you fill in the blanks. And then the second thing you’re going to need to know really is these pre-named product events. And it is kind of good to get used to these names. The most common ones being prodView, for a product view. ScAdd, which is shopping cart add, or add to cart. ScCheckout, for a checkout and amazing right? And then purchase for a purchase. And the lesser used ones are scRemove, if they’re going to remove something out of their cart, and scView, if they’re going to view their cart. And these are not commonly used, but are there and available for you, if you want to. But, anyway, it’s good to know what’s going on in the background and as we get into Launch, we will be able to use an extension specifically for the product string and we will be able to build these out.
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