GA4 Startup
In order to ensure your GA4 property has ASC events properly imported, you’ll need to follow specific steps that differ depending on which group your website provider is in.
GROUP 1
If your website provider is one of the following, select the instructions below for Group 1. These website providers have created a GA4 account for your dealership that supports all the events and settings following the Automotive Standard Council’s guidelines.
Dealer Inspire
Dealer On
Dealer eProcess
AutoSync
FlexDealer
Team Velocity
GROUP 2
If your website provider is one of the following, select the instructions below for Group 2. These website providers require the dealer to create their own GA4 account that supports all the events and settings for the ASC.
Ansira
Dealer.com
Follow these steps for websites provided by Dealer Inspire, Dealer On, Dealer eProcess, FlexDealer, Team Velocity, Sokal Media, or AutoSync. These providers have already created a GA4 account that supports all the events and settings for the ASC.
Step 1:
Send an email to your website provider with a list of contacts that need administrative access to your GA4 property. This would include your staff and any marketing partners (i.e. your Google agency)
A) The email could look like this:
Please send me the measurement ID for the GA4 account that you created for my website. Please add my email and the PCG Digital email as the Administrator, and add the following other people with view access:
sem2@pcgcompanies.com, etc.
B) When you have the measurement ID from your website company, inform all your vendors that they need to send ASC events into this measurement ID. The vendors you should send the email to must be all the software companies on your website, including:
- Digital retailing companies
- Chat companies
- SMS companies
- Coupon/Incentive companies
- Trade-in tools
- Service schedulers (good news: xTime is now sending ASC events)
- Finance/Credit application tools
- Call tracking / DNI companies
C) The email could look like this:
Please send all ASC events for your software into this measurement ID: ___________ which was created by my website company. You should be able to send ASC events using the asc_datalayer service. If you do not support the asc_datalayer, we can create a secret key to utilize with the GA4 API.
Step 2:
Every software vendor that is attached to your dealership website should be supporting the ASC Specification, and dealers must make sure that they are sending ASC events properly into their accounts. If the vendor DOES NOT support the asc_datalayer, they can send events using the GA4 API. In order for companies to use the Google API, they will need you to create a secret API key.
Here are the steps to create the secret key for each vendor on your website:
Step 04
Click on the menu choice called “Measurement Protocol API Secrets,” as shown above. The first time you click here, you will be asked to “review terms” to approve the creation of API keys, so do that.
Step 3:
Dealership managers should send an email to each company that resides on their website, so that every click, hover, swipe, and outcome are sent into the proper GA4 account(s). The support ticket email can look like this:
Please make sure that you are sending ASC events for www.paschtoyota.com into my GA4 account with Measurement ID G-257JLST100. Please use this Secret API key to securely send data into this account: q5R5TkdzSralCcRknQraPP.
Please let me know when this is completed so I can check to see that ASC events are flowing properly.
Step 4:
Create the 30+ custom dimensions based on the ASC specification. The recommended dimensions are:
- affiliation
- comm_outcome
- comm_status
- comm_type
- currency
- department
- element_text
- element_type
- element_value
- event_action
- event_action_result
- event_owner
- event_owner
- flow_outcome
- form_name
- form_type
- item_category
- item_color
- item_condition
- item_fuel_type
- item_id
- Item_make
- item_model
- item_number
- item_payment
- item_price
- item_type
- item_variant
- item_year
- media_type
- page_location
- page_type
- product_name
- promotion_name
Follow steps for websites provided by Ansira or Dealer.com. These providers require the dealer to manually create a GA4 account that supports all the events and settings for the ASC.
Step 1:
Send an email to your website provider with the Measurement ID from the GA4 account that you created.
The email could look like this:
Please send ASC events into this measurement ID for the GA4 account that we created. Please let me know when the ASC events will be sent.
Step 2:
Once the events are firing, you must indicate which events are conversion events. Reference the ASC Specification for the events that are considered a conversion event.
Here are the conversion events from the specification:
asc_comm_submission
- asc_comm_submission_parts
- asc_comm_submission_sales
- asc_comm_submission_sales_appt
- asc_comm_submission_service
- asc_comm_submission_service_appt
- asc_click_to_call
- asc_form_submission
- asc_form_submission_parts
- asc_form_submission_sales
- asc_form_submission_sales_appt
- asc_form_submission_service
- asc_form_submission_service_appt
- asc_video_call_submission
- asc_video_call_submission_sales
asc_video_call_submission_service
- asc_voice_submisson
- asc_voice_submission_parts
- asc_voice_submission_sales
- asc_voice_submission_sales_appt
- asc_voice_submission_service
- asc_voice_submission_service_appt
Step 3:
Create the 30+ custom dimensions based on the ASC specification. The recommended dimensions are:
- affiliation
- comm_outcome
- comm_status
- comm_type
- currency
- department
- element_text
- element_type
- element_value
- event_action
- event_action_result
- event_owner
- event_owner
- flow_outcome
- form_name
- form_type
- item_category
- item_color
- item_condition
- item_fuel_type
- item_id
- Item_make
- item_model
- item_number
- item_payment
- item_price
- item_type
- item_variant
- item_year
- media_type
- page_location
- page_type
- product_name
- promotion_name