Include parent category names to the GA product data.

[WillBrubaker]

4260824-zen

categories being sent to Google are just alphabetized and do not reflect any parent/child structure.

p1630554442116900/1630509117.102700-slack-C7U3Y3VMY

[jconroy]

Adding tag for discussion - It's not clear to me whether the hierarchy is needed or what the implications are - might need to do some diving into their docs.

[layoutd]

This is confirmed, the categories are retrieved (alphabetically) on Line 168 with get_the_terms():

woocommerce-google-analytics-integration/includes/class-wc-abstract-google-analytics-js.php

Lines 165 to 182 in 44e85ea

	protected static function product_get_category_line( $_product ) {
	$out = array();
	$variation_data = version_compare( WC_VERSION, '3.0', '<' ) ? $_product->variation_data : ( $_product->is_type( 'variation' ) ? wc_get_product_variation_attributes( $_product->get_id() ) : '' );
	$categories = get_the_terms( $_product->get_id(), 'product_cat' );
	if ( is_array( $variation_data ) && ! empty( $variation_data ) ) {
	$parent_product = wc_get_product( version_compare( WC_VERSION, '3.0', '<' ) ? $_product->parent->id : $_product->get_parent_id() );
	$categories = get_the_terms( $parent_product->get_id(), 'product_cat' );
	}
	if ( $categories ) {
	foreach ( $categories as $category ) {
	$out[] = $category->name;
	}
	}
	return "'" . esc_js( join( "/", $out ) ) . "',";
	}

They're then displayed in a / separated list (Line 181). So for a product with category Clothing > Hoodies, the script shows 'category': 'Clothing/Hoodies', but if the category is Sportswear > Hoodies, the script shows 'category': 'Hoodies/Sportswear'.

According to the Universal Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce documentation, the categories can and should be shown in hierarchical order:

The category to which the product belongs (e.g. Apparel). Use / as a delimiter to specify up to 5-levels of hierarchy (e.g. Apparel/Men/T-Shirts).

However, in WooCommerce products can have multiple categories. For example, the hoodie could have the categories Clothing > Hoodies, as well as Fan Gear > Real Madrid, in which case the plugin shows Clothing/Fan Gear/Hoodie/Real Madrid, which doesn't give Google Analytics an accurate representation of the category hierarchy.

Conclusion

Reordering the categories by hierarchy would be an improvement, but only for products that are in one category "tree". However, there doesn't seem to be a way to reconcile WooCommerce's multi-category support with the single hierarchical category supported by Google Analytics, so making the changes necessary wouldn't fix the problem for all stores. Is it better for the feature to be consistent (but broken) for all cases, or to work sometimes (but not reliably)?

(For reference, Google Analytics 4 still has a hierarchical design, but with a different syntax that isn't currently supported by the plugin AFAICS: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/ga4/ecommerce#view_item)

[jconroy]

Thanks for the investigation @layoutd and clear information. Leaving as an enhancement for product to prioritize at a later point.

@WillBrubaker feel free to add to the ideas board to help us gather an idea of customer need.