GA4 BigCommerce App Event Definitions

📌 Bookmark this page. Understanding how attribution metrics are derived and how event properties are translated from one platform to another can be difficult. Our team is committed to taking the guesswork out of managing attribution. The definitions below are shared to provide transparency and clarity in setting up and maintaining your attribution model.

Naming Conventions

One of the challenges in attribution tracking is that every platform, from BigCommerce to Google Analytics to Facebook Ads to Segment, uses different naming conventions to describe a shopper’s behavioral events, and the properties of those events.

It’s Fueled’s job handle all of these translations on behalf of our merchants. However, if you are looking to customize any of your Fueled events, it’s helpful to understand and adopt our naming conventions to keep your data clean and consistent.

Event Naming Convention

Fueled’s internal event naming convention follows the “Object-Action Framework.” What that means is that event names begin with the object upon which an action occurs, followed by a past-tense verb describing the action.

For example: when a user visits a product description page, we refer to this event as a Product Viewed event, not a Viewed Product or viewed_product event. The majority of CDPs and attribution platforms follow this Object-Action Framework. (Google Analytics, however, does the opposite.)

Moreover, Fueled events are Title Cased, and use spaces between the Object and the Action. Google Analytics, on the other hand, uses snake_case naming.

Note: If you are exclusively leveraging Fueled’s GA4 Connector App for BigCommerce, you don’t need to worry about Fueled’s naming convention, as events will show up in Google Analytics correctly, using Google’s event schema.

Event Mapping between Fueled and Google Analytics

Property Naming Convention

Fueled uses camelCasing when labeling event properties. Google Analytics typically uses snake_casing.

Fueled’s Data Layer Objects

When Fueled’s GA4 Connector App is installed, we provide an option for enabling a theme extension that installs a data layer and, optionally, injects client-side event tracking. You can leverage this data layer for your own purposes. Doing so is actually a great idea, as it helps ensure that you are using the data storefront variables across all of your client-side attribution scripts.

Our data layer exposes the following objects in your theme.

Customer Object

The Customer Object is only exposed when a shopper is logged into your store.

Product Object

Product objects are exposed both on individual product pages, and as an array of products on Collection pages and so forth.

Cart Object

Exposed on the cart page (https://examplestore.com/cart).

GA4 Client-Side Events

The following events are sent client-side, from your BigCommerce storefront to Google Analytics 4, via our javascript library, which is installed into your active BigCommerce theme. These are the default events that Fueled tracks out of the box. Additional tracking events can be added to your theme with a small amount of custom code.

Note: Fueled currently supports event properties marked with ✅. Properties marked with ❌ are not currently supported.

add_to_cart

This event fires when an item is added to a cart for purchase.

GA4’s add_to_cart event maps to Fueled’s generalized Product Added event specification. The add_to_cart event is populated with the following properties.

Note: The “add to cart” experiences on a BigCommerce theme are often heavily customized. Fueled’s out-of-the-box add_to_cart attribution events only cover standard use cases. Customized tracking scripts may be needed to capture all add_to_cart events on your website.

👓 Fueled’s Product Added event schema also includes cartId, which is exposed to other Fueled destinations, such as Segment. cartId represents the unique identifier of a shopping cart. We use cartId to connect GA4 carts, checkouts, and orders in our backend. However, cartId is not passed directly to GA4, given GA4’s PII requirements.

begin_checkout

GA4’s begin_checkout event maps to Fueled’s generalized Order Completed event specification. The begin_checkout event is populated with the following properties.

login

This event fires when a shopper logs into a BigCommerce storefront. Currently, the event is logged with no additional properties.

pageview

Fueled’s GA4 Connector for BigCommerce injects Google GTag.js script on each BigCommerce storefront page load. This allows Google Analytics 4 to directly track page view events. We do this, because this tag needs to fire to instantiate a GA4 Customer ID client-side.

To learn more about what GA4 collects for each page view event, visit GA4’s event documentation site.

remove_from_cart

This event fires when an item is removed from a shopping cart.

GA4’s remove_from_cart event maps to Fueled’s generalized Product Removed event specification. The remove_from_cart event is populated with the following properties.

Note: Fueled’s out-of-the-box client-side event tracking only tracks remove_from_cart events that occur on BigCommerce’s standard cart page. Customizations may be required to track all remove_from_cart events in a merchant’s theme.

search

This event fires when a shopper uses BigCommerce’s built-in search..

GA4’s search event maps to Fueled’s generalized Product Search event specification. The search event is populated with the following properties.

view_cart

This event fires when a shopper views their BigCommerce cart.

GA4’s view_cart event maps to Fueled’s generalized Cart Viewed event specification. The view_cart event is populated with the following properties.

view_item

This event fires when a shopper views a BigCommerce product page.

GA4’s view_item event maps to Fueled’s generalized Product Viewed event specification. The view_item event is populated with the following properties.

Note: GA4’s view_item event expects that the viewed product is returned in an array, even though it has a single item in that array.

view_item_list

This event fires when a shopper views a BigCommerce collections page.

GA4’s view_item_list event maps to Fueled’s generalized Product List Viewed event specification. The view_item_list event is populated with the following properties.

GA4 Server-Side Events

The following events are sent server-side, from BigCommerce to Google Analytics 4, to ensure the highest-level of attribution tracking possible.

sign_up

This event fires when a shopper registers and creates a user account on a BigCommerce store.

GA4’s sign_up event maps to Fueled’s generalized Account Created event specification. The sign_up event is populated with the following properties.

purchase