When I started programming in C# some months ago, I chose Express edition tool-kit, because it’s free and quite lightweight. But absolutely accidentally I ran into Microsoft DreamSpark program. They introduce it by:

DreamSpark is simple, it’s all about giving students Microsoft professional-level developer and design tools at no charge so you can chase your dreams and create the next big breakthrough in technology – or just get a head start on your career.

At no charge? Yes, that’s right – all students can download various developer tools for free. List includes:

• Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
• Windows Server 2008 Standard
• SQL Server 2008 Developer
• Expression Studio 2
• and more

I don’t know how student verification works in other universities, but my university  (The University of Edinburgh) has special login system which works as authentication gateway. Somehow Microsoft arranged it and I verified myself by using that system – process similar to using OpenID. Process took only some minutes and downloads where going.

It used to be that Microsoft programming languages were criticized because they where only available to use with IDE’s which cost a lot. And for starters, high-school or university students it was almost impossible to start programming in for example C#. They are not cheap now too, but now everyone can use Express versions and students can even get profession-level tools.

Isn’t it great? It may sound as Microsoft advertisement, but as student I really like this initiative. I’m not going to start using Windows again because of that, but the fact that Microsoft is thinking about students as a potential Microsoft technologies users and investing in them is really great.

E-commerce tracker works like normal Google analytics code, it’s simply part of it. Your job is to decide when to supply Google with transaction information, but I see only one logical time – right after confirmed payment.

To track your transactions you need to have “Success page”, a page, where users will be redirected after successful payment. If you don’t have such, you probably won’t be able to track transactions – it’s possible to submit transactions in other pages, but only submitting them in success page would give correct results (further details below). If you have tried Goals in analytics, you know what I’m talking about.

In your success page you need to slightly modify current Analytics tracker code. Google has very good API documentation available at code.google.com/apis, and all required information for transactions tracking is here (yes, only 3 functions). Sample transaction code is this:

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? 
"https://ssl." : "http://www.");
 
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + 
"google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
 
<script type="text/javascript">
  var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-ANALYTICS-ID");
 
  pageTracker._trackPageview(); // Track pageview
 
  pageTracker._addTrans(
    "1234",                    // Order ID
    "Mountain View",           // Store name
    "11.99",                   // Total
    "1.29",                    // Tax
    "5",                       // Shipping
    "San Jose",                // City
    "California",              // State
    "USA"                      // Country
  );
 
  pageTracker._addItem(
    "1234",                    // Order ID
    "DD44",                    // Product code
    "T-Shirt",                 // Product Name 
    "Green Medium",            // Category
    "11.99",                   // Price
    "1"                        // Quantity
  );
 
  pageTracker._addItem(..);    // Another Item
 
  pageTracker._trackTrans();   // Track transaction
 
</script>

What you do, is tell Google unique order ID, prices, shipping location and items information. All these parameters will later be used to analyse your sales and give information about popular products, customers habits, etc. Basically, Google analytics is easy way to merge your traffic and sales statistics.

E-commerce tracking has problems too. Most problems arise from success page requirement. For example, in PayPal customer can choose not to go back to shop. PayPal will send payment notification, but because user doesn’t visit your website, you’ve lost one transaction. It’s possible to supply transaction information as soon as user visits website again, but statistics won’t be accurate – user will probably come again from different source, different keywords, or even different month.

However, I recommend trying Google E-commerce tracking for all shops, especially small ones, because they probably don’t have good inside statistics. Statistics in back-end are always much more accurate and informative, but they require much more time and are really harder to implement than adding 20 lines of code. I’d vote for good back-end statistics and Google analytics for visitors vs. buyers analysis.