Revenue vs. Product Revenue Discrepancy in GA4—Resolved

Are you, like many others, having a tough time understanding the difference between "revenue" and "product revenue" in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)? It may seem like these two metrics report on the same thing—but they don't. In fact, these two metrics, used in tandem, will give you a deeper and clearer understanding of the financial health of your business.

» Need more insight into generating revenue? Learn how to perfect your sales funnel with GA4

Revenue in Google Analytics

Revenue is the aggregated metric from your web e-commerce or in-app stores. This is the value that's used most frequently in reporting, because it aims to give you an overall picture.

Beyond wondering how sales revenue is calculated, it's important to bear in mind that revenue represents the value of an entire purchase or cart. Therefore, it can include tax and shipping costs as well as discounts, because these values are applied to the entire purchase and not individually to each item.

Let's look at an example. Let's say a customer buys a T-shirt from Joe's Tees (an online e-commerce store). Here is an example of the code that's generated for the revenue metric. Take special note of the bold, underlined coding:

ga('ecommerce:addTransaction', {

'id': '5678', // Transaction ID. Required.

'affiliation': 'Joes Tees', // Affiliation or store name.

'revenue': '5.99', // Grand Total.

'shipping': '1', // Shipping.

'tax': '0.50' // Tax.

});

This code highlights the grand total, and includes shipping and tax in the final revenue report.

» Discover the benefits and difficulties of revenue analysis in e-commerce

Product Revenue in Google Analytics

Product revenue focuses on the value that individual products contribute to the total revenue. It looks at each product's value and quantity in the cart separately. Therefore, you may have situations where the values of revenue and product revenue don't correspond, even though you're analyzing the same products in the same cart.

Here's another example so that you can compare the coding. Sticking with Joe's Tees, have a look at the bold, underlined section:

ga('ecommerce:addItem', {

'id': '1234', // Transaction ID. Required.

'name': 'Black Rambo T-shirt', // Product name. Required.

'sku': 'AA12345', // SKU/code.

'category': 'Rambo Range T-shirts', // Category or variation.

'price': '5.99', // Unit price.

'quantity': '1' // Quantity.

});

The value of the revenue is $7.49, while the product revenue is $5.99 because revenue also calculates tax and shipping.

» Worried about product performance? Use these tricks to analyze your products with GA4

Final Takeaway

So, revenue will provide you with a baseline of your overall performance, while product revenue will show you the weight of each individual product's contribution. This is good for determining which products are your bestsellers and which need a marketing boost or should just be discontinued.

If you're still struggling to understand the difference between these metrics, you can call on BeProfit. Their solution will demystify all the GA4 discrepancies. The bottom line is that the success of your business depends on accurately understanding the metrics and data you can extract from GA4.

» Want to see what BeProfit has to offer? Schedule a demo