Merchandising Tracking and Reporting - Yahoo! Web Analytics - page 94

Let's look at a couple of examples where it is simply not possible to track the sale
immediately and directly on the Thank You page.

Thank You Page
In online marketing, the term Thank You page typically refers to a page where it is made clear
to customers that they successfully completed the transaction. A transaction could be anything
from a sale to an RSS signup, but it's always a conversion point. A good rule of thumb is to make
sure you always apply an ACTION variable to your Thank You page.

For example, suppose a visitor buys a new credit card that requires you to per-
form a credit check before final approval. if you track this as a sale on the “thank you
for applying” page, you could end up with registered sales that did not materialize.
imagine a scenario in which the final price is not necessarily determined upon
sale, such as per-hour car rentals, where you would know that a sale occurred but have
yet to determine the final sales value. if registered as a normal sale in the system, you
would be reporting on erroneous sales data.
as you can see from these two examples, we must have an opportunity to
“park” a sale until we know what the final status is. parking a sale is a built-in func-
tionality in Yahoo! Web analytics known as pending sale. it allows you to reconcile
your back office and your reporting interface, without having to worry about either
aborted sales or incorrect sales amounts showing up in your reporting interface. once
the sale has been finally confirmed, you can update the status of the sale from pending
to approved sale.
To activate the pending sale tracking, you have to add the PENDING_SALE action
value to your ACTION variable, as follows:
Version 4
var ACTION='PENDING_SALE';

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here's an example that explains the constraints as well as the freedom of the
PENDING_SALE action value:
Version 4
var ACTION='PENDING_SALE';
var _S_SKU='DM112899; DM113834';
var _S_UNITS='2;1';
var _S_AMOUNTS='100.00;50.00';
var ORDERID='10099803';
var AMOUNT='USD150.00'

Version 5
YWATracker.setAction(“PENDING_SALE“);
YWATracker.setSKU(“DM112899; DM113834“);