Improving measurement in e-commerce sites with server-side tracking

This study aims to investigate how Server Side Tracking (SST), one of the data collection methods in e-commerce sites, affects the measurement accuracy on Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and its contributions to site performance. Within the scope of the research, data was collected for the same e-commerce site with both Client Side Tracking and Server Side Tracking methods and analyzed in two separate GA4 accounts. Within the scope of the study, parallel measurements were performed on the same e-commerce site using both Client-Side Tracking and Server-Side Tracking methods. The data collected with both methods were compared in terms of basic metrics such as the number of users, the number of sessions and sales data. In addition, the measurement results were compared directly with the database records and the deviation rates of the sales data were also compared. Thus, it was aimed to reveal whether the server-side method caused less data loss compared to the client-side and whether it produced results closer to the real sales data. Thanks to these advantages provided by SST, the negative effects of factors such as ad blockers, cookie policies and browser settings on measurement are minimized; e-commerce sites can analyze user behavior more accurately and base their strategic decisions on more reliable data. This thesis is written to contribute to the literature on practical applications of Server Side Tracking method and its integration with GA4. It also suggests an alternative method for e-commerce companies to increase their measurement accuracy.