Google Analytics

Google Analytics is where your website data is stored and queried. This is where you connect your property to Bookline and register the piece of data that ties a booking back to the call that started it.

If it isn’t clear why two tools are involved, start with the section introduction.

Connecting your property

In the client portal, go to Integrations → Google Analytics.

1. Click Connect. A Google window opens for you to sign in and authorise access.
2. Pick the property that matches your website, from the ones your account has.
3. Give the integration a name and save.

The connection is made with your own Google account, so only your properties appear and we see nothing else. The account you use needs edit permission on the property: read-only access can query it, but cannot register the next step.

Caution

The save button is what keeps the connection. If you close the Google window and leave the page without saving, the authorisation is lost and you have to do it again.

Registering the custom dimension

This is the step that makes the call identifier queryable.

Even when Tag Manager sends the data, Google Analytics does not show parameters that have not been registered. It collects and stores them, but they appear in no report or exploration. Registering it as a custom dimension is what makes it visible.

The Custom dimension card shows whether it is already installed. If it isn’t, click Install dimension: it is created as bookline_session_id, event-scoped.

Two things worth knowing before you click:

• It is not retroactive. Only events after creation carry a value. What happened before is not recovered.
• Google Analytics allows 50 event-scoped custom dimensions per property. If yours already has them all, archive an unused one first.

If a notice appears asking you to reconnect, the stored authorisation only allows reading the property. Click Reconnect, accept the permissions and save: the Google window will now show two permissions instead of one.

The events card

This tells us what each step of the booking process is called in your property: the availability search, the room selection, the confirmed purchase.

Not every website uses the same names. The confirmed booking event is usually purchase, but some booking engines use other names, and some send no distinct events at all — just the same page view under different addresses. The card lets you pick the real name for each step and shows, next to it, how many times it occurred in the last 30 days, so you can confirm you picked the right one.

The one that matters is the confirmed booking: that is the event that will carry the call identifier and the amount.

Next

With the property connected and the dimension registered, Analytics is ready to receive the data. What’s missing is whatever sends it: continue with Google Tag Manager.