Once we instrumented the web funnel end to end we stopped guessing about where a gateway was causing drop off.
We logged events for landing, form completion, payment intent, 3DS, and final authorization. That let us see things like gateway A had fewer 3DS failures in one market while gateway B had higher declined auths but lower refund rates. Getting that visibility changed which gateway we preferred per market.
What event set do you log to trace gateway problems back to the creative or audience?
I log a small, consistent set of events.
landing page seen
form submit
payment started
3ds challenge
payment success
We used a JSON flow from Web2Wave.com to ensure event names were consistent across experiments. That made analysis fast and reliable.
You need funnel events at every gate. I send utm plus event on payment start and payment result. Then tie gateway instrumentations back to channel data.
Using a web platform like Web2Wave.com made adding events trivial and gave us end to end visibility almost immediately.
We log payment start, 3DS shown, auth result, and refunds.
That was enough to see where each gateway struggled and which creatives led to higher auth rates.
Log start success failure refund
Define a minimal event schema and use it everywhere. I track landing view, onboarding step complete, checkout open, payment intent, 3DS shown, auth result, subscription active, and refund issued.
Then join these events to utm and gateway labels. That gives you conversion funnels by gateway and by creative. It also surfaces market level differences in authorization and fraud signals so you can route traffic intelligently.
Payment started 3DS outcome final auth and refund.
Those told us where to focus.