Tracking Wishlist and Save-for-Later Behaviour in Ecommerce Analytics

Wishlists as Purchase Intent Signals

A user who adds a product to their wishlist is expressing significant purchase intent — higher than a product view, perhaps approaching add_to_cart in intent strength. But most ecommerce analytics setups ignore wishlist interactions entirely, treating them as non-events.

Tracking wishlist adds and wishlist views enables:

• Building high-intent remarketing audiences (wishlist adders who have not purchased)
• Identifying which products have the highest wishlist rates (demand signal for inventory planning)
• Measuring wishlist-to-purchase conversion rates (how effective are wishlist reminder emails?)

Standard GA4 Event: add_to_wishlist

GA4 has a standard recommended event for wishlist adds: add_to_wishlist. It uses the same items array structure as other ecommerce events:

dataLayer.push({ecommerce: null});
dataLayer.push({
  event: "add_to_wishlist",
  ecommerce: {
    currency: "GBP",
    value: 89.00,
    items: [{
      item_id: "SKU-001",
      item_name: "Blue Running Shoe",
      price: 89.00,
      quantity: 1
    }]
  }
});

This fires when the user clicks the wishlist/heart icon on a product. Because it is a standard GA4 recommended event name, it may appear in some GA4 reports automatically.

Tracking Wishlist Views

When a user views their wishlist page:

dataLayer.push({ecommerce: null});
dataLayer.push({
  event: "view_cart",  // or a custom event "view_wishlist"
  ecommerce: {
    items: [/* all items in the wishlist */]
  }
});

Viewing the wishlist is a re-engagement signal — a user is revisiting products they saved. These users are often close to purchase and are good remarketing targets.

Remove from Wishlist

Track removals with a custom event:

dataLayer.push({
  event: "remove_from_wishlist",
  ecommerce: {
    items: [{item_id: "SKU-001", ...}]
  }
});

If a product has a high add-to-wishlist rate and a high remove-from-wishlist rate shortly after, that may signal price resistance — users save it hoping for a sale but remove it when no discount appears.

Building a Wishlist Remarketing Audience

In GA4 audience builder:

• Include condition: event = add_to_wishlist (in last 30 days)
• Exclude condition: event = purchase (in last 30 days)

This audience: users who wishlisted products but have not yet purchased. Export to Google Ads for dynamic remarketing showing the specific wishlisted products. This is one of the highest-converting remarketing audiences available for ecommerce.

Summary

Wishlist tracking uses GA4's standard add_to_wishlist event with the same items array as other ecommerce events. Add remove_from_wishlist and view_wishlist as custom events. Build a wishlist-adder-not-purchased audience for remarketing. The wishlist-to-purchase funnel is a valuable measurement that reveals how effectively your store converts expressed interest into purchases.

See our Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking service for wishlist tracking implementation.

Need wishlist tracking set up? Contact Adslytics.