It's no secret that Google Analytics is the bedrock of modern analytics. For data analytics experts in all verticals — not only ecommerce — Google Analytics is the primary tool for setting goals, tracking results, ecommerce benchmarking and optimising campaigns for peak performance. But GA is no walk in the park. It's a complex platform with a robust dashboard, unique features like Enhanced Ecommerce and dozens of helpful tracking features for merchants big and small. Because GA can be a learning curve for inexperienced users, many merchants opt to work with a Google Analytics consultant or Google Analytics consulting group to help them navigate the waters of GA and fully optimise their product campaigns. [subscribe heading="Get the best Google Analytics consultants for ecommerce" background_color="green" button_text="get started" button_link="https://www.littledata.io/app/enterprise"] Before you go hunting for a GA consultant for your online store, make sure they check all the important boxes: Coding experience: from UTM parameters to more complex bug fixes, a respectable GA consultant should be comfortable messing around with code. While troubleshooting and custom implementations are the most common calls for coding experience, Google Analytics experts should be well-versed in coding within GA. Segmenting aptitude: As the old adage goes, averages always lie. In other words, the insight of data reports goes beyond the average numbers that GA shows. To better understand the data, an experienced GA consultant should know how to segment the data. If you hire a GA consultant who shows you plain GA exports exactly as Google shows it to the user, he/she is providing your store no value. Data without a plan of action is just a collection of reported numbers — nothing more. Deliver insights, not reports: Not every store owner understands bounce rates, but most understand the type of person that finds their website, don't take any on-site action, and leave the site right away. In other words, a good GA consultant should not be interested in exports from GA, but insights from GA. They should be able to extrapolate data from GA, explain to store owners what it means and communicate the impact for ecommerce business owners. Typically, store owners are not interested in complex GA data, and they don't have time to read comprehensive reports — they need guidance, translation and plain english to turn data into actionable insights. There's no getting around it — highly effective (and affordable) Google Analytics consultants are difficult to come by. Luckily, there's a better way for merchants to track data they can trust and build their strategy around reliable reporting from GA. Littledata's enterprise plans offer all the benefits of a personal Google Analytics consultant along with better insights, the experience to address complex issues, and dashboards to visualise the KPIs that matter to your store. [subscribe heading="Try Littledata free for 14 days" background_color="grey" button_text="start my free trial"] Why store owners choose Littledata enterprise plans 1) Start with an audit, sail to higher revenue After all, Littledata was started as a next-gen audit tool, so it's no accident that enterprise plans begin with an audit review.   During the audit, we review your store's data gaps and tracking issues keeping you from data you can trust for actionable insights. Our audits extend across marketing channels, mobile app performance and user behaviour on your storefront and product pages.   Our Google Analytics-certified account managers ensure a smooth process through strategy, implementation and optimisation. 2) Define project goals If your store requires more than just ongoing audit fixes, we work with your team to define custom goals for the products you really want to push.   This can be something as standard as setting up Enhanced Ecommerce in Google Analytics or as complex as developing a multi-site dashboard to analyse average customer revenue by location. Either way, our enterprise plans offer complete online support for peace of mind.   3) Decision-making power throughout the process Unlike some account managers, our team is hands-on from initial GA set up to implementation.  You'll be looped in throughout the entire process with an in-app, custom dashboard that updates real-time.   If you have GA questions, enterprise customers can also communicate with our account team through online tools like Slack and Trello.   4) Always getting better Our GA team monitors your data collection for accuracy and depth before creating custom recommendations. These include step-by-step reports showing how to use your new analytics setup, how to maximise automated reporting and how to improve your marketing ROI and drive more revenue through fixed attribution. Take the first step In addition to deep experience with platforms including Shopify Plus, Magento, Demandware (Salesforce) and BigCommerce, we support and smoothly connect with the full range of popular tools for ecommerce analytics, including Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Segment, Facebook Pixel, and more.   Take the first step into Littledata's custom enterprise plans!

Recently, Smart Goals in Google Analytics have resurfaced as a helpful feature for ecommerce merchants, but particularly Shopify merchants. In a previous post, we outline what Smart Goals are and why some ecommerce businesses use them. However, a lack of trust (and lack of endorsement) with the Google Analytics feature has turned away ecommerce merchants, particularly Shopify merchants. Like we discussed in the popular post, Smart Goals is a goal setting users can enable in Google Analytics. Unlike other goals, Smart Goals uses both behavioral data and contextual (shared) data to predict which of your web sessions will result in a conversion. The pitfall here is that the data is not your data, which would naturally be the best predictor of future conversions. Instead, Google's algorithm seeks highly-engaged visitors and then uses that data to conclude the likelihood a given web session ends with a conversion. Google puts it this way: To generate Smart Goals, we apply machine learning across thousands of websites that use Google Analytics and have opted in to share anonymized conversion data. From this information, we can distill dozens of key factors that correlate with likelihood to convert: things like session duration, pages per session, location, device and browser. We can then apply these key factors to any website. The easiest way to think about Smart Goals is that they reflect your website visits that our model indicates are most likely to lead to conversions. Are Smart Goals a good idea? There's a big hitch in the original concept. Smart Goals was designed for merchants using Google Ads who don’t use conversion tracking. Smart Goals was to help optimise their Ads campaigns by collecting important metrics of user engagement. In theory, it sounds brilliant and helpful for ecommerce merchants and business owners of all scales. But here's how it breaks down in real life: Advertise, measure, repeat As a rule of thumb, ecommerce merchants with stores of all sizes should be measuring their advertising performance. Even if you're creating a "set it and forget it" Google Ads campaign, it's still crucial to track product views, page views, user engagements, cost per click, etc. If you're advertising your products without measuring, you're likely wasting your time and your budget. So how do you ensure you're making good use of ad dollars? Properly set up conversion tracking. Littledata's Google Ads connection is a great place to start. With the connection, you can be confident in your data reporting and that you're tracking the metrics that matter. With conversion tracking, you can follow a shopper's journey and see how many ad clicks lead to purchases, contacts, downloads, signups and more. This data will help you better optimise your campaigns and adjust the ad copy, visuals and calls-to-action to what performs best. Unfortunately, there are thousands of ecommerce merchants who advertise their products without proper conversion tracking. This sets them up for underperforming campaigns and stalls their online store from scaling. [subscribe heading="Try Littledata free for 14 days" button_text="Start your free trial" button_link="https://www.littledata.io/app/get-free-trial"] Can you really trust anonymous data? The short answer is a resounding no, and for a few reasons: Using other people's data to make crucial product and marketing decisions around your campaigns, your website and your customers isn't a good idea. Only your own customer behavior trends will guarantee you're making optimal business decisions for your product marketing campaigns and your online store. How does Google's algorithm determine likely conversions? If conversions aren't defined and conversion tracking isn't properly set up, how can likely conversions be determined? Google basically assigns each web session a score, with the top sessions made into Smart Goals. That begs the question, "what defines top sessions?" Google scans anonymous data (such as session duration, pages per session, location, device, and browser) to select the users that are "most engaged" in your online store. For example, let's say Shawna the Shopify merchant. Shawna uses Google Analytics to track her product sales and other "big data" figures. However, Shawna has never set up goals in GA. For someone like Shawna, Google would use engagement metrics in place of conversion metrics, since Shawna has no conversion tracking for her Shopify store. This is not necessarily problematic. What is problematic is that other important metrics are left untracked. This includes metrics like: Average order value Customer lifetime value Cost of engaged users Sales increases Google Ads campaign optimisation If conversion tracking was set up (rather than Smart Goals), Shawna would easily be able to trace the online journeys and user engagements on her Shopify store. Littledata's Shopify connection with Google Analytics would also provide Shawna with curated reports and analytics to help make sense of her GA data stream. What's the verdict? While even Google advocates for conversion tracking, there is a better way to track the metrics that support better decisions for your ecommerce business. When advertising, especially with Google Ads, it’s incredibly important to use your own data to make decisions for the positive growth of your campaigns.

According to Baymard, 69.57% of online shoppers abandon their cart. That means that for every three people that add an item to their cart, two of those people end up not purchasing. As a store owner, this can be extremely frustrating. You’re running a business, so you want to see sales — not abandoned carts. On the other side of the coin, however, I can assure you that your customer was frustrated, and this is exactly why they abandoned their cart. While there are a million reasons why a customer would abandon their cart, there are a few common threads and factors for mounting frustration. The good news? They’re all easily measured with data and improvable with some common sense. [subscribe heading="Try Littledata free for 14 days" background_color="grey" button_text="start my free trial"] 1. Your mobile site experience sucks As an agency owner, I see a lot of websites. Yet it still surprises me how many ecommerce brands suffer from this issue. Over 50% of all traffic to ecommerce sites is coming from a mobile device, yet many brands are perfectly fine with letting their customers suffer through an almost unusable mobile experience. This is an extremely common cause of cart abandonment. If you’re curious, you can look within Google Analytics to see how many people abandon carts on different devices. While most websites are ‘responsive’ these days, that does not mean they’re usable or easily navigable. Have your parents, your siblings, or your significant other run through your online experience and try to purchase a product, and you’ll see the shortcomings in your mobile experience. Responsive design hardly considers the goals of an ecommerce website. When a store design is not user friendly, this leads to higher abandoned cart rates. 2. Your product pages don’t provide enough information The next commonality with cart abandonment is all too simple, but it’s one of the leading causes. It boils down to the customer having a question about the product: How big is it? What is it made out of? How much does shipping cost? How long until I can get it? What’s your return policy? Is it waterproof? Your product page needs to answer every question a shopper could ever have about your product. There are so many advantages to ecommerce, but the main disadvantage is that the customers are not holding that product in their hand. So, they can’t answer a lot of those questions on their own. You need to be their five senses in describing that product and your policies so that the customer can make a completely informed purchase decision. If I have more questions than answers, I’m not buying. (Not sure how to fix your product pages? You can get my 8-point guide on product page improvements by joining our mailing list here.) Some of the questions your customers have might not be obvious. Being so close to the product and the brand often puts blinders on business owners. An easy way to solve that is by asking your customers! You can use apps like Hotjar to ask your customers questions on why they’re leaving a product page. 3. Your apps, files or images are slowing down your page load speed The last issue to tackle: your page load speed. This is something that is often overlooked by people new to online businesses. If your website takes too long to load, I’m out of there. There are quite a few reasons why this would happen, but the main reasons are typically 1) too many apps and 2) content not sized properly for web. Apps are amazing, and I frequently recommend them to our clients to solve requests. What's not amazing about apps is their tendency to add bloat to your website. That’s why I highly recommend never installing an app unless you absolutely need it. The more apps you have installed, the more data that is being loaded on every page, and the slower your website will be. Uninstalling apps does not necessarily mean that the underlying code is deleted either. Take this as a warning. Additionally, oversized video and photos kill load times. I know that lifestyle photography you shot for your new collection is beautiful, but a five megabyte photo on my mountain 3G connection takes entirely too long to load, and I’m now browsing Twitter because I got fed up with your store. People are impatient. They do not want to wait, they want things instantaneously. You can view and track your site speed in Google Analytics to get some ideas on where you can improve those metrics. Ecommerce reporting and data tracking is key. Fix customer frustrations, fix your cart abandonment problem Customer frustration is the root of most abandoned carts. Your customers want a quick, mobile-friendly, simple experience — so create one! This is a guest post by Chase Clymer, Co-Founder at Electric Eye and Host of Honest Ecommerce. Chase is an ecommerce expert making brands more money every day. He's also a fan of islands, tacos, and Magic: The Gathering.

Data can be immensely useful. It can empower your decision making, change your course of action or offer insight into a better way forward. But if data is inaccurate, disorganized, or simply set up to be overwhelming, it can be distracting or even set you up for failure. So where do you start with data? As Shopify continues to develop features for enterprise ecommerce, many larger merchants are combining the plug-and-play versatility of Shopify Plus with Segment's dynamic approach to customer data. This is especially true for stores with personalised online experiences, DTC brands and products by subscription. Why? Because each of these businesses are looking to automate the customer journey as much as possible. Last week at Shopify Unite, we learned a lot. But one thing we kept noticing was how often Segment came up in discussions with Shopify partners. With that said, we wanted to take a look at some of Littledata's customers using Shopify and Segment together to supercharge growth. What is Segment? Segment is a streamlined way to clean, collect, push and pull customer data. The company has raised over $280 million and it continues to grow especially fast in the commerce vertical. Their Customer Data Infrastructure (CDI) is built around connections, protocols and personas (single user views), and the platform organizes connections in terms of sources and destinations. In other words, you can think about Segment as a single API for all of your customer data. [subscribe heading="Try the only recommended Shopify app for Segment" button_link="https://apps.shopify.com/segment-com-by-littledata" button_text="Learn More"] You probably know by now that Segment is used by major ecommerce brands like Trunk Club, which famously uses Segment to help deliver personalised style recommendations. Such advanced benefits are increasingly available to everyone. As Shopify continues to push features for enterprise ecommerce, you don't have to be front-page news to take advantage of Segment's functionality. So which mid-sized and larger brands are using Segment together with Shopify? 7 merchants using Shopify and Segment together Each of these stores are currently using Littledata's Shopify x Segment connection, which integrates Shopify with Segment automatically to ensure accurate tracking at every customer touch point. While some of these brands use the Shopify app to push data from Shopify to Segment for ecommerce reporting (with tools like Mixpanel and Amplitude), some are more focused on using data for hyper-targeted marketing automation. Others are combining these approaches for a complete, custom experience and fixed Shopify reporting. 1. Nuun Nuun was the first company to separate electrolyte replacement from carbohydrates. The result? A healthy, hydrating beverage without all of the extra sugar and additives. Nuun started ten years ago and has continued to expand to offer a variety of products for hydration and healthy living. The products are now sold in over 5,000 outlets in the USA and available in over 30 countries. We love Nuun's website because it offers subscriptions, which makes it easy to subscribe to the hydration products you rely on for sport or everyday life. 2. Unicorn Rides Unicorn Rides is the fastest transportation method within 1 mile and costs a fraction of popular scooter rental startups like Bird, Spin and Jump. Remote access (and automatic unlocking) through users' mobile phones is a feature that sets Unicorn apart from competing scooter companies. Users can also build "lists" made up of family and friends that can share their scooter. Unicorn scooters are currently available at a discounted rate of $549 for a one-time purchase. 3. ROMWOD ROMWOD stands for Range of Motion Workout of the Day. It's a Crossfit organisation with thousands of Crossfit athletes integrating its daily workouts with their own routines. ROMWOD sells apparel such as mens's and women's shirts, tanks and hoodies, as well as workout mats and other Crossfit-related accessories. While the company sells its workout routines on a monthly subscription ($13.95/month), its online shop is mainly built for one-off purchases. 4. Kin Kin is an adult beverage company selling two primary products (Kin Spritz and High Rhode). These drinks — coined "euphorics" — were created by Kin to help adults "open the mind, calm the body and connect the spirit". A 4-pack of Kin Spritz currently sells at $27, non-subscription. 5. Cellucor Cellucor sells industry-leading powder mixes, including pre-workout, post-workout and products categorized by goal such as weight loss, muscle gain and sports performance. Following their "Wherever your workout takes you" mantra, Cellucor products are meant for both on-the-go and at-home. The company offers hundreds of products, including the powders themselves, products sorted by ingredients (creatine, amino acids, etc.) and apparel for both men and women. Cellucor's cart is built on a tiered discount system — the more the user adds to their cart, the better their discount is upon checkout. The tiers include free shipping (orders of $50 or more), a 15% discount and a 20% discount on their entire order. 6. Rooster Teeth Founded in 2003, Rooster Teeth is a "pioneering media and entertainment company responsible for some of the biggest online series in history", including the award-winning web series, Red vs. Blue. The company also produces the well-acclaimed animated series RWBY, which is the first western anime series to be distributed in Japan. With over 45 million subscribers on its YouTube Network and 5 million unique monthly visitors to its RoosterTeeth.com hub, the company's online retail activity has skyrocketed — Rooster Teeth sells popular apparel, accessories, brand collections, drinkware, branded electronics and even home toys. 7. BH Cosmetics BH Cosmetics is an innovative beauty brand committed to selling cosmetics that are cruelty-free, vegan-based, rigorously-tested and affordably-priced. While the company does not offer a subscription option, they do have an affiliate program where they offer an 8% kickback for referral purchases. Are you harnessing the full power of your Shopify store? Littledata recently partnered with Segment to launch a Shopify to Segment connection that makes it easy to accurately track Shopify store performance and send those events to Segment. This frees you to connect that data to hundreds of Segment destinations like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Salesforce and Hubspot. Later this year, we'll be diving into some case studies about how Shopify Plus merchants are using Shopify and Segment together to implement personalised shopping experiences. If you want to be considered, just head to the app store and download our Segment app for Shopify, then give us a shout. We're here to help you reach the right customers at the right time, so you have more time for the little things in life. Like riding your bike (or your Unicorn scooter).

It's no accident that Shopify is the cream of the crop in the world of enterprise ecommerce. But what do Shopify's major announcements last week mean for the platform's growth going forward? To remain on top, Shopify must continue investing in areas of opportunity and customer need. That's exactly what they're doing, including major investment in an independent fulfillment network, multi-currency and multiple-store/multi-site improvements for Shopify Plus, and a stunning new range of developer-friendly APIs. In this post, I'll look at: Which types of ecommerce merchants are using the major platforms Shopify's announcements at the Shopify Unite conference 2019 What these announcements mean for larger retailers, Shopify experts and agencies Who's using what: ecommerce platforms by size and use I've been crunching the numbers in several different ways these past few weeks, and my findings were consistent: Shopify is the platform of choice for mid-sized to large stores globally. Last week at the annual Shopify Unite partner event, Shopify announced the plans that will keep Shopify leading the pack (Magento, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, BigCommerce, etc.). Shopify's recent announcements confirm my research findings. Shopify will continue to be the ecommerce platform with the strongest growth in larger stores. At first I looked at trend data from BuiltWith that showed the number of net installs on each platform over the past year. Only the top 1 million websites were measured (as defined by BuiltWith.com). When it came to pure volume of installs, WooCommerce came out on top. However, the average WooCommerce store is much smaller and less active than the average Shopify store. I confirmed this by looking at our own data set of over 4,000 stores on these ecommerce platforms: The bars represent range from the bottom to top quartile of store sizes, with the purple marker representing median store size. While Magento 2 and Salesforce Commerce Cloud had higher median store sizes (32k and 107k monthly visits, respectively), Shopify had a very consistent interquartile range of 6,000 to 60,000 monthly visits. By contrast, WooCommerce only had one quarter of stores receiving over 10,000 monthly visits — and zero stores doing more than 2.5 million visits in our data set. In other words, if this trend continues, Shopify is positioned to take on a big share of the stores migrating from Magento 1 over the next year or so. And that's not all. What this means for merchants using Littledata These larger stores will need a range of robust apps to extend Shopify’s platform, especially when it comes to analytics. We've responded to this need in a many ways, including: Launching the only recommended Segment connection for Shopify and Shopify Plus Rebuilding our Shopify data layer and tracking script for speed and performance at scale Standardising Littledata's Enterprise Plans to provide account management and SLAs Working with select clients to build private connectors and apps to bridge legacy systems In other words, Littledata's commitment to Shopify's ecosystem has only continued to grow. We hope the pattern continues as we hone our popular Shopify integrations like ReCharge for subscription analytics, and continue to improve our better smart connections for other popular apps (CartHook, Refersion, Bold Cashier) over the coming months. [subscribe heading="Try Littledata free for 14 days" background_color="green" button_text="get started"] What this means for Shopify users Enterprise-grade features In the past, global brands running a network of stores in multiple countries have been frustrated by the simplicity of Shopify’s setup. The launch of features such as multi-currency, multi-language and multi-store login from a single Shopify Plus dashboard will go a long way in quelling those user frustrations — all while making Shopify Plus an attractive alternative for current users of Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Fulfillment network to compete head-to-head with Amazon (FBA) Fulfillment is the biggest headache for DTC brands selling globally, and FBA is currently the only game in town for end-to-end purchasing and logistics. However, as ecommerce brands scale, more and more are looking to "own the experience" from start to finish. This includes branded packaging and visibility of delivery on the customers' end. Both of these things may very well have a better solution in Shopify Fulfillment Network: Amazon vs Shopify. @aobtweetz says Shopify is like retail entertainment: consumers who want to read the blog, engage with the brand and then buy - not just buy a commodity on Amazon @debriefevent #ShopifyUnite — Edward Upton (@eUpton) June 21, 2019 The network will start in the US. While it will take time to scale, early looks indicate it will be a sensible way for Shopify to spend its large pile of cash while pulling itself away from the crowded pack of SaaS ecommerce. Developer-first attitude We developers love companies that don’t forget their product-first roots. Much of Shopify’s growth has been due to making the platform easy to extend while encouraging a vibrant yet curated app store. Shopify continues to exercise caution when offering its existing app partners access to new core features (subscription billing, opening up new APIs for partners to develop on). A staggering 11 new APIs were announced at this Unite alone. While Shopify clearly believes that core experiences like checkout and payment should be owned and developed by Shopify itself, many non-core features (including many types of reporting) are actively pushed to partners with a relevant app or service. A living example of Shopify's developer-first approach? Their new Shopify app CLI, which speeds up timetables for new app launches. Where does Shopify go next? After more than doubling its number of active stores over the last two years, Shopify's current haul of 820,000 active stores is in good position to surpass 1.5 million stores within the next two years. For many larger Shopify partners, perhaps the more important pattern of growth isn't Shopify's standard offerings — it's Shopify Plus. [subscribe heading="Try Littledata free for 14 days" background_color="green" button_text="get started"] At a recent Commerce Plus event in London (organised by Shopify Plus), the main "complaint" was that Shopify’s sales reps "can’t onboard shops fast enough". With a newly revamped, user-centered design, Shopify Plus is an exciting platform to be a part of right now. It's only going up from here. If you didn't get a chance to read about everything Shopify announced last week in Toronto, don't worry. We have you covered! Check out our full recap of announcements. Also, check out our award-winning Google Analytics Shopify app. With AI-based tech, the app fixes your Shopify analytics by providing: Website benchmarks by industry Ecommerce benchmarking Shopify reporting Customer lifetime value Average order value Other crucial data metrics Wondering how your site compares? Check out our list of essential benchmarks for Shopify stores.

It's been a busy week in Toronto. We're still here at Shopify Unite, but yesterday's announcement day was chock-full of exciting new updates and experiences for Shopify Partners, merchants and agencies. With the most popular Google Analytics app for Shopify merchants and a new Segment app live in the app store as well, our ears perked up and stayed up! We chatted with our agency partners to get some feedback about which announcements might have the biggest impact on their business, from design and development to growth marketing for Plus stores. Here are six major changes: 1) New online store experience (updated design) Shopify's new store design experience will make it easier for merchants to personalise their storefronts without having to write any code. Later this year, Shopify will also introduce a feature that helps agencies provide the "highly valuable skills and services needed to take a merchant's business to the next level". What that feature set looks like is unclear at the moment, but what is clear are the following five design updates: Sections for each page: Sections-based editing is now enabled on every page of a merchant's online store, offering more space for creative freedom and personalisation. Master pages: Merchants can now dictate content and apply changes to all pages by simply editing the master page. Starting points: Shopify themes will offer "starting points", which will be pre-configured content sections to help accelerate store setup. Merchants can choose their starting point and easily fill it with content. Content portability: Store managers rejoice — content is no longer stored in themes, meaning merchants can make changes to their store without duplicating themes. Drafts: Merchants can draft changes on their store without making the changes go live. Merchants can play with design, content, etc. and only publish when they please. UX/UI: A new Shopify interface means (hopefully) a better merchant experience. Shopify says creating a store will now be a more intuitive experience, thanks to the new UI. In light of a new storefront app extension for agency partners, Shopify is unlocking a new feature that lets partners add apps to their storefront. [subscribe heading="Top Google Analytics app for Shopify" button_text="Learn More" button_link="https://www.littledata.io/connections/shopify"] 2) New Shopify Plus admin dashboard (multiple stores, multiple shoppers) Out with the old, in with the new Shopify Plus. The large-scale update will help large, multilayered businesses to manage multiple stores, shoppers and automation — all from a sleek new admin dashboard. The new design will offer brands: Robust insights across all of their stores The ability to manage multiple stores and user permissions from one place A better space to facilitate better store operations Shopify also continues to add more possibilities for what you can do with Shopify Flow, a smart way to automate workflows within Shopify Plus. For example, user admins and assigned staff members will soon be able to copy flows across all of your stores. [subscribe heading="Top Google Analytics app for Shopify Plus" button_text="Learn More" button_link="https://www.littledata.io/connections/shopifyplus"] 3) New checkout app extension for subscriptions [Coming soon] This is a big one, though the details are not yet clear. Later this year, Shopify Partners will be able to access the company's very first checkout app extension. The extension will mainly focus on improving purchase flow for subscriptions. The idea is to keep everything within Shopify's checkout flow, rather than sending shoppers to other apps. In Shopify's words: Buyers will no longer be routed outside of Shopify’s checkout to complete their transactions. Developers will be able to integrate their subscription apps into the checkout experience, surface their app’s information into Shopify’s checkout, and give merchants the ability to process transactions for subscription goods and services within one seamless checkout experience. If you or your clients are using ReCharge for selling subscriptions in your Shopify store, don't worry. Nothing changes now. You can still use Littledata's advanced Google Analytics integration for ReCharge to get accurate data about subscription sales and marketing channels, and we'll keep you in the loop about accurate tracking for checkout app extensions, once those get closer to going live. 4) Custom storefront tools, including multi-currency for non-Plus stores Because the customer journey is about more than an attractive website and pretty design, Shopify has taken the headless commerce approach by creating custom storefront tools for niche and complex ecommerce businesses. They're calling this "flexible commerce" and it promises to have a big impact on key Shopify benchmarks. These flexible commerce tools help merchants: Create a beautiful front-end experience Play a bigger role in a more personalised shopper experience (i.e. connecting to a CMS tool to share more dynamic pieces of content) Engage with shoppers through voice shopping, smart mirrors, smart fridges, etc. Leverage the scaling ability and speed of a headless commerce model Merchants and agencies can also now access the following through the Storefront API: Selling in multiple currencies New product recommendations Shopify Scripts All Shopify merchants now have the ability to sell in multiple currencies with Shopify Payments. This feature was previously only available to Shopify Plus merchants. 5) POS cart app extensions for loyalty and promotions Checkout is now faster and easier for both merchants and customers. Store managers can now see details about customer loyalty and promotions "directly in the cart without having to click away". The POS cart app extensions provide merchants with the "loyalty and promotion app functionality (they) want, where they need it: within the customer cart". With a more seamless checkout experience, merchants and customers can now enjoy better: Speed: The time it takes to apply a discount code is now down from 15 to 5 seconds Visibility: Store managers don’t need to remember to visit the apps section of POS Recognition: Customers feel more appreciated, no matter where a purchase is made The new POS app extensions helps both merchants and development teams improve the user experiences of the storefront(s) they manage. [Coming soon] Shopify's updated POS app will prioritize "quick and seamless workflows, helping store staff focus on what’s most important to them: human-to-human customer interactions and making each sale a positive experience". 6) New order editing APIs Shopify's brand new order editing features of the GraphQL AdminAPI enables apps to add, drop or replace items "before the line item has been fulfilled". This offers merchants increased flexibility after a purchase. 7) Shopify Fulfillment Network Once this news broke, we watched Twitter run wild as store managers imagined the possibilities with Shopify's brand new Fulfillment Network. Designed to compete with the world's top fulfillment networks (Amazon, USPS, etc.), the network will be built across the United States at first before (hopefully) expanding across the Atlantic. Shopify will be pumping over a billion dollars into this infrastructure, expanding and improving the network. The network gives Shopify merchants access to tools and services previously only available to the biggest stores in the world. Benefits include: One back office: This will reduce both errors and frustration for store management teams Maintain inventory integrity: Made possible by scheduling rhythmic cycle counts Nearly 100% accuracy: Orders will be ready to go on-time without the risk of error regarding order contents, shipping addresses, etc. Your eyes at the warehouse: Shopify is providing merchants with dedicated account managers with "logistics and Shopify expertise". The Shopify Fulfillment Network will also support the following: Multiple channels — online store, retail, Instagram, eBay, Amazon, etc. Returns and exchanges Custom (branded) packaging Stores of all sizes — "shipping 10 to 10,000 products a day", aiming to get this to "3 to 30,000" per day in coming years Is there anything we missed? Let us know. Next up, Ed will break down the announcements and unpack what they mean not only for Shopify partners and agencies, but for teams that rely on Littledata's smart connections for marketing attribution and better business decision-making. Stay tuned! Photo credits: Littledata, Shopify

We’re proud to announce our sponsorship with De:brief., this week's exclusive, post-Shopify Unite event. We'll look at what was announced at the leading Shopify conference, and what it all means for Shopify partners, app developers, and ultimately for merchants. Every year we go to Unite. And every year we ask ourselves: wouldn't it be nice to have some time to just debrief about all the things that were announced, and what they really mean? De:brief is an essential post-Unite gathering for partners working at the forefront of the Shopify ecosystem. It will take place on Friday this week in Toronto, the day after Shopify Unite.   De:brief will be a prime opportunity hear Shopify expert analysis, dive into the details of what was announced at Unite, and unpack what those announcements mean — especially to those within the Shopify partner ecosystem. With a ton of Littledata customers using our Google Analytics Shopify app -- and the upcoming release of our V8 Shopify tracking code -- we're especially excited to chat about how we can all work together to help stores scale faster and smarter. Who's coming? Over 150 data analytics experts and colleagues will also be joining networking and discussions around panels about Shopify updates and the impact they'll have on ecommerce going forward. We're happy to announce that our leading integration partner ReCharge will be leading a panel, and the good people at our agency partner We Make Websites will be there as well. Food for thought As official sponsors of the De:brief event, Littledata's co-founders Edward Upton and Ari Messer will be at the event and Ed will be on a panel about the app economy. A terrific opportunity to network with peers, discuss key industry trends and hear from ecommerce thought leaders, De:brief is an event you can't miss. For more details or to reserve your seat, check out De:brief's registration page.

As experts in web analytics for ecommerce sites, we often tinker with our data collection ‘engine’ to get the best results. In the latest iteration of our tracking code, we’re proud to announce some major improvements. Littledata's V8 Shopify Tracking Code comes with exciting improvements in three major areas: data accuracy, page speed, and versatility. These new changes will affect both our Google Analytics and Segment tracking code for Shopify sites, plus any stores using our data layer to trigger events in Google Tag Manager (GTM). Improvements for accuracy We improved the way we track key events so that: Product list views are sent only as users scroll down the page and view a product for more than 300 milliseconds (the minimum time a ‘view’ can be processed) Product list views and clicks have more accurate position information to help optimize product sort order Search pages are also tracked as product lists Social shares and clicks on product images on product detail pages are tracked These new improvements follow other recent improvements  we've added, which include: Using the latest gtag and GTM libraries Tracking page views only when the page was actually viewed [subscribe] Improvements for page speed Our research on performance has shown that faster page load speed is linked with better ecommerce conversion. With this in mind, we're reducing the time it takes to load the tracking script. Here's how we're doing it: A much smaller data layer for product list pages Minified tracking code, hosted on a content delivery network (CDN) Moved to server-side tracking of add-to-carts, resulting in smaller script in the browser Removed dependence on jQuery As an example, let's imagine a product listing page has 30 products. With a total Javascript load time of ~100Kb, our new update would bring the page load speed to less than 20Kb — much zippier! Improvements for versatility Tracking adds-to-cart is surprisingly hard. While this is partly due to add-to-cart buttons being targeted by many other scripts, the main culprit is something else — many online stores have a mini-cart or a separate checkout button. This means users may never actually see a 'cart' page at all. Our new V8 Tracking Code bypasses this issue by tracking cart updates from Shopify’s servers without generating any extra or cost for your web servers. This means that whenever an online shopper adds or removes your product from their cart — whether by clicking on desktop or swiping on mobile — that action will be tracked with 100% accuracy. How do I get this update? Currently, V8 is in private beta. In just one week, however, we’ll be updating all Shopify stores to use the new tracking code. Interested in our V8 beta program? Get in touch with us today! This updated script, as well as all future improvements, is included with your ongoing Littledata subscription. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy automatically accurate data about your Shopify store performance.