The script that triggers/sends the tracking events to Google Analytics must be loaded once (and only once) on every page of your site.

While you don’t need a Google Analytics consultant or Google Analytics consulting group to help you set up tracking, you’ll usually need either your Analytics tracking ID or the entire Javascript tracking code snippet to complete the manual setup.

This corresponds to your Google Analytics property. To find the tracking ID and code snippet:

1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account.
2. Select the Admin tab.
3. Select an account from the drop-down menu in the ACCOUNT column.
4. Select a property from the drop-down menu in the PROPERTY column.
5. Under PROPERTY, click Tracking Info > Tracking Code.

The snippet provided here must be implemented on every page, even the pages you’re not interested in. If you chose to not include the code on every page then:

• You will not be able to see the full flow of a client on your website.
• You will have inaccurate data about the time spent on site and actions taken.
• Visits to untracked pages will appear as ‘referrals’ and so will skew the volume of sessions.
• Marketing campaigns to the untracked pages will be lost.

The easy way for an established website to verify the tracking is complete is Google Analytics > Acquisition > Referrals and search in the report after the name of your website, as shown below.

You can also use Littledata’s audit tool (hint hint).

Choose your method for tracking setup

There are several ways to collect data in Google Analytics, depending on whether you want to track a website, an app or other internet-connected devices.

To select the best installation method for what you wish to track, here is the complete guide from Google.

Once you have successfully installed Google Analytics tracking, it may take up to 24 hours for data such as traffic referral information, user characteristics and browsing information to appear in your reports. Some of these metrics include buying behavior, average order value (AOV), customer lifetime value (LTV) and more.

However, you can immediately check your web tracking code setup.

If you don’t think it’s working correctly, you can check your Real-Time reports or use Google Tag Assistant to verify your setup.

Enhanced Ecommerce tracking

The main benefit of enabling Enhanced Ecommerce tracking (EEC) over standard tracking is the number of valuable reports you have access to with EEC.

Not only that, but you can segment data based on ecommerce events — i.e. which users visited your product pages, where the customer journey hit a roadblock (e.g. a customer pondered a product but didn’t add to cart, etc.) or which steps of the checkout process a user abandoned their cart.

This kind of data helps you zoom in on your sales funnel and change the parts of the process that don’t lead to conversions.

At Littledata, we typically set up EEC with Google Tag Manager. Here’s how to set up Enhanced Ecommerce tracking via GTM.

Setting up Shopify tracking

If you’re on Shopify and using Google Analytics as your main tracking tool, you’re in luck. Our new tracking code update for Shopify users is faster, more versatile and more efficient than ever before. We also have new features and updates in our Shopify app for Google Analytics.

With the app, you’ll only see fixed, accurate data in Google Analytics. This means you won’t need to rely on the broken data in Shopify analytics or the incomplete tracking in GA’s default view.

Fixed marketing attribution and accurate shopper behavior are now at your fingertips. That means better, more informed marketing & sales decisions for your Shopify store. ?