Shopify analytics is fine for what it is: a siloed data source that is good at tracking Shopify orders. But if you want to track the complete customer journey and get accurate marketing data, you need to look elsewhere.
Because it’s both free and flexible, Google Analytics has become a top choice for a “single source of truth” to supplement Shopify analytics and other tools you might be using. And GA4, the newest version of Google Analytics, promises to be even more powerful.
In our experience with hundreds of customers at Littledata we’ve found that many merchants turn to overblown solutions outside of GA (eg. fancy dashboards and generic data connectors) and then come back around to wanting to just fix the data in Google Analytics. After all, what good is the data if you can’t trust it?
Free ebook on Shopify and Google Analytics
It’s well known that Shopify’s own analytics connection misses out on key issues like product list views, repeat purchases and marketing attribution. But where exactly does the tracking go wrong? What’s going on behind the scenes?
This new ebook is an insider’s guide to Shopify Analytics vs Google Analytics. You will learn:
- Why transactions go missing in Google Analytics
- Common issues for Shopify stores
- The difference between marketing tags and Google Tag Manager
- How to set up checkout funnel tracking
- And all of the main reasons why Shopify doesn’t match GA
Top brands turn to GA for a single source of truth, but there are some common things that go wrong. Even if you don’t have a custom setup, things go wrong quickly — including the “basics” like tracking ecommerce orders. We built Littledata to fix these issues automatically, saving you time and money. (Here’s a quick demo video and our complete spec).
But before you get into the details of the solution, it’s important to understand the problem and what might be going wrong for your store in particular, whether you’re seeing a lot of traffic that appears to be “Direct” but is actually from marketing channels like Facebook Ads or Klaviyo email marketing, you’re missing repeat purchasing data, or your checkout funnel tracking is somehow out of whack. Get the ebook today.
How to add Google Analytics to Shopify
You can set up Enhanced Ecommerce in Google Analytics and then add Google Analytics to Shopify, but Shopify’s default GA integration misses many key elements.
Tip: With Shopify’s default Google Analytics integration, 12 orders go missing for every 100 in Shopify. We highly recommend using an advanced data connector instead!
If you would rather just get accurate data automatically, check out Littledata’s 30-day free trial. It’s the easiest way to avoid all of the known issues with Shopify’s default Google Analytics integration. Plus, you still own the data in GA, whether or not you continue using our advanced data connections.
