Top 5 data tracking mistakes to avoid as a DTC brand

Last year, there were discussions about Google Analytics transitioning users to Google Analytics 4, as Universal Analytics was going to be phased out completely. This shift towards event-based reporting instead of session-based reporting was not entirely new to brands that rely on data for analysis, reporting, and retargeting customers. Littledata has been working with brands that have been utilizing granular event-based data for some time now to enhance the user journey and increase conversions. This highlights the importance of subscription data in improving business outcomes. Adapting to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will require some adjustment, as with any new tool. Although it has a distinct appearance and user experience, it offers even greater capabilities for ecommerce managers. Littledata’s app connects automatically with BigCommerce and Shopify and Shopify Plus merchants to ensure precise subscription data in GA4, and in this article, I will outline the most beneficial features they have discovered thus far. Event based tracking Event-based tracking in GA4 captures specific actions or events on a website or app, providing more detailed data about user behavior than Universal Analytics, which focused on sessions and pageviews. This includes clicks, scroll depth, form submissions, video plays, and more. See Google’s full list of events that are tracked automatically.  Implementing event-based tracking in GA4 can help businesses understand user behavior and engagement, optimize their website, identify growth opportunities, and make data-driven decisions to improve their bottom line. This includes highlighting products and product groups based on granular browsing data captured through event tracking.  Automatically tracked events do not include important ecommerce actions like purchases, subscriptions, and refunds. Shopify's Google sales channel also does not provide complete tracking. Ecommerce sites need a custom setup or automated server-side tracking to ensure accurate conversion tracking. If you are using Skio events captured can be very useful for campaigns—for example using specific events to trigger workflows in Klayvio to drive higher engagement and AOV.  Flexible reporting GA4 has new features including no event collection limits, cross web + app tracking, explorations, and faster reporting. An early limitation was reporting, but Google has added an Explorations tab that makes it easy to deep dive into data by channels or demographics. Popular exploration types include free-form, funnel, and path. Creating an exploration by dimensions, metrics, or segments is now easier. Creating these for your unique subscription types, segments, or product types can do wonders for diving into data for analysis right in GA4. Remembering that the accurate data captured is key to the results.  The phrase garbage in garbage out applies here when you are only using client-side tracking or native store tracking. Littledata has gone to great lengths to enable merchants to have accurate data stitched together with server-side tracking so that the information you have in GA4 can be your single source of truth.  As mentioned, it takes time to learn a new tool but the Littledata team has made it incredibly easy with free GA4 courses that walk you through how to build your own ecommerce reports in GA4.  Here are our three popular setup videos for ecommerce reports in GA4: Sales performance report Checkout behavior report Creating segments for subscriptions Knowing how customers discover and interact with your brand can help with customer retention and acquisition. Identifying successful channels that drive subscriptions and high AOV can help ecommerce managers predict and allocate resources effectively. Streamlined audience building Google is encouraging users to link their Google Ad's account to GA4, which is seen as a better option than Universal Analytics in the long run. This will provide merchants with a direct view of the customer journey and allow them to create audiences from any combination of dimensions, metrics, and events found in GA4.  Google will automatically make two audiences for users based on purchases and all users, making audience building easier. Similar audiences or segments will be faded out by May 1st, 2023, to enable users to shift to using first-party data and Google's optimized targeting feature.  Littledata customers have been using their data to create audiences for years, and this connection is now even more important as GA4 data will guide Google Ad campaigns. The best part of sending this data directly to GA4 is that you will have the historical data from the time of implementation. Given that Google Analytics is not going anywhere this also gives brands piece of mind even if they are using alternative third party tools like Glew, Daasity, or Triple Whale to send their data for reporting purposes. Littledata benefits Skio brands by working with server-side tracking and third party integrations — helping sort out that the data is accurate and deduped before it reaches your GA4, Meta, TikTok, or Pinterest destinations giving you maximum control over your data for making better decisions.   Export raw data to BigQuery The ability to export from Google Analytics 4 (GA4) directly to BigQuery has opened up new possibilities for ecommerce managers to take their data analysis to the next level.The integration of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) with BigQuery has provided ecommerce managers with fresh opportunities to enhance their data analysis. Previously, these users were dependent on a GA360 account to obtain raw, row-level data and create unsampled reports or run their own algorithms. But now, with GA4 + BigQuery, users can access these features without requiring a GA360 account. This ability is particularly beneficial for ecommerce businesses, as it offers a robust data warehouse solution and provides an insurance policy for brands that want to own their own data for future analysis. With GA4 + BigQuery, users can harness the power of raw, row-level data to gain deeper insights into customer behavior, identify new opportunities, and optimize their marketing strategies. Ultimately, this new ability is a game-changer for businesses that want to take control of their data and leverage it to drive growth and success. Many brands are sending their data to GA4 from GA4 to BigQuery as a precautionary measure, even if they are not yet prepared to utilize or examine it in BigQuery. Reasons very but for the majority of brands they want the data collected and stored, so it is accessible in the future. Therefore, we highly suggest that anyone considering a data warehouse should begin using both BigQuery and GA4.  Third party apps are prioritizing GA4  GA4 only weeks away from being THE ANALYTICS TOOL — with sunsetting of Universal Analytics in July 2023 — for online merchants and brands. Providing more event based data than ever before that stands on privacy, first party data, and server-side tracking. Littledata helps top subscription brands track their data from Shopify and BigCommerce into GA4, ensuring accurate data and analytics by combining server-side and client-side tracking to combat cookie blockers from iOS updates and new privacy rollouts. Subscription tools like our partners at Skio come highly recommended by brands in all product vertical types: life food and beverage, fitness and health, and fashion. Having a tool like Skio to drive brand loyalty through new and robust subscription features is key for any brand looking to grow. Pairing this with Littledata for your conversion tracking into GA4 is the perfect way to level up your insights and data acumen. The benefit is that Littledata supports server-side tracking for brands to track all orders and give visibility to if those orders are one-time orders or recurring.  This adds tremendous value to subscription brands who want to drive campaigns based on high LTV and AOV—through accurate subscription data that can be missed completely with native tracking efforts or client-side tracking alone. For example, Littledata calculates LTV for brands automatically and sends it to your destinations like Google Analytics where you can filter by channel.  We've chatted with current and future Skio customers who rave about their platform for brands to drive more customer engagement and features to manage subscriptions. By combining Littledata with Skio you will get the most complete view and best attribution. Enabling you to take full advantage of the launch of Google Analytics 4 without the hassle of implementation or data maintence. Curious if you have any data tracking discrepancies?  Check out our free tool, GA4 Conversions Checker, to see if your ecommerce store is tracking the data properly, here. Or you can install Littledata instantly by connecting your store for a 30 day free trial. 

Updated article based on the latest iteration of Web Pixel from Shopify in May 2023. Shopify tracking is our bread and butter here at Littledata, so we were excited to learn that Shopify has released a new Web Pixel extension API to help stores track key customer events via tracking ‘pixels’, and a Shopify pixels manager to manage these pixels. Together this is Shopify’s Web Pixel feature. There are a couple of things to clarify at the outset. Firstly, Shopify’s Web Pixel is not really a pixel at all, but a way of managing and triggering pixels across a merchant store. Most websites today use some type of Web Pixels to track customer behavior, but Shopify’s standardization and centralization of their own Web Pixel tools is a big deal for both merchants and the partners who work with them. The new Web Pixel signals a change in both how client-side events are tracked, and in how related technologies, such as Google Tag Manager (GTM) and Google Analytics, can access those events. I welcome the move to standardize the data layer for Shopify tracking, and remove some of the challenges for stores using GTM to trigger events. In short, I think Web Pixel is now the best way to track the Shopify checkout. But there are a number of problems with tracking customer behavior in modern browsers that Web Pixel can’t solve. Web Pixel is now the best way to track the Shopify checkout...but there are a number of problems with tracking customer behavior in modern browsers that Web Pixel can’t solve. In this post I look at what Web Pixel is, how it does (and doesn’t) change customer tracking for Shopify stores, the benefits and challenges of different approaches to tracking and what we’re looking forward to as Web Pixel evolves. Let's dive in. Does Web Pixel change customer tracking for Shopify stores? Shopify merchants can track customer events in a variety of ways. Firstly, Shopify captures these events in Shopify Analytics. Almost every Shopify merchant uses third party marketing platforms like Facebook Ads, TikTok or Pinterest to drive traffic. And they all want to improve ROAS by sharing customer actions from the storefront and checkout (product views, checkout steps such as Add-to-Cart, etc.) back with those marketing platforms for retargeting and audience building. Historically, this has been done via a client-side browser tracking library: gtag for Google Ads and Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel for Facebook & Instagram Ads, the Pinterest Tag for Pinterest, etc. And there were three main ways stores could get these ‘pixels’ firing on the page: Via a Shopify app Triggered by Google Tag Manager (GTM) A developer adds the tag directly to the store theme In all cases, the challenge was both triggering the events at the correct time (e.g. listening for the click of ‘Add to cart’ button and sending the event before the page reloaded)  and having access to the right page, product and customer details at that time (e.g. product price, variant ID). What is Shopify Web Pixel? Shopify has seen stores struggle to implement tracking over the years, and wanted to make it easier for stores to track in any marketing platform without Shopify directly supporting the data destinations. In comes Web Pixel. In Shopify’s own words, using the Shopify pixel manager allows: Access to a stream of customer events on your online store, including checkout events An additional layer of security for your online store and your customers, including greater control over the customer data that you share with third-party services Prevention of third party code running non-performing Javascript, or interfering with your online store and checkout Built in tools for privacy compliance Let's look at each benefit in detail, with my commentary. Access to a stream of customer events: this is solving the challenge of triggering the right event. This was always most difficult for the checkout, and will become impossible for the new Shopify checkout (see "Common problems tracking Shopify’s new checkout", below). However, Littledata already offers proven server-side tracking for any Shopify checkout, including headless builds. An additional layer of security. Yes, restricting access to the storefront by loading the pixels in a sandbox removes the risk of rogue scripts scraping personal data. But it makes it much harder to populate all the data fields that need to be shared with third parties. Littledata’s solution to do that product and customer enrichment server-side is both secure and comprehensive. Prevention of third party code running non-performing Javascript. I've previously written about the 'Wild West’ of stores using the Additional Scripts field. I'm all for removing this risk, but again there’s a trade-off between security and the richness of the data captured. Built in tools for privacy compliance. Shopify launched the customer privacy API back in 2020, and updated that in 2023 to support different consent levels, but it wasn’t mandatory for tracking apps. With Web Pixel, Shopify is making every pixel respect the customer cookie consent (as managed by a cookie banner app). This is great, but Littledata already respects customer privacy with complete cookie banner integrations. For stores and app developers I see the key benefit of Web Pixel is robustly triggering standard events and data context for common customer actions. Web Pixel removes the need to build a GTM data layer with an app like Elevar, or set up GTM to use this data layer in the tags. But this, too, is not without complications. What can you track with Web Pixel? Web Pixel currently supports 5 pre-checkout customer events: page_viewed collection_viewed product_added_to_cart product_viewed search_submitted And 6 checkout events: checkout_started checkout_contact_info_submitted checkout_address_info_submitted checkout_shipping_info_submitted payment_info_submitted Checkout_completed Of these the most useful are product_added_to_cart (which is really hard to do without interrupting clicks of the add to cart button) and the checkout events (see below). What’s wrong with Web Pixel? There are several issues with Shopify's Web Pixel as it exists today. Firstly, it is not solving the key problem in modern web analytics: the increasing gap in client-side tracking due to ad blockers, browser restrictions on cookies and handling customers opting out of tracking. The solution to this is fully server-side tracking, which Littledata is launching in Q4. I believe Shopify is launching server pixels to address this problem later in 2023, but I don’t currently have details on how this will work. From a technical perspective, there’s a limitation with how you could use the tracking library (e.g. gtag) within the Web Pixel callback. To send data to Google Analytics, you would need to load the gtag library on the parent page (either from the theme or a script-tag) and, after the library has loaded, and the cookies have been set, get the cookie or local storage value in the web worker in which the Web Pixel runs. Shopify's Web Pixel doesn't solve the key problem in modern web analytics: the increasing gaps in client-side tracking. This removes some of the speed & security benefits Shopify is touting (not loading additional scripts) and complicates setup of custom pixels. You’ll need to add third party scripts to the theme to use the tracking libraries, and wait for them to run before the web pixel can fire. For the checkout pages you can get away with not running the tracking library Javascript, as checkout pages are almost never landing pages - so the cookie and session data should have been set on a previous page. Although for Google Analytics, you'll have to create your own tracking URL without the help of the gtag library. And then there are gaps in the standard events currently tracked via Web Pixel. I know Shopify intends to patch some of these, but it’s not there yet: collection_viewed event is in the documentation, but doesn’t seem to fire No product list impression events No product list click events No remove from cart event No post-purchase events (refunds, cancellations, fulfillments) Why do you need Web Pixel to track Shopify’s new checkout Shopify has long said it wants to lock down scripts running in the checkout to protect customer security and privacy. The latest version of the checkout, rolling out for Plus stores in 2023, does this by allowing more checkout customization via API but removing customizations and scripts in checkout.liquid. So if you're a Plus store, and added a GTM container to the checkout.liquid file, these tags will stop working later this year. You have three options to continue to track the checkout: Use Littledata’s server-side checkout tracking Use another app making use of the Web Pixel extension Build a custom pixel using Shopify pixel manager Why is Shopify restricting scripts on the checkout? Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a powerful tool to manage marketing tags, but i’ve written before about how it provides a backdoor for malicious code to be injected into the checkout. For example, hackers can add a keystroke tracking script which relays credit card details as they are typed to the hacker’s server. Or in another hack we saw, the user was directed away from Shopify’s checkout to a similar-looking bogus checkout. Shopify has signaled that they see checkout as core to the ‘OS of ecommerce’ and they want to protect their brand from association with such scams. If that means blocking safe tags like Google Analytics or Google Ads, then that’s a worthwhile trade off for better security in their view. Should your store use the Shopify pixel manager? Yes - for tracking the checkout at least. That's what Littledata is using it for. The main use for adding Web Pixel right now is tracking the checkout, although Web Pixel is difficult to implement pre-checkout via a custom pixel for landing pages (for example, loading the tracking library and passing through that library to the sandbox). If you want to remove Google Tag Manager from your storefront for performance or security reasons that is understandable, but I’d suggest you make more use of server-side tracking, which will also speed up your site Web pixel would be useful next year for stores moving to Shopify Hydrogen. For headless Shopify stores Web Pixel could make it easier to track pre-checkout events like page views, product views and add to carts - in addition to the server-side events Littledata tracks for headless stores. In the meantime, Littledata offers an SDK to make pre-checkout tracking easier for headless stores. Some predictions for the future From our conversations with Shopify, I think the ability for apps to add script-tags to the Thank You page might be removed in 2023. That would make Web Pixel the only way to track purchase events on the Thank You page – but it wouldn’t impact purchases tracked server-side. I predict the impact on the tracking app ecosystem will be similar to when Shopify opened up subscriptions in the checkout in 2021 - a proliferation of apps offering generic functionality, and a race to the bottom in app pricing. I’d expect to see many more free tracking apps - for common platforms, like Facebook, and for niche ones like Roku and Verizon Media - because the technical complexity of launching client-side tracking is reduced. This is especially true for Google Analytics 4. There are many apps which offer ecommerce tracking (plus Shopify’s Google Channel) but few that offer the accuracy of server-side tracking. [tip]See what Shopify stores can do today to prepare for GA4[/tip] I expect an increased demand and perceived value for apps that solve the real challenges of data accuracy and marketing attribution, through server-side tracking and other innovations. I know many brands willing to pay for quality data, and Web Pixel is just one part of what’s needed for complete Shopify tracking. [subscribe]