A few months back, we ran down a list of popular ecommerce reporting tools that Littledata integrates with. Today, we'll take a look at one tool in particular: Segment. When it comes to data, one thing is clear: every business should be using more of it. At Littledata, we believe data is your single biggest tool for success, whether it's breaking down your marketing channel attribution or deciding on a new campaign for your repeat buyers. Not only does data help you nail down what's working for your store and what's not right now—it also helps you make decisions for future success. With a flood of data tools on the market for Shopify stores (data lakes, business intelligence and dashboarding, funnels and segments) the search for the perfect data tool to fit within your tech stack can be overwhelming. It can also be tough to find a tool with all the right features for the right price. Fashion stores sell differently than coffee subscription stores, so it can be tempting to either build a custom tool yourself or hire an analytics consultant to do the heavy lifting for you. Maintaining multiple connections and integrations can also become a task in itself. This can lead to data fatigue, causing confusion and even costing you time and money. But whether or not you use an app for better Shopify tracking or you go with a consultant, one thing is clear for Shopify stores: driving your decision-making with data is no longer optional if you want to succeed in the current ecommerce marketplace. Plain and simple, accurate data is the best way to ensure you're getting the maximum ROI for your business. While our Google Analytics connection is popular among Shopify stores, thousands of Shopify stores (and Littledata customers) use Segment as their main tracking tool, including brands like Nuun, ROMWOD, Kin, Cellucor, and more. Why do Shopify sellers use 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. Segment's 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" background_color="grey" button_text="Learn more" button_link="https://apps.shopify.com/segment-com-by-littledata?_ga=2.230718111.1271051167.1588608356-1545539486.1571747621"] 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; tons of mid-sized Shopify brands currently use Segment together with Shopify. But why? How do Shopify stores benefit from integrating Segment with their store? Benefits of connecting Shopify with Segment 1) Capture every customer touchpoint Littledata's Segment connection lets you use Shopify as Segment source. In other words, merchants can now automatically track every ecommerce touchpoint on your Shopify store, including: User/browsing behaviour Checkout steps Sales & refunds Customer lifetime value (LTV) Marketing metrics like customer acquisition cost (CAC) When merchants integrate Segment with Shopify, no touchpoint in the customer journey goes untracked. This includes multiple checkout steps, sales conversion data and lifetime value (LTV), arguably the holy grail of ecommerce metrics. What about subscriptions? If you are a subscription business using ReCharge for your checkout then you’ll understand how difficult it is to attribute your recurring orders back to the original marketing source. Furthermore it’s hard to keep track of what revenue is coming from first time orders versus recurring revenue. By using Littledata with Segment you can correctly attribute your ReCharge orders including the use of custom dimensions such as order count and  customer LTV as well as lifecycle events such as customer created and subscription cancelled. [tip]Learn how to track subscriptions on Shopify with 100% accuracy[/tip] For those running a subscription store, the app integrates with ReCharge and Google Analytics so you can track all your subscription data. It also connects to your Facebook Ads and Google Ads for accurate marketing attribution and customer journey tracking. This way, you know which campaigns are actually working (and maybe more importantly, which ones are not). Tip: Hey, subscription stores! Now you can track all your subscription lifecycle events 2) Server-side tracking for complete accuracy Speaking of tracking, Littledata’s server-side tracking approach within Google Analytics beats out Shopify’s native reporting platform. For Segment users, server-side tracking ensures data is 100% reliable, which means better analysis and decision-making. 3) Quick setup Quick integrations should never be undervalued. Within minutes, Shopify merchants can have their stores armed with a steady data flow in Segment. Automated ecommerce tracking Like the popular Google Analytics connection for Shopify stores, Littledata's Segment connection uses server-side tracking to capture every step in your checkout flow, plus sales, refunds, product variants, and more. It’s the easiest way to ensure accurate, detailed data about sales and shopping behaviour. In fact, Littledata is the only recommended Segment integration for Shopify and Shopify Plus. Benefits include: Works with any Shopify or Shopify Plus store Server-side tracking for 100% accuracy Captures every touch point, including checkout steps, sales data and customer lifetime value (LTV) Analytics audit to check for accurate tracking The connection captures what happens on your Shopify store, then pushes that data to Segment so you can send it to hundreds of Segment destinations: Putting the data to use So what are some ways you can use this raw data as actionable insights? Better marketing automation Personalize and hyper-target your campaigns even more General ecommerce CRO Better reporting and analysis For example, you can push your Shopify data to tools including Hubspot, Salesforce, Mixpanel and Google Analytics. [note]Browse our Segment help guides for details about which events you can track with our Segment connection.[/note] Better actionable insights is really why Littledata built a single Shopify connection to be used as a source for Segment. By centralizing your data with Segment, you can ensure that you have data consistency when using the data across multiple destinations like Google Analytics, Klaviyo, Facebook, Friendbuy and Hotjar. Not only will this save 100s of development hours building and maintaining multiple integrations, but it also frees you to adapt your data stack for any opportunity, like debugging, testing and reviewing your data collection. Welcome to a truly smarter solution! Like we mentioned, Littledata is the only recommended Shopify connector for Segment. Want to give it a try? Our new 30-day free trials will give you a full month of accurate data so you can feel the difference for yourself. Our enterprise plans also include the option for custom Segment data audits, setup and reporting. We’re here to help you scale!

Littledata is always improving. Over the last 6 months, we’ve worked on numerous features to enhance the accuracy and availability of our ecommerce data analysis for Shopify merchants. Littledata's smart connections make it easy to get accurate data in Google Analytics or Segment. The changes below affect both of our Shopify apps (Segment and Google Analytics for Shopify), marking the biggest major update to our Shopify tracking script and server-side tracking since we released V8 last year. [tip]Check out our release notes for regular updates![/tip] Attribution for email marketing signups In order to provide enhanced email attribution, we've linked 'customer created' and 'customer updated' events back to the original source. Stores building a customer email list can now analyze where those email signups originally came from. By linking customer creation or update events on Shopify’s servers to the original campaign or referrer to the store, Littledata customers can now accurately track the source of email signups. Merchants can now also segment these signup events by whether or not the customer opted into marketing. Checkout steps Tracking checkout steps is essential for ecommerce analytics, but Shopify's native tracking is incomplete and inaccurate. Littledata's Shopify connections solve checkout tracking issues automatically. With recent updates, we’ve made the tracking of checkout steps even more reliable, coping with situations where a user is already logged in, or abandons the cart and then returns later. [note]Did you know by sending the data to Google Analytics, you can easily track your Shopify payments gateway during checkout?[/note] With the help of the full Enhanced Ecommerce specification, you can: track exactly which products follow in each step calculate the value of opportunities to improve each step [subscribe] ReCharge connection, recharged As subscription ecommerce sites continue to scale, they need even more detailed data about the user journey, especially lifecycle events. [tip]Do you trust your subscription tracking in Shopify? Learn how to get accurate tracking for repeat orders[/tip] With our new ReCharge v2 connection, subscription stores can now track the full subscription lifecycle including: subscription updates cancellations failed payments product edits customer profile / information edits [note]See the full slate of ecommerce events you can now track with ReCharge v2[/note] Geolocation of server-side events Stores need accurate information on the location of their customers to retarget campaigns around top-performing regions or cities. The extra events above, plus all the standard order data, are sent from our servers in Virginia, US. But, of course, in your analytics, you want to see them linked to the customers' real location. We now have a belt-and-braces solution for correctly geolocating customer events, passing on the browser's IP address where known, or else sending the shipping address (default customer address) to Google Analytics as a 'Geographical Criteria ID'. CartHook and Bold Cashier We've always supported other checkouts for Shopify, as we know some stores need flexibility with payment, upsell and recurring billing options. And for the most popular checkout solutions, we're always looking at ways to provide advanced tracking automatically. So in the past 6 months Littledata has launched more robust integrations with CartHook and Bold Cashier. New Google Optimize connection Google Optimize is a powerful A/B testing and personalization platform used within and beyond ecommerce. [note]Connect your Shopify store to Google Optimize to test your product pages, store content and messaging with 100% accuracy.[/note] Now, we have an out-of-the-box setup for Shopify, including an anti-flicker snippet. And coming soon... In Q1 2020, we're working on connections for Iterable's email marketing platform, plus a more consistent way of handling Segment's anonymous ID for stores which don't use Google Analytics. Is there something you're eager to see in Littledata? We're always happy to hear feature suggestions — get in touch with our team today!

We often get asked if Littledata works with certain reporting tools that are popular among merchants. Here's the short answer: if your tool can pull data from Google Analytics or Segment, then our smart connections will help you get accurate data to use with those reporting or data insight tools. Here’s exactly how we work with each platform. The Establishment These are the main ecommerce reporting tools. If you're using one of these tools, you're in luck. Littledata integrates with them automatically. These products include: Google Analytics Google Data Studio Tableau Segment Power BI Read on to see how Littledata works with these data insights tools to improve the accuracy of your data and the usefulness of your reporting. Google Analytics The world’s most popular analytics tool gets even better when paired with Littledata’s smart connections and full audit to enhance the ecommerce event data captured from your store. GA is the core tool to which Littledata connects, allowing you to connect to other dashboards below, such as Tableau and Data Studio. [subscribe] Segment Segment’s data pipeline is a trusted way to get analytics from one platform into dozens of others without complex engineering. Our source for Shopify and Shopify Plus helps you automatically send ecommerce events into any of Segment’s hundreds of destinations. Once the Segment connection is set up, you never lift a finger. Google Data Studio Data Studio is our dashboard tool of choice for more custom-designed reports.  Because Data Studio integrates seamlessly with Google Analytics, Littledata’s connections can all be exported from Google Analytics into Data Studio, making our Shopify app the top Data Studio connector for Shopify stores. While it can be slow to generate reports at scale, Data Studio's unlimited free reporting makes it hard to beat for ad-hoc analysis. And they often add new report templates and visualizations. With Littledata's Data Studio connection, you get: Accurate sales data, including refunds and repeat purchases Custom dimensions for LTV reporting and cohort analysis Better marketing attribution, since our app stitches sessions together automatically [note]Are you looking for accurate Shopify sales data in Google Analytics and Google Analytics? Get the free ebook on Shopify tracking, including tips for tracking refunds and repeat purchases.[/note] Tableau Tableau, now part of the Salesforce family, was one of the first tools to provide a smart, easy setup dashboard. Their connection with Google Analytics is well established, and as with Data Studio you can access the Littledata events from there. Power BI Microsoft’s popular reporting tool can also import data from Google Analytics, so anything Littledata pushes to GA is available in Power BI. Power BI is especially useful if you want to visually explore your ecommerce data, as the platform offers interactive visualizations and a range of business intelligence (BI) insights. They also allow on-premises report deployment (behind a firewall), which is great for larger brands with large in-house teams. Newer solutions In addition to the 'establishment' above, Littledata seamlessly integrates with a number of newer reporting tools that offer Google Analytics insights and visualizations. These apps and reporting tools include: Glew Glow Yaguara These tools are especially popular with Shopify and Shopify Plus stores. Glew Glew provides some cleverly-curated ecommerce reports, but any of the underlying data on marketing attribution or customer behaviour pulled from Google Analytics will require Littledata’s improved tracking for full accuracy. Here’s a more detailed guide of the differences between Glew and Littledata. Grow Grow is a newer dashboard tool with hundreds of reporting sources, of which Google Analytics is their ‘most popular’. While some of the detail from Littledata’s connections may be lost in ‘basic reporting’ from GA, their multi-channel marketing reports are useful. Yaguara Yagura provides a series of templates to gain insights into your ecommerce business. One of their key integrations is with Google Analytics, and so the extra insights from Littledata’s tracking can be pulled into a Yaguara dashboard. Tools we don't work with directly The following tools don't connect with Littledata, and we aren't planning an integration. Conversific Conversific is an analytics tool for Shopify, with similar reporting to Littledata. While Conversific doesn’t offer the same smart connections as Littledata, it’s unlikely you’d need to use the two together. Metrilo Metrilo offers to optimize marketing channels for ecommerce. While their guide says Metrilo is a good alternative to Google Analytics, it won’t replace the reporting that Littledata provides. Zaius Zaius is an ecommerce CRM, allowing you to personalise and automate marketing based on customer interactions. As such, it needs its own event data capture, and can’t integrate with Littledata reporting. [note]Have you built custom reports using Littledata tracking? We'd love to hear about it. Give us a shout and let us know.[/note]

We may be biased, but...Shopify is a terrific, industry-leading platform that continues to see success with its in-app features and integrations. But one of the ways it hasn't been successful? It's native reporting. [tip]See why Shopify analytics are broken (and how to repair your Shopify tracking)[/tip] In a recent post running down some popular brands using the Segment app for their stores, we outlined what the Segment platform is and why top brands are choosing to integrate Shopify with Segment. Today, we'll run down the top 3 benefits for merchants using Shopify and Segment in tandem. First, let's start with the problem: What’s wrong with Shopify reporting? Shopify’s native tracking tool (Shopify analytics) is unsophisticated and incomplete, missing key steps in the customer journey. This makes it tough for Shopify users to get accurate sales and marketing data for their store. The situation is even worse if you want to push that data to Segment (previously, this had to be done manually), since you'd have to hire a developer or consultant just for the setup. But it's not all doom and gloom. Luckily, Littledata's new Segment connection (available in the Shopify app store) fixes this issue automatically. Here's how... [subscribe heading="Use your store as a Segment source" background_color="green" button_text="Get the app" button_link="https://apps.shopify.com/segment-com-by-littledata"] How does the Segment connection work? Once the data is tracked within your Shopify store, it's then sent to Segment. By adding Shopify to your Segment sources, it's easier to push your Shopify dataset to Segment destinations so you can report and act on ecommerce behavior. Plus, our app fixes the tracking automatically, so you can make data-driven decisions with peace of mind, knowing your Shopify data is accurate when you push it to Segment destinations. Tracking for Shopify & Shopify Plus To recap from our post a few weeks ago, Littledata's Segment connection sends the following events from your Shopify or Shopify Plus store to Segment. These events will show up as tables in your warehouse, and as regular events in your other destinations like Google Analytics, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, Heap and more. Among all Shopify apps, the Segment connection offers benefits unique to Shopify partners. Check out our help center for additional questions on the Segment integration. 3 reasons to integrate Shopify with Segment 1) Capture every customer touchpoint Our Segment connection lets you use Shopify as Segment source. In other words, merchants can now automatically track every ecommerce touchpoint on your Shopify store, including: User/browsing behaviour Checkout steps Sales & refunds Customer lifetime value (CLV) Marketing metrics like customer acquisition cost (CAC) When merchants integrate Segment with Shopify, no touchpoint in the customer journey will go untracked. This includes multiple checkout steps, sales conversion data and customer lifetime value (CLV), arguably the most crucial metric for Shopify stores. Running a subscription store? We have you covered. The app integrates with ReCharge and Google Analytics so you can track all your subscription data. It also connects to your Facebook Ads and Google Ads for accurate marketing attribution and customer journey tracking. This way, you know which campaigns are actually working (and which are not). [tip]Hey, subscription stores! Now you can track all your subscription lifecycle events[/tip] 2) Server-side tracking for 100% accuracy Speaking of tracking, Littledata's server-side tracking approach within Google Analytics beats out Shopify's native reporting, which is riddled with inaccurate numbers. Server-side tracking ensures each data metric is 100% reliable, empowering merchants to make better, data-driven decisions for their store. 3) Set up in minutes for any Shopify store Quick integrations should never be undervalued. Within minutes, Shopify merchants can have their stores armed with a steady data flow. Sound too good to be true? That's the power of next-gen tracking and reporting. Which ecommerce events are tracked? Littledata's Shopify app for Segment automatically tracks key events in the ecommerce journey. These currently include: From your Segment workspace, you can then push this data to hundreds of Segment destinations, such as: Reporting and visualization tools like Mixpanel and Google Analytics Sales and marketing apps like Hubspot and Salesforce Email marketing like Drip and Klaviyo And the list goes on and on...here's a full list of everything you can track. Enterprise plans for Shopify Plus stores The Segment integration for Shopify captures every stage in the customer journey, empowering you to do more for your store with an accurate dataset. The best way to get started? Littledata enterprise plans are a popular option for Shopify Plus merchants and other stores set on major growth. Not only that, but enterprise plans are specifically designed with Plus stores in mind. With Littledata enterprise, you get: Shopify Plus support Segment support Unlimited connections Unlimited data thresholds Custom setup & reporting Manual data audits Optimization support Enterprise plans also offer reliable customer support, a dedicated account manager, help from our Google Analytics consultants, data analytics experts and ecommerce growth hackers. Ready to give it a shot? Get started with our 30-day free trial, and if you have any questions about Segment, Shopify, how the connection works, we're here to help!

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, like selling in multiple currencies, 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).

Littledata's new Shopify app for Segment tracks sales and browsing behavior automatically, so you can focus on growth. Thousands of online businesses use Segment to clean, collect and control customer data. Littledata's Segment connection fixes ecommerce tracking automatically, and sends that data to your Segment workspace. Our Shopify-to-Segment connection is the newest source in the Segment catalog, joining over 200 powerful integrations. We've always loved Segment, and with a growing number of shared customers (larger ecommerce sites using both Segment and Littledata), building a seamless connection was a no-brainer.  Automated ecommerce tracking Like our Google Analytics connection for Shopify stores, our Segment connection uses server-side tracking to capture every step in your checkout flow, plus sales, refunds, product variants, and more.  It's the easiest way to ensure accurate, detailed data about sales and shopping behaviour. In fact, Littledata is the only recommended Segment integration for Shopify and Shopify Plus! Benefits include: Works with any Shopify or Shopify Plus store Server-side tracking for 100% accuracy Captures every touch point, including checkout steps, sales data and customer lifetime value (CLV) Analytics audit to check for accurate tracking The connection captures what happens on your Shopify store, then pushes that data to Segment so you can send it to hundreds of Segment destinations. Customers use this for marketing automation, campaign personalization, ecommerce optimization, reporting and analysis. For example, you can push your Shopify data to tools including Hubspot, Salesforce, Mixpanel and Google Analytics. Browse our Segment help guides for details about which events you can track with our Segment connection. [subscribe heading="Best Shopify app for Segment users" button_text="Free trial"  button_link="https://apps.shopify.com/segment-com-by-littledata"] Getting started Getting started is easy. If you don't already have a Littledata account, you can download Littledata's Shopify app for Segment users directly from the Shopify app store - with free trials on all plans! If you're already using Littledata, you can add the Segment connection from the Connections tab in your Littledata admin. Questions? Our enterprise plans now include the option for custom Segment data audits, setup and reporting. We're here to help you scale.