We had a great time at Shopify Unite in June, but that was just the beginning of ecommerce conference season. What's up next? In the next few months the Littledata team will be hitting up both US coasts at major ecommerce events in New York City and Los Angeles, plus some smaller meetups in Austin, Nashville and the UK. Will you join us? Meet Magento (New York, NY) September 5-6, 2019 It's no secret. Littledata isn't only for Shopify stores. Our Magento customers include successful ecommerce brands like Horace and Micro Scooters. We help Magento sites get better ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics since the beginning, and our new Welt Pixel partnership has taken automated tracking to the next level. You can , plus use Littledata connections like Facebook Ads and Google Ads to sync ppc data with ecommerce tracking. That's why we're especially excited to be attending Meet Magento NYC this year. With presentations 'for merchants by merchants', it's always a truly informative time. While we won't be speaking at this year's event, Littledata team members will be around to chat about analytics and keep an eye out for ecommerce trends like how merchants and developers are handling headless ecommerce and multi-channel attribution. We're happy to hop on a quick demo. If you'll be there too, come say hi! ChargeX Summit (Santa Monica, CA) September 19-20, 2019 We can't wait for the ChargeX summit in Los Angeles. And it's not just about getting a slice of that legendary Los Angeles sunshine in the land of Littledata customers like Groundwork coffee and Rachel Zoe's Box of Style. ChargeX is ReCharge's annual user conference. ReCharge has been one of our most successful partnerships, and we continue to hone the ReCharge connection to help sites get accurate data about recurring payments and customer lifetime value (CLV/LTV). The Littledata team will be at ChargeX to chat about getting better data about your subscription ecommerce business. Littledata CEO Edward Upton will be presenting on agency day, along with a killer lineup of industry experts including Benjamin Crudo from the Diff Agency and Kelly Vaughn from the The Taproom agency. But that's not all. The second day of the summit is all about merchants. We'll have a large presence there to chat about how we can build a smarter, more profitable system for everyone. Confirmed speakers include: Jesse Horowitz - Co-CEO/Founder at Hubble Contacts Kaitlin Holliday - Retention Manager at Four Sigmatic Paul Tran - CEO at Manscaped Chris Traverse - Head of Engineering at Huel Lanie De Pasquale - Sr. eCommerce Manager at Kopari Beauty If you're selling products by subscription, this is the conference for you. Whether or not you're already using ReCharge or Littledata, you can attend the conference! Get your ticket today before they sell out :) And if you're based in LA or will be around for the summit, drop us a line. Should you attend that ecommerce conference? Check out the Littledata conference checklist to find out if it's worth the cost.

As part of our Magento connection, we're excited to announce our partnership with Welt Pixel. Not only will this allow us to offer more dynamic enterprise plans for Magento merchants, but it creates a ripe opportunity for interested enterprises to join Magento's unique ecommerce network. Through Welt Pixel's Magento 2 extension, we've been able to provide store owners with complete, accurate data, including: Full Enhanced Ecommerce shopping behaviour events Custom dimensions for product reviews and stock status Light-weight script for fast-loading pages Full configuration in Google Tag Manager A connection you can trust   With this new partnership, Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce for Magento 2 enables full Enhanced Ecommerce tracking implemented in just minutes. That way, you can start gathering valuable data literally overnight to make better, data-based company decisions than ever before. Magento users can also track product views, clicks, detail impressions, cart-related user actions (adding or removing products), promotion data, purchase data, refunds, and more. Enterprise plans   Our Magento connection is available at any enterprise level.   Littledata's Enterprise plans include unlimited app features, such as Facebook Ads and Google Ads connections with Google Analytics, plus options for custom setup and reporting. Plan features include:   Advanced setup for Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager Account management from a certified Google Analytics expert Knowledge of best practices for Magento 1 and Magento 2 Advice on analytics and platform migrations Multi-channel marketing attribution and Lifetime Value reporting Private benchmarks   [subscribe heading="Get accurate data for Magento" button_text="Get started"  button_link="https://www.littledata.io/connections/magento"] Getting started   If you don't already have a Littledata account, you can book a demo with a Magento analytics expert.   Questions? We're here to help you scale — contact us with any questions about Littledata, our Magento connection, or what our new Welt Pixel partnership means for your store.

Whether you're choosing a new enterprise ecommerce platform for your online business, or considering a platform migration, choosing Shopify vs Magento is not an easy choice. But when it comes to ecommerce performance, it pays to take a look at the data. Littledata has a range of customers on different ecommerce platforms, with a majority of larger stores using Shopify Plus or Magento. So which platform has the best ecommerce performance? For this post, we crunched data from 1,600 Shopify and Magento stores to see where the platforms typically perform best, from technical performance essentials like site speed, to ecommerce essentials like conversion rate and average order value. Ecommerce benchmarks Littledata benchmarks stores using our platform on 30 key metrics. Any merchant can sign up to benchmark their ecommerce website, and we like to dive into the benchmark data to find key stats and unexpected trends. Comparing Shopify vs Magento benchmarks, we looked at the median performance of stores of all sizes in all sectors, and then just larger stores (those getting more than 20,000 sessions per month). The headline news is that Shopify converts more visitors into customers than Magento, mainly due to better add-to-cart rate, but also slightly more efficient checkout conversion rate. Shopify stores have a higher Average Conversion Rate, but Magento stores have a higher Average Order Value. However, since Magento stores have a larger average order value (maybe because stores selling high value items are put off by Shopify’s percentage pricing), the Magento stores get more revenue per visit. And it is really the higher customer lifetime value that you should care about (Shopify agrees). Magento stores outperform on landing page engagement and marketing, and have a significantly higher usage of product search. Shopify vs Magento: a benchmark-by-benchmark comparison Average conversion rate The headline ecommerce conversion rate is better on Shopify (2% vs 1.7%) and this actually widens for larger stores (2.3% Shopify vs 1.5% on Magento). This is reflected in Shopify being better on both underlying metrics of performance: add-to-cart rate (5.5% vs 4.6%) and the percent of those starting to checkout. [subscribe button_text="benchmark your site"] The checkout completion rate is actually better on most Magento stores (48.6% vs 51.3%), although for larger stores this is flipped around (50.0% Magento vs 48.7% Shopify). Average order value Average revenue per customer is much higher for the Magento stores surveyed (and this difference persists for larger sites) - $75 USD per customer on Shopify vs $161 on Magento. This is driven by both a higher average order value, and more repeat purchasing on Magento stores. This extra money per order more than compensates for the lower conversion rate on Magento, and means Magento stores get an average $2.79 per visit versus $1.52 for Shopify store visits. Site speed There are two factors to website speed - how long the server takes to response, and how long the page takes to render in the browser. Shopify's cloud infrastructure is better at the former (609 milliseconds versus 967 milliseconds average server response time on Magento), but for the more important delay before page content appears there is little difference between the platforms (2.6 seconds for Shopify vs 2.8 seconds for Magento). Larger Shopify stores do typically install lots of 3rd party apps, which can increase the script load time, and so the time to full page load is higher on larger Shopify stores (6.8 seconds vs 6.0 seconds on Magento). Marketing channels There are some big differences between how Shopify and Magento store owners go about Marketing. Shopify stores get a far higher proportion of traffic from Facebook (5.8% vs 2.7%), but this is still below the global average for Facebook referrals. Shopify stores also had a greater reliance on the homepage - showing a lack on content marketing sophistication (34% on Shopify vs 25% on Magento). User engagement (site search and email marketing) The interesting difference is a much higher use of site search for Magento stores (3.1% Shopify vs 10.8% Magento). This may that Magento themes make it easier to implement site search, or that Magento stores with larger numbers of SKUs. And Magento marketers manage to get a lower bounce rate from emails: 50% on Shopify vs 44% on Magento. This is maybe due to a greater variety of email landing pages or campaigns. What about Shopify Plus vs Magento Enterprise? Many of the same differences are there for Shopify Plus (the equivalent of Magento Enterprise Edition for larger stores). Shopify plus stores manage a higher conversion rate (2.6% vs 1.6% for Magento EE), and but still have a lower average value per session ($2.12 on Shopify Plus vs $3.23 on Magento). And Plus stores, with more customised themes, still get a higher bounce rate from mobile search (55% vs 51% for Magento). If you're looking for more info, we have a useful post on the general differences between Shopify and Magento, and our friends at Electric Eye have an extensive breakdown of how Shopify and Magento pricing and implementation really work for merchants seeking the best ecommerce platform for their business. For an in-depth look at enterprise ecommerce options, we recommend checking out the big Magento 2 Commerce vs Shopify Plus comparison by Paul Rogers. An expert in ecommerce replatforming, Rogers has worked with Magento brands including O’Neills, Agent Provocateur, Waterford, Royal Doulton, and Shopify Plus brands including Bulletproof, Trotters, Oco, Current Body and ESC. Get more performance data Looking for more performance data? If you're interested in the topic of Magento vs Shopify performance, you can view our public listing of detailed Shopify benchmarks and Magento benchmarks. We've made it easy for anyone to dive into the data for themselves. And if you have an ecommerce website, sign up to benchmark your site for free! [subscribe button_text="benchmark your site"]

Ecommerce conference season is upon us. In the past few weeks, the Littledata team was at Shop.org in Las Vegas, Paris Retail Week, and the Google Expert Summit in Waterloo, Canada -- three very different events in three rather different countries. Then we also hit up Agile Cambridge and Technology for Marketing in the UK, the UPRISE fest in Dublin, TechDay LA in sunny Los Angeles and the BigCommerce partner summit in Austin. And while we unfortunately couldn't make ReCharge's Recur event for the subscription industry, or Hawke Media's Hawkefest, the ultimate anti-conference, many of our partners and merchants were there and had awesome things to say. But wait a second. Slow down! With so many exciting events to potentially attend during what is already one of the busiest times of year for those of us in the industry (Black Friday is just around the corner from a marketer's perspective), how do you choose? Is that conference you've been debating attending really worth it? If we've learned anything... Over the years I've had a mixed experience with conferences. But with Littledata we've found a good rhythm. Of course it helps that we're on the cutting edge of new technology, actually using AI and machine learning as opposed to just talking about it, and that we already have major customers around the world, even though we're technically still a 'startup'. This gives us a wide range of high-quality speaking and learning opportunities. But at the same time our productive conference experiences haven't happened by accident, whether for ecommerce or general tech events. We've found such a good conference rhythm -- a dance that produces a consistently high ROI on in-person events -- by looking closely at our own data on a quarterly and yearly basis. Our strategy is always evolving, but some stats have been consistent. For example, we discovered that at the right events: Though we don't necessarily have a higher win rate for enterprise leads from conferences, the sales cycle is condensed, on average 3x faster from meeting to close. This saves our sales team valuable time chasing down leads, and also helps us improve our product, pitches and processes at a faster rate. Agencies we meet in person are 4x more likely to refer us a customer within the next 30 days -- even if we never did a formal product demo. What's your company's take on conferences? Here are a few insights that might help you get more out of the conference experience, whether that means big tech industry events or smaller, focused meetups. [subscribe] There is no such thing as a must-attend conference The great irony with ecommerce conferences is that they tend to be scheduled at what are already busy times for those of us in the industry. Whether it's the shows we attended these past 6 weeks that overlapped with everyone getting back to work after summer holidays, or European standbys like NetComm Suisse's later fall events and One to One in Monaco every March, right after SXSW in Austin, it's either an embarrassment of riches or -- depending on your perspective -- a really confusing hodge podge of hard-to-classify opportunities. There are simply too many choices, and it's especially hard to decide whether to attend a tech conference or meetup if your company has never attended that particular show before. One thing I love about our industry is that merchants (stores and ecommerce managers) and vendors (apps, platforms, consultants, designers and agencies) are all in the same boat. In short, we have no time for BS. We want events that focus on real information, emerging technologies and human connection. So how do you decide? First things first, make your own list. There are a ton of blog posts out there about 'must attend' conferences, those 'not to miss'. Give me a break! Every business is unique, and you're only as viable as your buyer personas. So make a list of conferences, events and meetups that might help connect you with your prime customers and best partners. Brainstorm, look online, ask around. Make your own list and plan to review every quarter. Then once you've made that list, on paper or Trello or however you work best, go through the following checklist with as many members of your team as possible, especially if you can bring in decision makers from both Product and Marketing. A simple checklist When deciding if you should attend a conference for the first or second time, it's useful to have a checklist for quick, consistent analysis. The checklist I use is deceptively simple. It has only 5 indicators. Would one significant sale pay for itself in terms of customer acquisition cost (CAC)? If the conference did work out, is it something you would attend every year? Would it be the right place for you to speak, either now or in the future? Is this your scene, your community? Are there companies, merchants, agencies, vendors etc. attending whom you wouldn't see any other time this year? (Even just one counts, if sufficiently high-value.) In short, if you can tick all five boxes then you should attend the conference. If you can only tick four, it's probably worth attending but needs more debate. If this is the case, then considering point number one in detail -- looking at your current LTV/CAC ratio and considering how the conference could help improve or at least maintain it -- is essential. For ecommerce tech companies like our own, this generally means one big sale or partnership. For ecommerce sites it can also take the form of discovering new tech (like Littledata, Klickly or ReCharge) that will help increase sales and marketing ROI. If you can tick all five boxes then you should definitely attend the conference The checklist works even if you've already attended the conference in the past. Just consider point two already covered and proven! If you're in the ecommerce space, definitely consider platform-specific conferences. Shopify and Magento have regular events and meetups around the world, and word on the street is that BigCommerce will be really ramping up their local partner events in 2019. Shopify Unite has consistently been that rare conference that ticks all the boxes for us here at Littledata, but that doesn't mean we're ignoring others that only tick four. We've cast our net wide (using the checklist of course) and are still seeing results. If you want to get a head start on conference browsing for next year,  Veeqo has created a calendar of best worldwide ecommerce conferences for 2019. Across the board remember this: success at a conference almost never comes in the form of expected outcomes. Yes, the best outcomes will be aligned with your sales and marketing goals, but sometime the biggest benefits will not be clear for 3, 6 or even 12 months down the line. That's why we do quarterly and yearly reviews of all in-person activities, from networking events to large conferences. I suggest you do the same. Most importantly, have fun! Gone are the days of boring trade shows. Show up. Make connections. And if we're there too, come say hi! Maybe nobody can make analytics sexy, but we at least promise to make them useful. And usefulness is a good place to start...

Ecommerce blogs were once full of the stories of retailers who had built a thriving ecommerce business sitting on a beach in Thailand while doing as little work as possible. Their business model wasn’t complex: they bought cheap goods from suppliers in developing nations, dropshipped them to US and European consumers with a substantial markup, and lived off the profit. If you’re unusually smart and lucky, it’s still possible to find success walking this path, and you will have little trouble finding ecommerce bloggers happy to sell you the secret to their success (and a large dose of snake oil to wash it down with). But for today’s hopeful new ecommerce merchant, that path doesn’t lead anywhere worth going. As the ecommerce market matured, the low-hanging fruit was picked. In 2017, the most successful small ecommerce retailers are focused on niches they understand well and can build a rapport with. The suppliers relied on by the dropshippers of old got wise. They don’t need small ecommerce merchants to act as the middle-man when it’s just as easy to sell online themselves. There are suppliers who don’t want to be involved in the retail end of the business, but those are generally wholesalers who only sell in quantities that smaller retailers can’t afford. As Commerce Notebook’s Brian Krogsgard puts it: Yesterday’s dropshipping gold rush is today’s dropshipping myth factory. You should be prepared for the realities of dropshipping today in a highly competitive environment, and know that it’s not as easy as some of the stories you’ve heard. Plus, if all your store does is attempt to replicate a tiny subset of Amazon, you’re onto a losing proposition. You can’t beat Amazon at its own game. And yet, small ecommerce merchants continue to thrive. How? By doing what the Everything Store cannot: providing excellent service to a niche market whose needs they understand. I’ve seen dozens of smaller ecommerce businesses flourish by focusing with single-minded determination on a niche audience. Why niche ecommerce works Niche ecommerce works because it’s all-encompassing. Every aspect of these sites fits their particular specialism, including the passions of the target audience. When building user personas for your site, the better you know your audience, the more effective those personas will be when running PPC campaigns, improving SEO and optimising product listings! Branding, communication, product, design, service: everything is calculated to appeal to a specific and clearly identified group of people. Groups that are large and diverse enough to be worth selling to while possessing a sliver of a common identity. One of my favorite examples of this phenomenon is Dolls Kill, a fashion retailer that sidesteps the norms of the fashion industry to appeal to a clearly articulated individualism. The online store calls for shoppers to ‘navigate through the site and unleash your inner riot girl’, and they even have a brick-and-mortar pop-up shop in San Francisco right now. Towards the more mainstream end of the spectrum, Grovemade manufactures and sells wooden furniture and other products. Its branding focuses on design, craftsmanship, and the quality of its materials, with content that tells the story of each product’s genesis, from concept, to design, to manufacture. Although different in tone, audience, and product, these retailers are similar in one way: each understands the values, lifestyles, and needs of a niche market. They unapologetically sell products and build a brand that appeals to that audience. Their customers get the products they desire, but more than that, they buy from a retailer that projects an authentic image in-line with their ideal identity. [subscribe] What’s next for niche ecommerce? The future of ecommerce might be in a combination of these worlds, the old and the new, the big and the small. On one hand we have niche sites that combine next-gen dropshipping with the power of a platform like Shopify, WooCommerce or Magento that make it easy to scale -- as long as you choose the best reporting tools to understand revenue and customers. Littledata’s ecommerce analytics app is particularly useful for Shopify and Magento stores that want to find the right buyer personas to sell to, and to connect that marketing directly to revenue. On the other we have larger stores like MADE.com and Figleaves in the UK. These online stores are now household names, but they became that way by building best-in-class customer support teams and online customer communities with specialised, personalised tools. Two standout examples are MADE’s Unboxed customer community, where shoppers share design pics, and Figleaves’ My Perfect Fit tool, where shoppers can find their perfect lingerie fit. MADE’s story is especially worth noting because they created a niche based on the story of how their business operates, cutting out the middleman and selling directly from designers to consumers. Once they found this niche, they scaled using data-driven decisions that lead to radical increases in yearly revenue. That’s the deal with niche selling: no two stores are ever the same, but your chances for success increase many fold when you use proven tools for hosting, design and tracking -- and create ways for your customer community to share inspiration while at the same time discovering new products and trends. Niche ecommerce is a powerful force, and anyone entering the ecommerce market in 2018 should pay heed to that power.   About the author: Graeme Caldwell works as an inbound marketer for Nexcess, a leading provider of Magento and WordPress hosting. Follow Nexcess on Twitter at @nexcess, Like them on Facebook and check out their tech/hosting blog!

How do you choose between Shopify and Magento? Hostinger's Laura Ramonaitytė breaks down the differences between these popular ecommerce platforms. Taking your offline business online, or starting a new online business from scratch, can be overwhelming. However, if you take time to do research and choose the right ecommerce platform for your particular business, you'll alleviate stress and have a much greater chance of success. With so many options in the market, it can be difficult to know that you're making the right decision. Nevertheless, your first preference should be choosing a platform that can fulfil not just current but also future requirements of your online store, at least as much as you can estimate those future needs. To help you make this difficult decision, we've compared the two most popular ecommerce platforms: Shopify and Magento. We look at a number of different categories and performance areas, so make sure to read through the entire post to help you make the best decision for your business. Core differences Before starting the detailed comparison, let’s take a look at some core differences between Shopify and Magento. Shopify is a complete ecommerce platform, while Magento is free and open-source software. For Shopify, secure web hosting is included in all main subscription plans, whereas for Magento you need to set up your own hosting. Both platforms have technology ecosystems with apps and themes to help you customise your site and track online sales and marketing, but Shopify's app store is much more robust and developed, with over 2,000 apps available since they opened to third-party developers in 2009! Let's dive deeper into differences between the platforms. [subscribe] Pricing These platforms handle setup and operating costs differently. Shopify provides a 14-day free trial. After that, users need to purchase a monthly subscription (you can start the trial and then decide on a plan, which is a nice touch). Users can choose from 3 main subscription plans, currently ranging from $29-299 per month, plus lite (for basic selling via Facebook and  'buy' buttons) and enterprise (Shopify Plus) options. Shopify is a fully hosted platform, which means you pay a flat fee per month for a plan that includes hosting. It's worth mentioning that credit card charges and transaction fees can be extra. On the other hand, Magento offers two pricing options: Magento CE and Magento EE. Magento CE (Community Edition) is free for download and use, and you are not required to buy any monthly subscription. It can be a perfect option for small and mid-sized businesses. Magento EE (Enterprise Edition) is another option, ideal for larger online stores and established businesses. The price depends on the size of your business. You can find the exact pricing by contacting Magento specialists and requesting a quote. Startups.co.uk estimates that the costs for setting up and maintaining a Magento EE site are a good fit only for larger ecommerce sites and enterprises: To give some indication, a very basic Magento shop selling less than 6,000 products, that uses pre-made Magento themes, will cost you in the region of £20,000 to £40,000. On the other hand, if you have cheap web hosting, a Magento CE site using a free theme could be quite affordable, as long as you have the expertise to maintain it. Conclusion: Shopify has fixed pricing while the cost of Magento depends on different factors such as the costs of hosting plans, technical support and plugins. If you're an experience ecommerce developer, Magento probably gives the best cost-benefit. Otherwise, Shopify is a better deal. [subscribe] Templates and Designs Elegant templates and designs are a crucial part of any online store. The template which looks and feels good can attract more people and eventually earn more revenue. Screenshots from the Seaside style of the Providence theme for Shopify Shopify has it own theme store, where users can look for beautifully designed, highly-responsive templates and themes. However, since Shopify is a hosted shopping cart, users get limited options for customizations. That said, Shopify's themes are awesome for plug-and-play. The themes are organized by industry, such as Furniture or Clothing, and also by type of store, such as themes optimised for stores with very small (or very large) inventories. Shopify themes generally cost over $100 but include useful features like Instagram product feeds. Screenshots from the free Absolute Theme for Magento Since Magento is open source and has been supported by a large developer community from the start, it has a range of template options. There are free and paid themes available in the Magento Marketplace, and most are mobile responsive, but there is also a huge variety of free and paid themes available from independent front end developers around the world. It's worth noting that some  Magento stores with solid coding experience do create custom themes on their own as well. Here's a guide to theme development if you're running Magento 2. Conclusion If you're looking for more theme options and customization, Magento is the winner. On the other hand, why start from scratch? Whatever you're looking for, it probably already exists in a Shopify theme! SEO Optimization If you are starting your online store from the ground up, it is necessary for you to pick the ecommerce platform that has SEO capabilities as well. Nowadays, more than half of all online purchases begin with an online search in search engines like Google and Bing. Therefore, it is crucial that ecommerce platform you have chosen supports various search optimization techniques. In our analysis, the overall SEO score for Magento is 95 out of 100 whereas Shopify's SEO score is 98 out of 100. Shopify is a highly SEO-optimized platform that has all the basic and advanced SEO features in all its plans. You can easily edit your title tags, meta description, page URLs, according to your requirement. Besides this, you can also customize your image file name and also edit alt tags as per SEO requirements. Like Shopify, Magento is also a fully SEO-optimized ecommerce platform that supports extensive SEO functionality. Along with basic SEO settings, it also provides some advanced SEO options, including canonical tags for separate categories and products, robot.txt files, image optimization, meta tags for products and home page. Conclusion Both platforms seem equally competent in terms of SEO optimization. As long as you have an organized content strategy, you can take advantage of the SEO capabilities of either platform to get more traffic. Customer Support Reliable support is more important than anything else. As a newbie, you may need to access customer support many times in a day. Consequently, invest in the company that has better technical support and back up based on what your needs might be. Shopify provides 24/7 technical support, which means that you can access support day and night whenever needed. There are three ways you can access their customer support team: Email Support Phone Support Live Chat Magento’s customer support does not include any official service. However, you can look for answers to your queries in its extensive developer community, Magento Forums, and in their documentation. Almost all platform-related queries are already answered there. Conclusion: This is the category where Shopify is definitely the winner. Ecommerce Performance For a detailed performance , check out this post on how Shopify and Magento perform for large ecommerce brands. In the post, Littledata's CEO looks at data from 1,600 Shopify and Magento stores to see where the platforms typically perform best, from technical performance essentials like site speed, to ecommerce essentials like conversion rate and average order value. Final Thoughts In conclusion, both Shopify and Magento have various stunning features and they can manage your online store efficiently and help to boost your revenue. Magento is an open source platform and is more flexible, but you need to have the staff and knowledge to develop it. Features, customer support and ease of use probably make Shopify a better ecommerce platform for a standard ecommerce business. Whichever you choose, I recommend getting Littledata's Shopify connection, Shopify Plus connection or Magento connection earlier rather than later - otherwise you will likely be missing essential data about sales and marketing! I hope this post inspires you to dig deeper and make an informed choice before launching your online store, whichever platform you choose. There are other platforms available as well, such as WooCommerce (Shopify vs WooCommerce), so don't just pick one randomly! Hostinger is a leading worldwide cheap web hosting provider.

With the release of Google Analytic's Enhanced Ecommerce tracking, Magento shop owners now also have the option to track more powerful shopping and checkout behaviour events. Using a Magento plugin to add the tagging to your store could save a lot of development expense. But choosing a third party library has risks for reliability and future maintenance, so we’ve installed the plugins we could find to review how they work. The options available right now are: Tatvic’s Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce plugin (there is also a paid version with extra features) BlueAcorn’s ‘official’ Google Enhanced Ecommerce for Magento plugin Scommerce Mage's Google Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking plugin Anowave – they have a GTM and non-GTM plugin available for €150, but declined to let us test them for this review DIY – send the data directly from Google Tag manager Advanced features Plugin Checkout options? Promotions? Social interactions? Refunds? Tatvic - - - - BlueAcorn  Y  -  -  - Scommerce Y Y - Y Anowave Y Y Y Y DIY setup Y Y - - Our overall scoring Plugin Ease of install Flexibility Privacy Cost Tatvic 4 2 2 Free BlueAcorn 3 1 5 Free Scommerce 3 3 5 £65 / US$98 None (DIY) 1 5 5 Your time! There is no clear winner so choose the plugin that suits your needs best. If you are concerned about data privacy then go for either BlueAcorn or Scommerce, but pick Tatvic's plugin if you prefer easiest installation process. If you want to spend more time capturing further data – like promotions and refunds – you might want to consider implementing the tracking yourself with Google Tag Manager. Tatvic’s plugin Advantages: Fast and easy to install (it took less than an hour to configure everything). Good support by email after installation. Basic shopping behaviour and checkout behaviour steps captured. Disadvantages: It injects a Google Tag Manager container into your site that only Tatvic can control. Some reviewers on Magento Connect raised privacy concerns here, so Tatvic should clarify how and why they use this data. At the very least it is a security flaw, as any Javascript could be injected via that container. * Product impressions are only segmented by product categories - there is no separation for cross-sell, upsell or related products widgets. No support for coupon codes or refunds. * Tatvic can help you configure your own GTM container if their standard setup is an issue for you. Scommerce plugin Advantages: It doesn’t need Google Tag Manager, so you can be sure that no one can add scripts to your site. You can install from Magento Connect. Update on 24 Aug 2015: Supports one page checkout. BlueAcorn plugin Advantages: Easy to install. It doesn't add Google Tag Manager to your site. Disadvantages: You have to set your shop currency to US dollars. Support is slow to respond. Enable Enhanced Ecommerce reporting To be able to install listed plugins for Magento, you will first of all need to enable Enhanced Ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics. If you already have it enabled, you can skip this section. Go to Google Analytics > Admin > View > Ecommerce Settings. Enable Enhanced Ecommerce and set up the checkout funnel steps (see the screenshot for standard checkout steps).  Remove your Google Analytics tracking code from the website. Installing Tatvic’s plugin Go to Magento Connect centre, open the “settings” tab and enable beta extensions.  Go back to the “extensions” tab, paste the link into extension and click 'Install'.  You should see a successful completion message.  Go back to the configuration page. Don't worry if you see 404 error.  Log out and back in again and you shouldn't see the error anymore.  Now add the missing details in the configuration settings, eg Google Analytics account, checkout URL. You should see all the checkout steps working.  Installing BlueAcorn plugin BlueAcorn's plugin supports only stores that have their currency set to US dollars. If your online shop is in any other currency, you won't be able to see most of the data on your product's sales performance. Installing BlueAcorn's plugin is similar to Tatvic's but you have to do two extra steps. Go to the cache store management, select all items, select 'Disable' from the Actions dropdown list and click 'Submit'.  Go to System > Tools > Compilation and click button ‘Disable’.  Install the plugin. Log out and log back in. Re-enable the cache by going back to the cache store management, select all items and enable them. Go to the Google API tab (System > Configuration > Google API), enable plugin and insert your Google Analytics account number.  Installing Scommerce plugin Disable compilation mode by going to System > Tools > Compilation and click 'Disable' button.  Disable Google Analytics API.  Upload module to root folder (PDF). Now flush the cache.   Configure plugin.   If you have any further queries regarding the plugins we reviewed, don't hesitate to let us know in the comments.