GA4, the new version of Google Analytics, is the talk of the town these days. But is it really that different from Universal Analytics? What should DTC brands do today? Littledata is joining forces with some of our top partners in the Shopify and BigCommerce worlds to share insider knowledge about the new version of GA4: what's changing, what isn't, and what it all means for data-driven ecommerce businesses. Join us along with our tech partner Daasity and our agency partner Irish Titan for the ultimate GA4 webinar on Thursday, November 3rd. See you there! [tip] Missed this webinar? You can now watch it here on demand [/tip] As Universal Analytics’ last days approach us, we’re still seeing some confusion among ecommerce merchants on their migration to Google Analytics 4: ⚖️ What are the reporting differences between UA and GA4? 🔌 Why hasn't Shopify offered a plug-and-play solution for GA4? 📈 Will GA4 solve cross-domain tracking issues? 🤔 What exactly is event-based tracking anyway? Save your spot today >> With the busy holiday shopping season approaching quickly, there has never been a more important time to get your data ducks in a row. Register for our free webinar and learn how to quickly enable better tracking with first-party tracking with a free platform that is more reliable and robust than many paid solutions. [tip]Did you know? Google has added many features to GA4 that used to only be available to GA 360 customers (the expensive paid version of Google Analytics)[/tip] Littledata's plug-and-play GA4 integration is now available for Shopify and BigCommerce stores, including subscription tracking and conversion events. We've worked with the top Google Analytics experts to make sure we offer the best solution in the industry. Learn more about our GA4 connection for Shopify and Shopify Plus Learn more about our GA4 connection for BigCommerce Learn more about tracking Universal Analytics and GA4 in parallel Get the GA4 ebook Looking for that extra bump in effectiveness? Check out Littledata Plus for managed onboarding, manual data audits and analytics training.

Littledata is thrilled to announce our partnership with Awtomic, an innovative ecommerce subscription management platform, to help Shopify stores build delightful subscription products and bundles while getting complete data insights in Google Analytics. Founded in 2020 at the genesis of the modern subscription ecommerce boom, Awtomic seeks to help ecommerce brands build loyalty, increase customer lifetime value, and build sustainable businesses by leveraging the power of trustworthy subscriptions. Trusted by household names like Weight Watchers and backed by notable investors like Y combinator and Index Ventures, Awtomic has quickly become a popular choice for subscription management tools. Subscriptions are now a part of nearly every consumer's daily life, so subscription merchants need to provide a memorable experience while also making decisions based on accurate insights about their buyers. In our new world without third-party cookies, gaining those accurate insights to delight customers through personalization is a pressing challenge. Littledata and Awtomic's partnership means that merchants can leverage both tools to: Beat ad blockers using first-party data to preserve crucial insights into customer behavior and desires Convert more customers using flexible, personalized subscription plans unique to the merchant's offerings and goals Use automatic settings to manage inventory, shipping and dunning out of the box Connect Shopify to Google Analytics to eliminate data gaps and get a truly accurate picture of overall store health Offer product shuffles, bundles, and build-a-box subscriptions to customers that provide an elevated experience As the subscription economy continues to blossom both in size and revenue, increased competition and ever-evolving consumer demands mean that to win in the industry brands need to be able to stand out with their product offering and truly know their customers to tweak their product and stay ahead of the pack.   With Awtomic and Littledata, subscription sellers have two indispensable tools in their belt to accomplish their goals, fuel growth, and claim their piece of the subscription ecommerce pie.   Ready to take your subscription business to new heights? Learn more about using Littledata and Awtomic.

Littledata is excited to announce a new partnership with Dwight Funding, a leader in the DTC funding space, to help brands scale faster with flexible funding and hands-on support. Founded in 2015, Dwight provides capital to growth-stage ecommerce businesses to build out inventory, bridge gaps in the cash conversion cycle, and extend runway ahead of an equity raise. Having worked with brands like Cleancult and Chubbies, Dwight has remarkable industry knowledge and relationships, making it a natural fit with Littledata's customer base, which includes brands like Athletic Brewing and Laundry Sauce. What’s more, Dwight and Littledata both take a data-driven approach to helping brands scale. "For best-in-class businesses, being well-funded and spending sustainably go hand in hand. Littledata shares our commitment to data-driven growth and has been successful in giving DTC brands an accurate view across Shopify, GA and Facebook so that their marketing yields the best results." - Ben Brachot, Dwight Funding Co-Founder & Managing Director As privacy standards and the economic environment shift, Littledata and Dwight are here to help. Our shared mission is to empower growing DTC brands to thrive by providing them with seamless access to the tools they need—whether it be capital, expertise, or data to drive decision-making and growth strategy. Whether or not you're already a Littledata or Dwight Funding customer, contact us to learn more about: Optimizing marketing ROI with server-side tracking to "beat the ad blockers" and syncing Shopify data with GA Shoring up your financing in today’s economy How to create a high performing, data-driven culture “We're delighted to welcome Dwight Funding to the Littledata family as we team up to bring thriving DTC brands the tools they need to reach new heights. Littledata itself is in part financed by debt, and we understand the value of borrowing against tomorrow's revenues to fund growth today. Equally, these same fast-growing brands need accurate data to make decisions — accurate data that Littledata can provide for any brand using Shopify or BigCommerce.” - Edward Upton, Littledata CEO We're especially looking forward to collaborating with the Dwight team on resource development around best practices for optimizing cash flow across the balance sheet, from inventory management to marketing spend, including paid channels like Facebook Ads and email channels like Klaviyo. In the coming months, we'll be sharing updates on the blog and in our email newsletter. Ready to scale the smart way? Learn more about Littledata and Dwight Funding.

As the VP of Data Activation at Velir, I always encourage my team of analysts and analytics engineers to demonstrate the business value of data as early and often as possible. This helps avoid the ‘data death spiral’ where lack of understanding in a data project’s value can lead to reduced investment and further difficulties in showing value. That’s why Littledata’s ability to reduce the time to value for data integrations has been a critical input to success for Velir and our clients. There’s no better demonstration of this than our joint work building out johnnie-O’s customer data infrastructure. Building the stack johnnie-O is a leading men’s apparel brand that blends East Coast prep with Southern California surf style. After a surge in ecommerce sales, johnnie-O uncovered cracks in its marketing technology stack that were holding it back from its full potential. Its analytics reports were unreliable, and most of its shoppers received a static, non-personalized experience. In response, johnnie-O engaged Velir’s Data Activation team to deploy the customer data platform, Segment, and connect it to Shopify to produce advanced analytics and personalization capabilities. Littledata’s Segment connector saved the day by streamlining the integration and allowing us to bypass what would have been months of planning and development work implementing an ecommerce tracking plan from scratch. The final solution allowed johnnie-O to ingest high quality data into its CDP and revolutionize how johnnie-O understands and interacts with its customers. Getting a deeper dive into data Like many other businesses seeking to become more data-driven, johnnie-O doesn’t have any full-time data engineers on staff. For this reason, Velir recommended tools that provide turn-key integration over those that would require custom development. Included in this recommendation were Twilio Segment, Fivetran, and Littledata. Each of these tools focuses on making high-quality, timely data available to downstream systems with as little setup and maintenance as possible. Similarly, Snowflake was selected as a cloud data warehouse platform because of its low administrative overhead. The final data infrastructure shown below allows johnnie-O to flexibly handle both real-time and batch data workloads with ease. How Littledata links apps together Like other ecommerce retailers, johnnie-O faced challenges in coordinating the number of tools needed for its marketing operations. Twilio Segment is well-known for its ability to seamlessly synchronize data across marketing tools, but building and implementing an ecommerce tracking plan can take several months. During that time, no data is flowing into the CDP which means that no business value can be derived until after the data collection phase is complete. Littledata stepped up to the challenge by providing a full implementation of Segment’s ecommerce tracking specification from day one. This included tracking for events such as: Pageviews Product impressions and clicks Checkout steps Add to cart (server-side) Orders (server-side) Refunds (server-side) With these events in place, johnnie-O was able to forward them to tools such as Google Analytics for website reporting, Klaviyo for personalized messaging, and Power BI for business intelligence reporting. Why server-side tracking matters in data reporting Littledata’s server-side tracking capabilities were especially important to johnnie-O's reporting goals. While collecting order data through client-side JavaScript (like Google’s gtag.js) is possible, the quality can suffer due to variations in user browsers and behaviors. As a consequence, businesses like johnnie-O are often stuck jumping between different reporting systems to view ad performance, revenue, and behavior metrics. With Littledata’s server-side order tracking in place, johnnie-O was able to consolidate reporting in Power BI which had full visibility into orders, returns, behavior data, as well as shipping and other costs. This meant fewer places to look when stakeholders needed to answer questions and higher reliability in the data being presented. [tip]Learn how to create powerful, dynamic ads on Facebook using server-side tracking.[/tip] Conclusion Today, johnnie-O enjoys easy access to customer data for personalization and reporting. Segments of users like "high AOV boys clothing shoppers”, or "gift-givers" can be easily created and targeted with emails, SMS messages, and advertisements. The johnnie-O marketing team is able to unleash their creativity in crafting sophisticated, cross-channel personalized journeys without having to worry about the underlying data integrations. As a result, johnnie-O has seen increased engagement with personalized content and has been able to make smarter decisions about marketing spend and product purchasing. Importantly, johnnie-o has an enterprise-class solution that will keep up with their ambitious growth targets over the years to come. This is a guest post from Adam Ribaudo, who leads Velir's Data Activation Services. His group is focused on helping businesses convert data into business value through data engineering, advanced analysis, and data strategy. He holds a Master's degree in Data Science from Northeastern and has 16 years of experience helping marketers make the most of their marketing technology and customer data.

Who's setting the bar for subscription ecommerce in five core industries? Join our free webinar with UWP as we discuss and vote on industry-leading subscription brands, while sharing tips to help you keep up with the best! Five expert panelists from Littledata, LoyaltyLion, Underwaterpistol and ReCharge will do five rounds of website evaluations — one per industry — for fashion, beauty, food & drink, fitness and homeware.  Each audience participant will get the chance to vote, helping our panelists decide on the final winner in each industry! Save your spot now to join the live webinar on the 15th of April, 4-5 PM BST: Save your spot  https://youtu.be/4Q0Q7p03FmM About Littledata Littledata automatically fixes tracking for Shopify stores, offering complete marketing attribution, accurate sales data, and custom dimensions for lifetime value reporting. Littledata has been a leader in the subscription analytics space since we launched our first Shopify app in 2017, so this is an especially exciting opportunity to share not just our favorite subscription brands, but those who have been using data-driven strategies to accelerate growth. We now have advanced integrations with all of the top subscription apps, including ReCharge, Bold and Ordergroove. [tip]Ready for data-driven growth? Download our free ebook on ReCharge analytics[/tip] Whether they have focused on organic marketing and brand building (hello, Instagram!) or used cohorts and daily analysis to optimize paid channels for higher customer lifetime value (LTV), brands like Craft Gin Club and Dry Farm Wines are leaders in the subscription space. We look forward to debating the pros and cons of different subscription setups! Sign up for the free webinar >>> About UWP Underwaterpistol is one of Littledata's leading agency partners for Shopify Plus stores, specializing in design and development, growth marketing and Shopify migration. UWP does more than just launch a shop, they provide hands-on support to maximize their customers' ROI and build proven success strategies for each customer. Sign up for the free webinar >>>

Have plans this Thursday? Join me, Tamas Hanko, in a new webinar about why Shopify data doesn't always match Google Analytics -- and how to fix this. In this free webinar on Thursday, November 19th, hosted by our partners at Prisync, we will dive deep into the waters of Shopify and Google Analytics, and look at how to make this data play well together to power your ecommerce sales and marketing. There are lots of reasons why Shopify and GA might have a mismatch, and we'll run through the common ones plus a few outliers. Every site is unique, but there are common setup and tracking issues, especially with Shopify's checkout. In this free presentation, you will learn: Common issues with making Shopify data match Google Analytics dataUnderstanding the differences in how metrics are calculated in Analytics and ShopifyWhat server-side tracking can (and can't) do to help fix these issues Reserve your free spot today Can't make the live webinar? Sign up anyway and we'll send you a recording after the session. You can also check out Littledata's free ebook on Shopify and Google Analytics.

It seems like everyone's considering going headless lately. What do you need to know before you make the leap? This year, in addition to optimizing Littledata for Shopify Plus (including headless Shopify setups), we have extended our headless tracking to include ReCharge and Segment in addition to Google Analytics. And we have collaborated with Nacelle as our preferred tech partner for headless builds. Led by CEO Brian Anderson, Nacelle has raised around $4.8M in funding so far, including angel investment from Shopify and Klaviyo execs. A growing number of successful online brands seeking to go headless are using Nacelle for the build and Netlify for deployment, and it's been great to see remarkable performance improvements with shared customers like Ballsy, who saw a 28% conversion rate increase across the board after moving to a headless Nacelle setup with Littledata for analytics. So we were excited to contribute some ideas to the new Nacelle ebook on how to get the headless experience without overhauling your Shopify Plus tech stack. If you are using Shopify Plus (or planning a migration), we highly recommend downloading the free guide and sharing with your team internally -- as well as any external partners like ecommerce agencies and growth consultants. In the free guide, you’ll learn: How a headless PWA works in combination with top solutions including Shopify Plus, email, SMS marketing, reviews and user-generated content, affiliate marketing, subscriptions, analytics, and customer service What industry leaders in these respective categories have to say about going headless and enhancing functionality (including Littledata for analytics and some of our long-term partners like ReCharge for subscriptions and Refersion for affiliate sales) Real-world examples of merchant success To learn more, download the free guide from Nacelle. What about headless tracking? At Littledata, we do not see headless ecommerce as a passing fad. PWA tech has caught up to the needs of larger DTC brands, who want best-in-class technology at each customer touch point (eg. social microsites, one-click subscriptions, multi-currency payments, upsell funnels) alongside custom design and a deep cross-device user experience to match their brand story. As Nacelle explains, headless ecommerce now offers the possibility of not just integrating your current tools but actually improving the functionality of your Shopify Plus stack. Together we can build a shopping experience that is better, faster, more reliable, and more highly personalized. But without server-side tracking, getting accurate data about your headless Shopify setup can be extremely complicated. Check out our headless tracking demo to see how to automatically get complete sales and marketing data about your headless Shopify site in Segment or Google Analytics.

This week, we're continuing our Q&A segment: Lunch with Littledata! We sat down (virtually) with Anshey Bhatia, founder and CEO of Verbal+Visual, to chat about the Shopify world, good design, and where things are going. V+V is one of our fantastic agency partners here at Littledata. They work closely with thoughtful brands that are dedicated to a seamless, user-centric experience on Shopify Plus. We share a number of customers with the agency and it was great to catch up during these crazy -- but also inspirational -- times here in NYC. Let's dive right in! Q: How has COVID-19 impacted your clients overall? Have they seen a boom in orders or AOV, or has order volume been normal? Our clients with higher cost per units for non-home items have been much more affected than everyone else. While no client has seen a major boom, only one client has seen a significant loss, and they are a high-ticket, night-on-the-town apparel company that launched in February. All in all, while there was a slight dip for most in March, ecommerce rebounded quickly. Q: How has V+V adapted to the pandemic era? We have taken on some new client work that is smaller in scope than our typical projects. We’ve done this to help the immediate needs of brands that were not positioned to adapt to the acceleration of e-commerce shopping that we’ve seen. When we saw the need for smaller development projects that could save brands thousands of dollars a day in lost sales, we realized it’s more efficient to solve those short term problems before addressing a full site redesign. We saw the need for smaller development projects that could save brands thousands of dollars a day in lost sales Harley Finkelstein, the COO of Shopify, recently referred to Shopify as a “Retail Operating System”, and we agree with that definition. Our agency is not just building ecommerce websites; we create the infrastructure needed for a brand to scale across many different online and offline channels. [note]Wondering how Littledata has adapted? Here's what we're doing in response to the crisis.[/note] Q: If you were going to start a DTC brand right now, what would it sell? We partner with brands that are mission-driven and are thoughtful about their supply chains and materials. We also love working with brands focused on other mission-driven areas such as health and wellness, and empowerment / equality initiatives. With that in mind, we would start a DTC brand that sources non-perishable ingredients from local restaurants and merchants. Restaurants have come up with inventive ways to sell food and other products while their establishments are shut down, so bringing locally sourced products like sauces, spices, and seasonings to a larger audience is a huge opportunity. For example, Bread makers have seen the second largest increase in purchases from March 2019 to March 2020 as a result of COVID-19, and I have a feeling our team could design a pretty kick-ass bread maker! Q: Sounds delicious! So you're a group of ecommerce design experts — visual design, experience design, etc. What's the most challenging part of creating great design experiences for businesses running on Shopify? Two important issues come to mind. Firstly, brands always want experiential sites, however they also want high conversion rates and AOV. The two don’t always go well together. It’s important that while going through the design process, the tightrope between brand equity and conversion focus is walked across gently and that we don’t go too far in either direction at the risk of losing the other. This is not endemic to Shopify necessarily, however most brands that are on Shopify care deeply about their brand. Secondly, all ecommerce sites need to be accessible to everyone, everywhere. We need to design sites with accessibility as a priority, as it’s not only the law, it’s the right thing to do. The trick is retaining a unique experience, ensuring shoppability, and allowing equal access, all at the same time. Q: What are some underrated elements of great ecommerce design that merchants should pay more attention to? We spend a lot of time thinking about the design elements that are not immediately noticeable. A lot of the new brands we see have certain elements that are trendy or in line with an agency’s signature style. For us, we focus our energies on creating scalable design systems that will bend but not break as a company grows their enterprise. Sometimes that means we have to question the brand’s assumptions and really dig into their brand identity. It’s not always clear and then our job becomes designing a set of guidelines that can not only be applied to the digital experience, but elsewhere. While we don’t specifically focus on branding, it’s important that we understand the fundamental building blocks of the brands’ visual identity, so that we can bring that brand to life across digital touch points. We also pay attention to interactions, animations, and page transitions. These animations are not always noticeable and sometimes they are designed to be that way. If a PDP is image-heavy by design, we’ll create loading animations for those images, with the understanding that it will take a little longer to load some of those images as users scroll down the page. Q: What's your advice for merchants who may not realize that a great shopper experience is stalling their growth? A lot of brands are selling a great product, they’re creating compelling ads on Facebook and Instagram which tells the story of the brand. Then potential customers click on those ads and end up on a site that does not align with the touch points they’ve had with the brand so far. A digital experience that doesn’t align with the brand’s identity will immediately reduce trust between the customer and the brand. It’s important to have a seamless customer journey from delivering ads, to the website, to emails and even into the receipt of the packages. If parts of the customer experience don’t feel connected, you are more likely to lose your customer or lose their potential LTV. Q: How does ecommerce look different for standard Shopify stores vs. Shopify Plus stores right now? There are so many new brands appearing in different verticals right now. Shopify does a great job of giving brands the tools to get off the ground and running. However, when brands need to start to differentiate themselves, they break out of the templated design that Shopify is best for. From a design perspective, you can accomplish pretty much anything you want on a Shopify store all the way up to a Shopify Plus store. Shopify Plus stores, though, are able to elevate the holistic digital experience to another level. Shopify Plus offers significantly more functionality for brands that are going international and are expanding via physical retail or other channels. Shopify Plus is built to provide an entire commerce infrastructure, while Shopify is built for a starter level e-commerce experience. Shopify Plus also offers white glove customer service, which is hugely important for brands serious about their long term growth. Q: Is omnichannel selling a thing of the past? On the contrary, omnichannel is the future of commerce. Some people think of omnichannel as the relationship between offline and online shopping. We view omnichannel as any touch point your customer can buy at. COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of ecommerce, but ecommerce still sits at under 30% of total commerce. While most first-time ecommerce shoppers are going to large marketplaces like Amazon, Target, and Walmart, many of them are also exploring DTC brands for the first time. Brands are looking to shift to big marketplaces while also experimenting with new channels like TikTok and mobile gaming platforms. Additionally, we’re seeing traditionally offline businesses like restaurants looking for additional revenue streams. Shopify’s updates for Shopify POS have addressed the short term safety issues surrounding COVID-19, and we believe these updates will also help to improve the dynamic between online and offline, and make more shoppers comfortable with the idea of omnichannel. Ultimately, brands want to be where their customers are. We don’t always know what channels are going to be popular, but we do know all brands need a strong digital infrastructure in place to adapt and scale. Q: How crucial is it for Shopify Plus merchants to trust their tracking? In other words, how important is accurate Shopify tracking and reporting to a store's success? We use data to drive our design process, inform the user experience, and our ecommerce strategy recommendations. As mentioned before, one of the main problems we see with brands is the misalignment between their marketing campaigns, creative content, their website, and the unboxing experience. We use data to drive our design process and inform the user experience It’s critical for us to know where customers are coming from, how they are converting, how much they are spending, and their lifetime value. This not only helps our clients’ marketing efforts, but it allows their ecommerce team to make informed decisions. We can understand what changes need to be made to landing pages, PDPs, and path to purchase, and we can attribute customers to the correct marketing channels so that teams can align around shared goals. Accurate Shopify reporting ultimately leads to clarity around ownership of the data and accountability, so we can’t stress enough the importance of being able to read and interpret these data points.   Thanks again to Anshey and the Verbal+Visual team for hanging out with us online. Looking for more Lunch with Littledata? Last month we sat down with Chad Rubin, CEO of Skubana (and a Shopify seller too!).