Supported checkouts
Littledata supports checkout funnel event tracking for the following checkout flows:
- Shopify checkout (automatic setup) *
- ReCharge checkout (automatic setup)
- CartHook checkout (manual setup)
* If you have a headless Shopify site (a headless ecommerce site with a Shopify checkout), follow the headless setup guide.
Default checkout steps
When the end customer starts and progresses through the checkout on your ecommerce site, Littledata sends Checkout Step event action to your tracking destination for the following three checkout steps. These steps cover the default configuration for most popular checkout flows such as Shopify checkout and ReCharge checkout.
Step 1: Contact information
Step 2: Shipping information
Step 3: Payment method
Transaction (Order complete)
Tip: This article outlines how we send checkout step events. For more information on checkout tracking, see how to configure your checkout funnel in Google Analytics.
Event triggers and labels
For Shopify checkout and ReCharge checkout, you can receive the events in Google Analytics or Segment or both. For CartHook checkout, you can manually configure event tracking for Google Analytics destination by following our advanced tracking guide.
Let’s take a closer look at the structure of these events, what we call them when they’re triggered, and how they work.
Google Analytics destination
For Google Analytics destination, the checkout journey starts when a user clicks the checkout button.
Then we send the following checkout step events.
User Journey –> | Step 1 | Step 2 | Step 3 | Complete |
Contact info page viewed | Shipping info page viewed | Payment page viewed | Transaction Completed | |
Actual Trigger | Checkout object created in Shopify’s database for that cart | Customer property (PII) added to the checkout object | Shipping lines property is added to the checkout object | Order is created and marked as PAID in Shopify |
GA Event Label | Contact information | Shipping information | Payment method | Session with Transaction |
With the Google Analytics connection, all checkout step events are sent upon landing on the respective step.
Tip: Check out a detailed list of all events supported in Littledata’s GTM and Google Analytics data layer.
Segment destination
For the Segment destination, the checkout journey starts when a user clicks the checkout button.
Then we send the following checkout step events.
User Journey –> | Step 1 | Step 2 | Step 3 | Step 4 | Complete |
Contact info page viewed | Shipping info page viewed | Payment page viewed | Bank / payment verification | Transaction Completed | |
Actual Trigger | Checkout object created in Shopify’s database for that cart | Customer property (PII) added to the checkout object | Shipping lines property is added to the checkout object | Payment method property is added to the checkout object | Order is created and marked as PAID in Shopify |
Segment – Event name 1 | Checkout step 1 viewed | Checkout step 2 viewed | Checkout step 3 viewed | NA | Order completed |
Segment – Event name 2 | Checkout started | Checkout step 1 completed | Checkout step 2 completed | Payment info entered | NA |
With the Segment destination, Checkout Step Viewed is sent upon landing on the respective step and Checkout Step Completed is sent after the user has jumped onto the next step of the funnel.
Tip: Check out a detailed list of all events tracked by our Segment connection, and raw data examples.
How it works behind the scene
Due to security reasons, third-party apps such as Littledata don’t have direct access to the checkout pages on Shopify. We have to depend on Shopify’s webhooks to infer the checkout pages viewed by a particular user.
Edge cases
Oftentimes when a user zips through the checkout pages in quick succession (specifically under 10 seconds), Shopify only informs us of the last page viewed by the user. This leads to misleading spikes in some of the steps and makes the funnel nonsensical. See the example below:
Littledata’s solution
For every checkout step, Littledata checks back if it has sent events for all previous steps for the same user ID and checkout ID in the last 3 days.
In cases where previous step events were NOT sent in the last 3 days, Littledata retroactively adds checkout steps to make sure the user’s journey looks complete in the checkout funnel.
For example, let’s say a user is already logged in and gets through to the payment page within 10 seconds. For this user, even if Shopify only communicated the final end-state (i.e. payment page), Littledata will assume that they went through all steps of the funnel as expected and send 3 separate step hits to GA:
- Contact Information (retroactively added)
- Shipping Information (retroactively added)
- Payment Method (webhook end-state)
Trade-offs
Although retroactively adding steps makes the funnel a lot more meaningful, there are a couple of trade-offs that should be kept in mind while analyzing the data:
- This method could misrepresent the cases where the users actually started the session in the middle of the funnel by retroactively sending step hits to GA.
- Events on the same user checkout beyond the 3-days cut-off will be resent, which could lead to duplicate events sent to GA. However, we believe a 3-days will cover the vast majority of cases for most e-commerce stores.
Checkout Steps FAQ
My store has both Shopify checkout and ReCharge checkout, can I see the checkout funnels separately for each?
Yes, in Google Analytics destination, you can create the following segments on Checkout Behavior reports in order to visualize the funnels separately:
- Shopify Checkout: Create a segment with Event Category = Shopify (Littledata) and Event Action = Checkout
- ReCharge Checkout: Create a segment with Event Category = ReCharge (Littledata) and Event Action = Checkout
My store has both Shopify checkout and CartHook checkout, can I see the checkout funnels separately for each?
Unfortunately, no, you cannot visualize the two checkout funnels separately. Once you have set up CartHook checkout funnel tracking using our advanced tracking guide, all the CartHook checkout events and Shopify checkout events would be sent with Event Category = Shopify (Littledata), which makes the checkout events indistinguishable in Google Analytics.
How did the checkout funnel events work before October 2019
As of October 25th, 2019, we have moved away from a 4-step checkout funnel:
- Contact Information
- Shipping Information
- Payment Method
- Payment Processing (deprecated)
To a 3-step checkout funnel:
- Contact Information
- Shipping Information
- Payment Method
Payment Processing is the step when the user is redirected to the concerned payment authorities for verification and charge approval. Sometimes, this leads to an unnecessary spike in events at this step making the funnel look nonsensical. To simplify interpretation, we have decided to remove this step altogether.