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.

I recently stopped by the Honest Ecommerce podcast to give listeners the lowdown on ecommerce analytics. Check it out to learn how to fix tracking for Shopify stores! Get the free podcast episode here: Ep. 21 - How To Track Shopify Sales & Marketing (In A Way That Is Accurate & Useful) Honest Ecommerce is one of the fastest growing podcasts for Shopify and Shopify Plus store owners, from the good folks at Electric Eye agency in Columbus, Ohio. While the episode is focused on tips for Shopify stores, we chat about ecommerce tracking for every type of store, whatever platform and business model you're using, and how to do more with less, rather than getting bogged down in too much -- or inaccurate -- data. In the episode we cover: Why we started Littledata and the journey so far What is wrong with your data? (Does your Shopify data match what you see in Google Analytics?) What KPIs should you be looking at in Google Analytics? Using data to drive your business Analytics audits & ecommerce benchmarking How our integrations work, including Facebook Ads, ReCharge and Refersion Littledata's new Segment app for Shopify stores How to connect Facebook Ads data with Google Analytics automatically Which types of ecommerce sites get the most out of Littledata? And much more! :) Check it out and let us know what you'd like to hear about in our next podcast appearance. Haven't tried Littledata yet? Explore our connections or sign up for a free trial today.

The latest version of Safari limits the ability for Google Analytics (and any other marketing tags) to track users across domains, and between visits more than a day apart. Here’s how to get this fixed for your site. This article was updated 12th June 2019 to clarify changes for ITP 2.2. How does this affect my analytics? Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) dramatically changes how you can attribute marketing on one of the web's most popular browsers, and ITP 2.1 makes this even more difficult. How will the changes affect your analytics? Currently your marketing attribution in Google Analytics (GA) relies on tracking users across different visits on the same browser with a first-party user cookie - set on your domain by the GA tracking code. GA assigns every visitor an anonymous ‘client ID’ so that the user browsing your website on Saturday can be linked to the same browser that comes back on Monday to purchase. In theory this user-tracking cookie can last up to 2 years from the date of the first visit (in practice, many users clear their cookies more frequently than that), but anything more than one month is good enough for most marketing attribution. ITP breaks that user tracking in two major ways: Any cookie set by the browser, will be deleted after 7 days (ITP 2.1)Any cookie set by the browser, after the user has come from a cross-domain link, will be deleted after one day (ITP 2.2) This will disrupt your marketing attribution. Let’s take two examples. Visitor A comes from an affiliate on Saturday, and then comes back the next Saturday to purchase: Before ITP: sale is attributed to AffiliateAfter ITP: sale is attributed to ‘Direct’Why: 2nd visit is more than one day after the 1st Visitor B comes from a Facebook Ad to your latest blog post on myblog.com, and goes on to purchase: Before ITP: sale is attribute to FacebookAfter ITP: sale is attributed to ‘Direct’Why: the visit to the blog is not linked to the visit on another domain The overall effect will be an apparent increase in users and sessions from Safari, as the same number of user journeys are broken in down into more, shorter journeys. How big is the problem? This is a big problem! Depending on your traffic sources it is likely to affect between a quarter and a half of all your visits. The update (ITP 2.1) is included in Safari version 12.1 onwards for Mac OS and Safari Mobile. It does not affect Safari in-app browsing. Apple released iOS 12.2 and Mac OS 10.14.4 on 25th March 2019, and at the time of writing around 30% of all web visits came from these two browser versions on a sample of larger sites. The volume for your site may vary; you can  apply this Google Analytics segment to see exactly how. The affected traffic will be greater if you have high mobile use or more usage in the US (where iPhones are more popular). Why is Apple making these changes? Apple has made a strong point of user privacy over the last few years. Their billboard ad at the CES conference in Las Vegas earlier this year makes that point clearly! Although Google Chrome has overtaken Safari, Internet Explorer and Firefox in popularity on the desktop, Safari maintains a very dominant position in mobile browsing due to the ubiquitous iPhone. Apple develops Safari to provide a secure web interface for their users, and with Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) they intended to reduce creepy retargeting ads following you around the web. Genuine web analytics has just been caught in the cross-fire. Unfortunately this is likely not to be the last attack on web analytics, and a permanent solution may not be around for some time. Our belief is that users expect companies to track them across ­their own branded websites and so the workarounds below are ethical and not violating the user privacy that Apple is trying to protect. How to fix this There are three outline fixes I would recommend. I’m grateful to Simo Ahava for his research on all the possible solutions. The right solution for your site depends on your server setup and the development resources you have available. If you’re lucky enough to use our  Shopify app the next version of our script will include solution 1 below. Contact our support team if you'd like to test the private beta version. For each solution, I’ve rated them out of three in these areas: Quick setup: how much development time it will take to solveCompatibility: how likely this is to work with different domain setupsLongevity: how likely this is to work for future updates to Safari ITP Solution 1: Local storage Quick setup *** Compatibility ** Longevity* To solve the one day cookie expiry, you store the GA client ID in the browser’s local storage (which does not expire), along with the cookie. So before we allow GA to set a new client ID we first check if the Safari browser has a local storage. Here are the full technical details. Solution 2: Common iFrame plus local storage Quick setup ** Compatibility*** Longevity * The problem with solution 1 is that local storage is only available to an individual subdomain. Let's imagine a user journey that goes: Day 1: Visits blog.mysite.comDay 8: Visits shop.mysite.com In this case, the two visits cannot be linked because after 7 days the cookie has expired, and shop.mysite.com cannot access local storage on blog.mysite.com. Solution 2 fixes this by setting up a page on the top level domain (e.g. www.mysite.com/tracker.html) on which that local storage is set, and the page can be accessed from any subdomain. What makes it longer to setup is it will require a new page on your web server, not just script changes on the existing pages (or via GTM). Full technical details. Solution 3: Server-side cookie service Quick setup * Compatibility *** Longevity *** In the long term, ITP may target the local storage API itself (which is already blocked in Private browsing mode). So solution 3 securely sets the HTTPS cookie from your web server itself, rather than via a browser script. This also has the advantage of making sure any cross-domain links tracked using GA's linker plugin can last more than one day after the click-through with ITP 2.2. The downside is this requires either adapting your servers, proxy servers or CDN to serve a cookie for GA and adapt the GA client-side libraries to work on a web server. If your company uses Node.js servers or a CDN like Amazon CloudFront or Cloudflare this may be significantly easier to achieve. If you don’t have direct control of your server infrastructure it’s a non-starter. Full technical details. What about other marketing tags working on Safari? All other marketing tags which track users across more than one session or one subdomain are going to experience the same problem. With Google Ads the best solution is to  link your Ad account to Google Analytics, since this enables Google to use the GA cookie to  better attribute conversion in Google Ads reporting. Facebook will no doubt provide a solution of their own, but in the meantime you can also attribute Facebook spend in GA using Littledata’s  connection for Facebook Ads. Are there any downsides of making these changes? As with any technical solution, there are upsides and downsides. The main downside here is again with user privacy. Legally, you might start over-tracking users. By resetting cookies from the local storage that the user previously requested to be deleted, this could be violating a user’s right to be forgotten under GDPR. The problem with ITP is it is actually overriding the user’s preference to keep the cookie in usual circumstances, so there is no way of knowing the cookie was deleted by the user … or by Safari supposed looking out for the user! Unfortunately as with any customisation to the tracking code it brings more complexity to maintain, but I feel this is well worth the effort to maintain marketing attribution on one of the world's most popular browsers.

We're excited to announce a new integration with Klickly! Get ready for smarter analytics. Many Shopify stores know that their data isn't accurate, but they don't know where to start. Littledata tracks everything automatically. Our new Klickly integration offers full sales and marketing tracking, plus a free custom report to help you get higher ROI on Klickly campaigns. What’s Klickly? Klickly is an invite-only, commission-based advertising platform that enables ecommerce merchants to run unique buyable ads on thousands of well-known websites. With risk-free, commission-based pricing, you don't pay commission until Klickly gets you a sale. Setup takes less than 10 minutes, and there are no long-term agreements or fees. Stop paying for clicks + impressions that don’t lead to sales. Klickly lets you pay only when ads drive sales and set the commission that’s right for you. Benefits of Littledata's Klickly integration: Campaign reporting – Get automated reporting for sales from Klickly Ads Marketing attribution – Connect marketing channels and campaigns with shopping cart activity and buyer behaviour, with automated tracking for Shopify stores Optimisation – Make data-driven decisions with Littledata’s industry-leading analytics audit, smart connections and industry benchmarks Setup guide For the Littledata - Klickly integration to work, you need to have both apps installed for your store. Install Klickly and Littledata Ask the Littledata support team to activate the Klickly report for you Yes, it’s that easy! You can contact Littledata support from the Intercom widget in the app, or just reply to any of our onboarding emails :) Enterprise plans for larger Shopify stores and Shopify Plus If you run a larger Shopify store on Shopify or Shopify Plus, we’re here to help you scale. Littledata offers enterprise plans that include custom setup and a dedicated account manager. This can include anything from GTM setup to custom reporting. Larger stores looking for an enterprise plan are encouraged to sign up for a free trial of Littledata, then contact us for a free consultation so we can take an in-depth look at your setup. If you’re a digital agency with multiple customers on Shopify using Klickly, even better! Check out our agency partner program for Shopify experts. If you're looking for accurate, actionable analytics, Littledata's new Klickly integration will help you scale the smart way. Say hello to a better way!

It might be a familiar sinking feeling - why do users keep deciding at the last minute not to buy an item? There are a whole range of reasons that online shopper abandon their shopping carts. You might not be able to do anything about the majority of these reasons, but if you are seeing a high cart abandonment rate then it is definitely something you can actively work on minimising. In this post I dive into shopping cart abandonment: what it is, why it matters, and how to minimise it using proven practices from successful ecommerce sites. What is the average rate of cart abandonment? The Baymard Institute has compared reported cart abandonment from 41 studies, to conclude that the average rate stands at 69.57% in 2019. However, reports varied wildly over the years. In 2010, Forrester Research calculated that cart abandonment stood at just 55%. At the high end of the scale, AbandonAid stated in 2017 that cart abandonment occurs 81.4% of the time. Is your average checkout completion rate below the industry average? How to calculate cart abandonment rate Fortunately, there is no need to consult a mathematician when it comes to calculating your cart abandonment rate. To find the percentage of users who have not completed a purchase after adding an item to their cart, you must divide the number of complete purchases by the number of carts created: 1 - (Complete purchases/Carts created) x100 After doing this division, subtract the result from 1 and multiply by 100 to get your percentage. Fortunately, there’s no need to get the calculator out. You can easily monitor ecommere analytics with Littledata’s Shopify app. Connect this to Google Analytics to make the most out of tracking user movements - in this instance, when they removing products from the cart. Why might a cart get abandoned? There is no simple answer to this question. The truth is, carts get abandoned for a variety of reasons, although the recurring theme is that a lower abandonment rate means a more intuitive and trustworthy store. A high proportion of people browsing your store might be doing so in the hope of coming across a hidden discount, to compare prices or to check your stock against competitors. Some might even be compiling a wishlist for the future, with almost no intention of purchasing your product now. In short, there isn’t a lot you can do about this type of shopper. Focus, then, has to turn to the shoppers who would have made a purchase, was it not for an element of your site or checkout process that led to them scurrying away. As part of the Baymard Institute’s research into cart abandonment, it conducted a survey of over 2,500 US adults asking why they abandoned their purchase after passing the stage of adding an item to their cart. Many of the factors above can be countered by making tweaks to the checkout process. Take the second largest influence - “the site wanted me to create an account”. By offering a guest checkout option where an account is not necessary, this 34% of respondents will be one step closer to purchasing the product in their cart, and avoiding the dreaded stage of checkout abandonment. What goes into a better checkout process? It’s fine to say that the checkout needs to be streamlined in order to reduce cart abandonment, but what does this actually mean? What are the characteristics of a site that experiences relatively low checkout abandonment? This is specifically about what happens after a user has added a product to their cart - optimising add-to-cart rate itself is a different stage in the purchase funnel that we have talked about before here at Littledata. The first thing to take a look at is the intuitiveness of your buying process. After adding a product to cart, ensure that the following trail resembles a standard ecommerce store. This might mean identifying a clear “checkout button”, followed by payment options and providing delivery address, then reviewing the order before submitting. Any significant change to the standard process could throw a user off balance. Making your store as trustworthy as possible is another key step to reducing cart abandonment. Check that the secure payment icons are visible when checking out, and a money-back guarantee will always send a customer’s confidence skyrocketing. Offering incentives to complete a purchase also does the trick. As mentioned, shoppers may be on your site as part of a price comparison tour, so making a 10% discount visible from the outset will make your site a winner in the eyes of many a potential customer. In a similar vein, you should make sure that product and delivery details are easy to locate and understand. Adweek shows that 81% of shoppers conduct detailed research before buying a product, so make this task easier for them. Please don’t include any last-minute delivery charge shocks. Another thing to consider is the mobile-friendliness of your checkout process. The statistic that half of all ecommerce revenue will be mobile-based by 2020 is banded around a lot, but shouldn’t be ignored. If a site is near impossible to navigate on mobile, you can be sure of frustrated cart abandonment. 8 ways to minimise cart abandonment I want to give you a list of specific ideas that you could implement on your site. These have all been taken from Missions - our new optimisation tool. Each mission consists of a pack of ecommerce optimisation tips on a certain subject, complete with evidence and studies found by our researchers. The following eight tips, of course, have all been taken from our “Minimise Cart Abandonment” mission. Steeped in proof, we like to take a step away from gut feel. These tips have all reduced cart abandonment for other sites, and I am sure that some of their effects can be replicated. 1) Send cart abandonment emails This one really is the only place to start. We will of course take a closer look at tweaks you can make to your sales funnel, but targeting people who have already abandoned their carts is a crucial way of reviving a potential sale. Ecommerce site owners are becoming increasingly aware of the opportunities provided by email marketing. Hertz are one company making the most of this practice, reporting that 37% of people who opened a cart abandonment email went on to make a booking. In the past, so much money would have been left on the table by users who abandoned carts. Now, it’s so easy to send a personalised email to every customer who abandons their purchase on your site. This is all about remembering that not everybody who abandons a purchase does so on bad terms. They may simply have gotten distracted, or left the purchase for a later date. A friendly nudge back towards your buying funnel might be just what they are after! 2) Trigger exit surveys and live chat at key moments If a user is on the brink of exiting a site in frustration at not being able to find what they want, a live chat session could keep them around. Some classic stats served up by BoldChat suggest that live chat is the preferred method of communicating with a business for 21% of shoppers. If you manage to solve a customer’s biggest doubts, they will be one step closer to completing a purchase. In turn, exit surveys allow you to gather the opinions of customers who abandoned their cart. Why didn’t they make a purchase? Gold dust. Easily identify recurring themes and patch these things up so fewer potential sales slip through the net. A handy tip for exit surveys - give people open-ended questions to answer instead of preset options. According to Groovehq, this will increase response rate by 10%. 3) Use address lookup technology to minimise typing Form-filling is dull. Customers know this as well as anyone, and will often go to great lengths to avoid it. If your checkout funnel is littered with unnecessary forms to fill, more than a couple of potential customers will run like the wind. Of course, a customer’s shipping address is central to completing their order. To make this easier on them, some accurate address lookup technology such as Loqate will squash the time it takes to get things done. Anything you can do to make the form-filling process as pain-free as possible is a surefire way of reducing your cart abandonment rate. Hotel Chocolat, after introducing address lookup, reported a 19% uplift in the amount of people completing each stage of their checkout funnel. 4) Give shoppers the option of using a guest checkout Finding the option to “checkout as a guest” is starting to come as naturally to customers as looking for the “add-to-cart” button. Research from the Baymard Institute indicated that 30% of all shoppers abandon their purchase immediately upon viewing a registration process. Not even a second thought! Similarly to tip #3, this is all about saving time on the customer’s side. If they have a product in their basket and are willing to pay for it, the last thing you want to do is shove a registration form in their face. 5) Use dynamic retargeting to recover lost sales Stella & Dot saw their average order value increase by 17% when targeting customers with more relevant ads. This is all about employing technology which is able to accurately create a picture of a customer’s browsing experience, so that they can be targeted with adverts to match their interests. Although female lifestyle and fashion website Stella & Dot were more focussed on increasing their average order value, dynamic retargeting is a valid method of reducing cart abandonment by presenting individual users with adverts to match their activity. 6) Provide a one-click checkout Made famous by retail giant Amazon, a one-click or one-step checkout allows a user to immediately purchase a product if they already have their payment details registered on the site. The ability to avoid form-filling and save time is a godsend for shoppers - and the estimated $2.4 billion value of Amazon’s recently expired one-step checkout patent goes to show this. Other ecommerce sites have designed one-click checkouts of their own, finding that they do wonders for retaining customers within the purchase funnel. A case study by Strangeloop showed that implementing a one-step checkout increased conversion rate by 66%. 7) Be clear about delivery (especially free shipping) A joint study conducted by eDigitalResearch and IMRG found that 53% of cart-abandoners cite unacceptably high shipping costs as the reason for abandoning their purchase. Making sure that your shipping fees are blindingly obvious from an early stage in your purchase funnel will prevent any user frustration at discovering the cost just before payment, or simply not being able to locate this information at all. A study by Accent has shown that 88% of online shoppers expect free shipping to be offered to them in one way or another. Failing to meet this rising expectation will likely result in a chunk of abandoned carts. 8) Experiment with exit-intent popups It isn’t a coincidence that popups always appear just when you are about to close a page. Many sites use technology that detects an aggressive mouse movement towards the top corner of the screen - usually a sign that it will be closed down. These are a last-ditch attempt to keep a user browsing the site, but if they capture attention in the right way then they can work wonders in terms of saving a cart that was about to be abandoned. A common tactic is to offer a discount. Research from Beeketing indicates that 48% of ‘window shoppers’ would buy a product they were interested in if they were offered a limited-time discount. This works on the scarcity principle - a perceived rush to buy a product can prevent someone from abandoning their cart to come back at a later date. Reduce your cart abandonment today Packed with plenty of tips similar to the ones we have explored, the ‘Minimise Cart Abandonment’ mission will equip you with an arsenal of techniques to drive that statistic down and keep shoppers inside your purchase funnel until the very end. Littledata automatically benchmarks ecommerce sites so you can see how you compare, then recommends missions to optimise performance. Knowing your average checkout completion rate is a good place to start. Whether you're looking at a Shopify abandoned cart or abandoned carts on a different ecommerce platform, you can launch the 'Minimise Cart Abandonment' mission directly from your Littledata dashboard. Use the app to track progress as you test ideas to discover what works best for your site. And one final tip: don’t try to fix everything at once. Start with one of the tips above that’s most relevant to your current shopping funnel, and go - or should I say grow - from there! This is a guest post by Jack Vale, a UK-based freelance writer and ecommerce expert.

We're excited to participate in eCommerce Master Plan's virtual summit for subscription ecommerce this week. Littledata CEO Edward Upton is one of the lecturers, and that's not all! Over 10 industry experts have contributed in-depth online sessions to the summit, with advice for a variety of sites. This popular online conference is the place to be, whether you're just launching subscription products or looking to optimize revenue and customer lifetime value for an established brand.  eCommerce Master Plan Virtual Summit The summit is a gathering place for thought leaders and growing brands. Sessions are live today, Tuesday 30th April, and unlocked for participants until 5pm on Thursday 2nd May. In one of the online sessions, Ed shares essential advice about Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) for subscription ecommerce. Get the inside scoop on how to calculate CLV and what it means for your business. The summit is a who's-who of next-gen ecommerce apps and consultants. Ed is joined by experts from ReCharge, Churn Buster and more. Topics include everything from launching and scaling a subscription box company, to specifics about Facebook Ads and loyalty programmes. Why attend the summit? Why should you attend this 3-day annual conference? Chloe and the team break it down into the most convincing reasons: HUGE OpportunityThe latest Royal Mail research predicts the Subscription Box market will be worth £1 billion in 2022. This Summit will give you the knowledge to grab your share of that market growth It's a different ball gameSubscription eCommerce is a very different type of business to a 'normal' eCommerce business. Different challenges, different opportunities. This Summit will explore those differences, and how to make the most of them to build and grow your subscription business. Keep OptimisingLearn multiple ways to optimise and improve the marketing of subscription products. We couldn't agree more. It's why we built, and why we regularly highlight content specifically for online retailers selling things by subscription - whether it's the heart of your business (like it is for our customers Athletic Greens and Dry Farm Wines) or simply a part of your wider product mix. Plus, it's a virtual summit so travel costs are nonexistent. So start brewing that coffee at home and hop online for non-stop learning. Sign up today! Free podcast with subscription ecommerce tips Want to learn more before signing up? Conference organizer (and ecommerce mastermind) Chloe Thomas has you covered. Check out Chloe's latest podcast (the 213th episode!) on top tips from the summit - including some from Littledata. If you're looking for even more free content, this podcast episode is a great compliment to Ed's appearance on the eCommerce Fastlane podcast, where he breaks down how to get a complete picture of your store's performance, from marketing channels through repeat buying behaviour. Thanks and see you at the summit!

What an amazing year it's been already! With a focus on smart connections for ecommerce analytics, Littledata is scaling quickly. We recently closed a new funding round and are firing on all cylinders, ramping up our agile product development, marketing outreach, career opportunities and conference participation. Here's the latest news from Littledata HQ. Littledata closes new angel funding round We're excited to announce that Littledata has closed a new angel funding round. We will be using the new funding chiefly to enhance product development and inbound marketing. Funding is a tricky thing. Too many companies make big claims without building a viable product, or estimate markets that don't actually turn out to exist. We've taken the opposite approach, building automated tools that solve real problems faced by major ecommerce brands. After all, the fanciest reporting in the world is useless if you can't trust your data! In other words we've been conservative with our funding because we believe in establishing deep product-market fit, and this new round comes at a perfect time. I've long said that bootstrapping builds better startups. For a bit of Littledata history, check out CEO Edward Upton's appearance on the Ecommerce Fastlane podcast, and his take on six challenges in developing a Shopify integration. New connection: Shopify to Segment We worked closely with the Segment team to create the ultimate Segment connection for Shopify and Shopify Plus. Segment offers a powerful Customer Data Infrastructure (CDI) that lets you clean, collect and control customer data. Our Shopify app for Segment users fixes tracking automatically, and lets you use Shopify as a Segment source. Benefits include: Server-side tracking for 100% accuracy Capture every customer touch point, including checkout steps, sales data and customer lifetime value (LTV) Push Shopify customer data to hundreds of Segment destinations Set up in minutes for any Shopify store We're hiring! With great things on the horizon, Littledata is seeking the best talent across departments in London, NYC and Romania. Check out our job postings for an up-to-date list. Our values include: Agile development New technologies Open collaboration Happy people We're looking for brilliant team players who are ready to build the next generation of analytics apps. Google Analytics knowledge is essential. Ecommerce experience is a plus! Conference season We all might live online these days, but our team culture values meetups IRL. If you're heading to Shopify Unite in Toronto this June, or ReCharge's ChargeX conference in LA in September, send us a note - we'd love to see you :) Should you go to that ecommerce conference? How to decide. There's never been a better time to join the Littledata family, whether as a partner, customer or team member. Growth has never been stronger - and customer happiness continues to be our most impressive statistic. Thank you for joining us on the journey to better data!

When it comes to social profiles, most ecommerce marketers choose to highlight their products on Instagram. But how can you turn your Instagram marketing into consistent sales growth for your online store? Instagram gets over two times the engagement on photos versus all other social platforms. You’ll also find that more than one in three internet users interact with social media to find more information on a brand or product. Due to this, ecommerce stores are turning to Instagram for not only engagement but also for launching ads. This process is made simple by connecting an Instagram profile with Facebook, making it easy to convert the Instagram profile into a business one. This allows you to launch ads on Instagram, while all the data is directly connected to your Facebook account. Once you’ve created a promotion you have the ability to send it to your Instagram profile, your website, or your Facebook page. You can also create Instagram promotions directly from Facebook’s self-serve advertising platform. Some of the benefits of Instagram advertising include scalable pricing, control of who you’re targeting, and instant ads. As with Facebook Ads, you can define the goals by reach, traffic, and brand awareness. Gone are the days when Instagram was used just for engagement, it’s now a frontrunner for sales. Below are the apps that we’ve chosen based on rankings and reviews. 5 best Shopify apps for Instagram ads So here they are: the top 5 apps. If you're using Instagram to market your brand, these can help you increase sales and customer lifetime value. Much like our previous post where we dug into 15 Shopify apps that would help you increase AOV, we’ve taken the same approach to look into 5 Shopify apps that can help you increase your sales and deliver results. We searched for top-ranked apps to give you the best tools and ensure your ecommerce site is using Instagram to its full extent. 1. Instagram Shop by Snapppt Quick pitch: Shoppable galleries, UGC, find influencers & build communities Snapppt is a free, Instagram approved app that allows you to make your Instagram feed shoppable. That’s right, shoppers can now buy directly from your Instagram feed - now shoppers can instantly click on a pair of earrings they thought were great and buy them. An example would be South Beach Swimsuits, in the image below you can see how within the photo you can view the product displayed and shop for that item directly from Instagram. Snapppt also gives brands the ability to track their customers from the point of seeing an Instagram image all the way to checkout. While Instagram is testing out their own checkout, called simply Checkout, we still think Instagram shop is a better fit for Shopify stores. It's a must-have for brands looking to add to their sales pipeline. Happy scrolling! 2. Kit Quick pitch: Run better Facebook ads Kit is an official Facebook Marketing Partner that integrates with Facebook and Instagram. Kit's been owned by Shopify since 2016, so obviously it's a great fit for any Shopify store looking for smart automation! What is Kit? It's a virtual marketing assistant that can manage your Facebook Ads, Instagram ads, social posts, and email marketing to help you drive sales. Need help creating discount codes and targeting customers? Kit is really helpful with that - all you need to do is communicate via SMS or Facebook Messenger. Just type in some commands and Kit will be ready for duty. It also works with other Shopify apps like Yotpov and Venntov. Kit will make your life easier when it comes to managing ads and can even help you generate reports for sales. Hire an assistant or get a free assistant with Kit? Tough choice, big reward. 3. Google Analytics by Littledata Quick pitch: Google Analytics app with Facebook Ads & ReCharge connections Littledata's Shopify app fixes your tracking automatically and gives you accurate data. Once you install, all you have to do is connect your Facebook Ads account using our Facebook integration. Using that Facebook integration, we'll show you the real ROI of your Instagram ads - and connect ad performance to buying behavior, like adds-to-cart and recurring purchases. That’s right - since your Instagram ads data is found in Facebook Manager, all you need to do is connect Facebook Ads and you’ll get that data imported right into your Google Analytics account. Simple, right? That’s what we thought as well. After you connect, that data will be seamlessly pulled into your overall ecommerce tracking, so you can see if your Instagram promotions lead to purchases and conversions, or just a lot of ‘window shopping'. [subscribe heading="Connect Instagram Ads to Google Analytics" background_color="grey" button_text="free trial"] 4. Vantage Quick pitch: Automated Facebook & Google Ads for Your Ecommerce Store Vantage uses your Shopify data to help you better target and retarget audiences based on customer interests, behavior and purchase history. For example, if you sell sports clothes and health vitamins, you can automatically run Instagram ads aimed at people who are interested in health, vitamins and sports apparel. This makes sure that your ads are seen by the optimal shopper. Vantage helps Shopify merchants understand shopping behavior using insights from your store. It allows you to personalize content using highly targeted and automated Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads, all of which Vantage integrates with. It also auto-optimises, so you won’t waste money on ads that aren’t performing well. It will reallocate your budget so that you're focusing on the right channels and best placements. Vantage allows you to target ads based on demographics, interests, as well as online behavior - leading to even better results for your Instagram ads. With more successful ads you’ll be able to bring more people to your site and your Instagram page. 5. Stamped.io Reviews Quick pitch: Get product reviews, site reviews, photo/video reviews and Q&A Stamped.io Reviews takes your customers words or content and uses it to increase your sales. It’s an easy three-step process as you can search Instagram for the photos you want to add to your gallery, tag them with items from your store and showcase those by creating a gallery. You have complete control over the contents of the gallery, which can includes images that are posted by customers. As people are interacting with your Instagram feed or the gallery on your site or blog they are able to see the products in one place instantly. This also allows for a smarter marketing strategy as you’re using user content to your advantage to drive traffic. All of these Shopify apps add something special to make sure that your Instagram is performing at its best. They can lead you to a more successful marketing strategy due to smarter ads, ad cost analysis, and a directly shoppable Instagram feed. Let’s remember that Instagram has 58% more engagement than Facebook and 75% of Instagram users take an action after seeing an engaging post. You don’t want to miss out on those numbers, so optimise your Instagram for success today!