It's been a busy week in Toronto. We're still here at Shopify Unite, but yesterday's announcement day was chock-full of exciting new updates and experiences for Shopify Partners, merchants and agencies. With the most popular Google Analytics app for Shopify merchants and a new Segment app live in the app store as well, our ears perked up and stayed up! We chatted with our agency partners to get some feedback about which announcements might have the biggest impact on their business, from design and development to growth marketing for Plus stores. Here are six major changes: 1) New online store experience (updated design) Shopify's new store design experience will make it easier for merchants to personalise their storefronts without having to write any code. Later this year, Shopify will also introduce a feature that helps agencies provide the "highly valuable skills and services needed to take a merchant's business to the next level". What that feature set looks like is unclear at the moment, but what is clear are the following five design updates: Sections for each page: Sections-based editing is now enabled on every page of a merchant's online store, offering more space for creative freedom and personalisation. Master pages: Merchants can now dictate content and apply changes to all pages by simply editing the master page. Starting points: Shopify themes will offer "starting points", which will be pre-configured content sections to help accelerate store setup. Merchants can choose their starting point and easily fill it with content. Content portability: Store managers rejoice — content is no longer stored in themes, meaning merchants can make changes to their store without duplicating themes. Drafts: Merchants can draft changes on their store without making the changes go live. Merchants can play with design, content, etc. and only publish when they please. UX/UI: A new Shopify interface means (hopefully) a better merchant experience. Shopify says creating a store will now be a more intuitive experience, thanks to the new UI. In light of a new storefront app extension for agency partners, Shopify is unlocking a new feature that lets partners add apps to their storefront. [subscribe heading="Top Google Analytics app for Shopify" button_text="Learn More" button_link="https://www.littledata.io/connections/shopify"] 2) New Shopify Plus admin dashboard (multiple stores, multiple shoppers) Out with the old, in with the new Shopify Plus. The large-scale update will help large, multilayered businesses to manage multiple stores, shoppers and automation — all from a sleek new admin dashboard. The new design will offer brands: Robust insights across all of their stores The ability to manage multiple stores and user permissions from one place A better space to facilitate better store operations Shopify also continues to add more possibilities for what you can do with Shopify Flow, a smart way to automate workflows within Shopify Plus. For example, user admins and assigned staff members will soon be able to copy flows across all of your stores. [subscribe heading="Top Google Analytics app for Shopify Plus" button_text="Learn More" button_link="https://www.littledata.io/connections/shopifyplus"] 3) New checkout app extension for subscriptions [Coming soon] This is a big one, though the details are not yet clear. Later this year, Shopify Partners will be able to access the company's very first checkout app extension. The extension will mainly focus on improving purchase flow for subscriptions. The idea is to keep everything within Shopify's checkout flow, rather than sending shoppers to other apps. In Shopify's words: Buyers will no longer be routed outside of Shopify’s checkout to complete their transactions. Developers will be able to integrate their subscription apps into the checkout experience, surface their app’s information into Shopify’s checkout, and give merchants the ability to process transactions for subscription goods and services within one seamless checkout experience. If you or your clients are using ReCharge for selling subscriptions in your Shopify store, don't worry. Nothing changes now. You can still use Littledata's advanced Google Analytics integration for ReCharge to get accurate data about subscription sales and marketing channels, and we'll keep you in the loop about accurate tracking for checkout app extensions, once those get closer to going live. 4) Custom storefront tools, including multi-currency for non-Plus stores Because the customer journey is about more than an attractive website and pretty design, Shopify has taken the headless commerce approach by creating custom storefront tools for niche and complex ecommerce businesses. They're calling this "flexible commerce" and it promises to have a big impact on key Shopify benchmarks. These flexible commerce tools help merchants: Create a beautiful front-end experience Play a bigger role in a more personalised shopper experience (i.e. connecting to a CMS tool to share more dynamic pieces of content) Engage with shoppers through voice shopping, smart mirrors, smart fridges, etc. Leverage the scaling ability and speed of a headless commerce model Merchants and agencies can also now access the following through the Storefront API: Selling in multiple currencies New product recommendations Shopify Scripts All Shopify merchants now have the ability to sell in multiple currencies with Shopify Payments. This feature was previously only available to Shopify Plus merchants. 5) POS cart app extensions for loyalty and promotions Checkout is now faster and easier for both merchants and customers. Store managers can now see details about customer loyalty and promotions "directly in the cart without having to click away". The POS cart app extensions provide merchants with the "loyalty and promotion app functionality (they) want, where they need it: within the customer cart". With a more seamless checkout experience, merchants and customers can now enjoy better: Speed: The time it takes to apply a discount code is now down from 15 to 5 seconds Visibility: Store managers don’t need to remember to visit the apps section of POS Recognition: Customers feel more appreciated, no matter where a purchase is made The new POS app extensions helps both merchants and development teams improve the user experiences of the storefront(s) they manage. [Coming soon] Shopify's updated POS app will prioritize "quick and seamless workflows, helping store staff focus on what’s most important to them: human-to-human customer interactions and making each sale a positive experience". 6) New order editing APIs Shopify's brand new order editing features of the GraphQL AdminAPI enables apps to add, drop or replace items "before the line item has been fulfilled". This offers merchants increased flexibility after a purchase. 7) Shopify Fulfillment Network Once this news broke, we watched Twitter run wild as store managers imagined the possibilities with Shopify's brand new Fulfillment Network. Designed to compete with the world's top fulfillment networks (Amazon, USPS, etc.), the network will be built across the United States at first before (hopefully) expanding across the Atlantic. Shopify will be pumping over a billion dollars into this infrastructure, expanding and improving the network. The network gives Shopify merchants access to tools and services previously only available to the biggest stores in the world. Benefits include: One back office: This will reduce both errors and frustration for store management teams Maintain inventory integrity: Made possible by scheduling rhythmic cycle counts Nearly 100% accuracy: Orders will be ready to go on-time without the risk of error regarding order contents, shipping addresses, etc. Your eyes at the warehouse: Shopify is providing merchants with dedicated account managers with "logistics and Shopify expertise". The Shopify Fulfillment Network will also support the following: Multiple channels — online store, retail, Instagram, eBay, Amazon, etc. Returns and exchanges Custom (branded) packaging Stores of all sizes — "shipping 10 to 10,000 products a day", aiming to get this to "3 to 30,000" per day in coming years Is there anything we missed? Let us know. Next up, Ed will break down the announcements and unpack what they mean not only for Shopify partners and agencies, but for teams that rely on Littledata's smart connections for marketing attribution and better business decision-making. Stay tuned! Photo credits: Littledata, Shopify

We’re proud to announce our sponsorship with De:brief., this week's exclusive, post-Shopify Unite event. We'll look at what was announced at the leading Shopify conference, and what it all means for Shopify partners, app developers, and ultimately for merchants. Every year we go to Unite. And every year we ask ourselves: wouldn't it be nice to have some time to just debrief about all the things that were announced, and what they really mean? De:brief is an essential post-Unite gathering for partners working at the forefront of the Shopify ecosystem. It will take place on Friday this week in Toronto, the day after Shopify Unite.   De:brief will be a prime opportunity hear Shopify expert analysis, dive into the details of what was announced at Unite, and unpack what those announcements mean — especially to those within the Shopify partner ecosystem. With a ton of Littledata customers using our Google Analytics Shopify app -- and the upcoming release of our V8 Shopify tracking code -- we're especially excited to chat about how we can all work together to help stores scale faster and smarter. Who's coming? Over 150 data analytics experts and colleagues will also be joining networking and discussions around panels about Shopify updates and the impact they'll have on ecommerce going forward. We're happy to announce that our leading integration partner ReCharge will be leading a panel, and the good people at our agency partner We Make Websites will be there as well. Food for thought As official sponsors of the De:brief event, Littledata's co-founders Edward Upton and Ari Messer will be at the event and Ed will be on a panel about the app economy. A terrific opportunity to network with peers, discuss key industry trends and hear from ecommerce thought leaders, De:brief is an event you can't miss. For more details or to reserve your seat, check out De:brief's registration page.

Understanding how your website performs versus similar sites is the best way to prioritise what to improve. In this post we take a look at 6 top benchmarks for optimising Shopify store performance. Accurate benchmark data is especially useful to the increasing number of ecommerce companies using web performance benchmarks, such as bounce rates and home page reliance, as core elements of their sales and marketing KPIs. Understanding benchmarks is a key to success. To put together this new benchmarking report, we analysed current data from 470 Shopify retailers. If you're wondering how you compare, check out our Shopify analytics app. Average order value Average order value (AOV) or Average revenue per paying user (ARPU) is the total monthly revenue divided by the number of users which transacted that month. It is a measure of how well you are up-selling and cross-selling your products, depending on your product mix. What is a good average order value for Shopify stores? The benchmark is $69. The average is slightly lower ($63.50) if you are a smaller Shopify store. More than $120 AOV would put you in the top quartile, and one of our top-performing stores in the luxury ecommerce sector is averaging $2,080 per order! If your Shopify store has a lower AOV than the benchmark, you might try increasing your average checkout value by cross-selling other products, offering free shipping above a minimum threshold or increasing pricing on selected products. [subscribe heading="How do you compare?" button_text="BENCHMARK YOUR SITE"] Ecommerce conversion rate Ecommerce conversion is the number of purchases divided by the total number of sessions. Most visitors will take more than one session to decide to purchase, but this is the standard measure of conversion rate. It is a measure of how good a fit your traffic is for your products, and how well your site converts this traffic into customers. What is a good ecommerce conversion rate for Shopify stores? The benchmark is 1.75%. Larger stores have pushed this to 1.85%, and if you are more than 2.8% you are in the top quartile. The highest conversion rate we’ve seen on Shopify is 8%. Can you increase the conversion rate with more attractive product displays, or improving the checkout process? Enhanced ecommerce tracking will help you identify exactly where the blockers lie. Bounce rate from mobile search Since more than 60% of Google searches are now done on mobile, ensuring your site design works on a small screen is important for branding and sales. Bounce rate is the percent of visits of only one page – and will be high if your landing pages do not engage. Google will even adjust your mobile ranking for a given keyword depending on what proportion of visitors stick on your page - a good indication that your link was useful. What is a good bounce rate from mobile search for Shopify stores? The benchmark is 47.5%. The biggest Shopify stores have got this below 40%, and overall large retailers have 38% mobile bounce rate. So it’s not a problem with the Shopify platform, so much as a problem with the store theme – or how the options and products are displayed on a smaller screen. Can you improve the first impressions of the landing pages, put key content higher up the page, or decrease the page load speed to reduce that bounce rate? Delay before page content appears The delay between a page request by the user and them being to read or click on that page. This is more important than full page load speed for AJAX / lazy loading sites (also called the ‘DOM Interactive Time’). What is a good delay time before page content appears? The benchmark for Shopify stores is 2.75 seconds. Even larger retailers have this down to 2.8 seconds, so Shopify sites do well on this score. Anything less than 3 seconds is generally acceptable. Internet users are increasingly intolerant of slow sites. Your developers could look at Google PageSpeed Insights for more details. Often the delay will be down to extra scripts which could be delayed or removed. [subscribe heading="How do you compare?" button_text="BENCHMARK YOUR SITE"] Server response time This is the part of the page load speed which is entirely outside of your control – and due to the speed of the servers your site runs on. What is a good server response time for Shopify stores? The benchmark is 322ms. The average for larger ecommerce is 542ms – so Shopify’s server infrastructure is serving you well here. Reliance on the homepage This is the percent of visitors who land on your homepage. If this is below 40% you rely heavily on your homepage to capture brand or paid search traffic. Google increasingly rewards sites with a greater volume of landing pages targeting more specific keyword phrases. What is a good reliance on homepage percentage for Shopify stores? The benchmark is 32%. Larger Shopify stores, with many more landing pages, have reduced this to 7.3% of traffic landing on the homepage on average. Can you build out product landing pages and inbound links to copy their advantage? Ready to benchmark your own website, stop playing guessing games and start scaling your ecommerce business? Our Shopify reporting app is the easiest way to get accurate benchmarking. Install Littledata today and you'll get instant access to up to 20 relevant industry benchmarks for ecommerce sites, plus the tools you need to fix your analytics for accurate tracking, so you'll always know for sure where your website stands. It's all about smart data that helps you focus on making changes that drive revenue and increase conversions. We're here to help you grow!

As experts in web analytics for ecommerce sites, we often tinker with our data collection ‘engine’ to get the best results. In the latest iteration of our tracking code, we’re proud to announce some major improvements. Littledata's V8 Shopify Tracking Code comes with exciting improvements in three major areas: data accuracy, page speed, and versatility. These new changes will affect both our Google Analytics and Segment tracking code for Shopify sites, plus any stores using our data layer to trigger events in Google Tag Manager (GTM). Here's a quick rundown of the update: Improvements for accuracy We improved the way we track key events so that: Product list views are sent only as users scroll down the page and view a product for more than 300 milliseconds (the minimum time it takes the human brain to process an image) Product list views and clicks have more accurate position information to help optimize product sort order Search pages are also tracked as product lists Social shares and clicks on product images on product detail pages are tracked These new improvements follow other recent improvements  we've added, which include: Using the latest gtag and GTM libraries Tracking page views only when the page was actually viewed [subscribe] Improvements for page speed Our research on performance has shown that faster page load speed is linked with better ecommerce conversion rates. With this in mind, we're reducing the time it takes to load the tracking script. Here's how we're doing it: A much smaller data layer for product list pages, especially for stores with lots of product data Minified tracking code, hosted on a content delivery network (CDN) Moved to server-side tracking of add-to-carts, resulting in a smaller script in the browser Removed dependency on jQuery As an example, let's imagine a product listing page has 30 products. Previously, the total Javascript data layer size would have been ~100Kb, but after the update would be less than 20Kb — up to 5x zippier! Improvements for versatility Tracking adds-to-cart is surprisingly hard. While this is partly due to add-to-cart buttons being targeted by many other scripts, the main culprit is something else — many online stores have a mini-cart or a separate checkout button. This means users may never actually see a 'cart' page at all. Our new V8 Tracking Code bypasses this issue by tracking cart updates from Shopify’s servers without generating any extra or cost for your web servers. This means that whenever an online shopper adds or removes your product from their cart — whether by clicking on desktop or swiping on mobile — that action will be tracked with 100% accuracy. How do I get this update? [Update] V8 is now out of private beta — this means all Shopify stores installing the Littledata app use the new tracking code. This updated script, as well as all future improvements, is included with your ongoing Littledata subscription. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy automatically accurate data about your Shopify store performance. What if I need to keep the previous script version? That's fine too. Just reach out to our support team before 6th September and we can make sure you don't get the V8 script.

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.

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. Transcript [00:00:01.750] - AriYou don't want to start redesigning the site or changing your product line based on a really limited sample because it could be just random. So the more data you can get, the more you can make sophisticated decisions. [00:00:16.300] - AnnetteWelcome to Honest Ecommerce, where we are dedicated to cutting through the b.s. and finding actionable advice for online store owners. [00:00:24.000] - ChaseI'm your host, Chase Clymer [00:00:26.050] - Annetteand I'm your host, Annette Grant [00:00:28.660] - Bothand we believe running an online business does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. [00:00:33.160] - AnnetteIf you are struggling into scaling your sales electric I is here to help to apply to work with us. Today's episode of Honest Eommerce. We welcome the co-founder of Littledata, Ari Messer. [00:00:53.930] - ChaseHe's going to explain to us that our data is broken and how to fix it. [00:01:04.310] - ChaseHey everybody welcome back to yet another episode of Honest Ecommerce. I do want to take one second to say thank you to everyone that's actually listening to it. I've gotten so many e-mails from people or just correspondents where people are like "we actually listened to your podcast. Like I learned something from your podcast." So now I have proof that I'm not just talking into the cloud. [00:01:23.240] - AnnetteWell Chase I hate to break it to you. That's me. I've made a lot of aliases and I'm emailing you to make you feel good about yourself. [00:01:29.360] - ChaseCool. Well then that's a bummer (laughs). Anyways welcome to Honest Ecommerce. [00:01:34.730] - ChaseI'm Chase Clymer, this is my co-host Annette Grant. And today we welcome to the show Ari from Littledata. He is going to kick our butts into gear with Google Analytics. Welcome to the show Ari, and let us know how you know so much about analytics. [00:01:49.130] - AriIt's good to be here. And I actually have I haven't created any aliases but I have the show that I've heard so far. I think it's great to have something here that's, you know, merchants really find useful and find that other agencies and partners too. [00:02:02.910] - ChaseSo yeah I just don't like to blow smoke up people's butts I like it to be honest and real. It takes hard work. [00:02:09.320] - AriYes. Yeah I think there's a lot more space for that now. If you can speak intelligently to people, they'll pay attention. [00:02:17.360] - AriThe more you learn about analytics, the more there is to know (laughs). Basically I joined Littledata as a co-founder a few years ago, and we've been on Shopify for about two years now. We're adding a lot of connections, the main ones being to Google Analytics. So what I knew before joining was really about how analytics could be used to help people grow a SaaS app, because they really were in the startup space a lot and now have learned more and more about analytics for ecommerce. So that's what we're here to talk about today. [00:02:53.150] - ChaseAwesome. So what was that transition like? How did you go from helping SaaS companies to building Littledata. [00:03:00.230] - AriYeah, it was really a natural transition. As we all know, ecommerce is huge. It's growing in all directions, it's continuing to grow and not just in the US, but all around the world. I'd had some cool gigs helping SaaS companies build out integrations. I used to work mostly on the product marketing side. Now, being this close to the company, I sort of do all kinds of things. It was really a lot of those integrations were either directly ecommerce-related or something that was sort of peripherally commerce-related, like helping build out an integration to do retargeting for card abandonment and stuff like that. [00:03:41.390] - AriAnd then with Littledata I met Edward Upton, the original founder in London, and kind of came on and as a Google Analytics consultant at first and just thought, "oh wow, this is a really cool idea — you're actually helping people fix their data, not just report on it." [00:03:57.590] - ChaseSo what is one of those common mistakes that you guys were seeing out there with the data? What's broken with my data? [00:04:08.370] - AriWe do have an audit tool that people can plug in and sort of get a sense for what might be tracked correctly and what's not. So there are all kinds of things that can go wrong. I think for Shopify stores in particular, there's often a mismatch between how sales are being calculated. So that includes different parts of the checkout funnel, when types of products or product groups people are adding to cart that are not purchased, and all the way through actual sales and refunds. [00:04:42.870] - ChaseI can agree with that. I noticed there's always a mismatch between the number in Google Analytics and the number in Shopify. [00:04:49.790] - AriAbsolutely. And with our app, we basically fix that issue. You know sometimes, you have to do a few more connections and activate some of our plugins (like if you're using ReCharge to do subscription sales or whatever it might be). But basically, what the app does, (not to get too geeky) is use server-side tracking so that every single user action and every sale is tracked in Google Analytics. So what you see in Shopify will match what you see in GA. [00:05:22.170] - AnnetteSo you can get yours to match Google Analytics? [00:05:26.610] - AriYeah, I would say 99.9%. [00:05:30.780] - AnnetteWow. So if people if things aren't tracking properly, is it because the developer didn't set up Google Analytics correctly? Let's kind of peel it back for for our listeners. If they're looking at their Google Analytics, what are some red flags where they would be in need of "pick your theme and get it in the app." Google Analytics sometimes gets very confusing, so walk me through what are the top things to look at and what needs to be fixed? [00:06:13.260] - AriThe main thing is just like Chase was mentioning that just raw sales numbers like when you look at the number in your bank account maybe doesn't match what's Shopify shows. And that doesn't match what's in Google Analytics. So that's definitely a red flag because if you're looking at any sort of marketing campaign — I know we're all getting more and more sophisticated about using audiences and all this stuff like fancy stuff for retargeting and trying to sort of sell people stuff that they're more likely to want to buy — often, you go in there and look and say "well this campaign seems to have worked really well, and yet, the overall sales number is not matching what should be the number of conversions that we got. So it's any kind of mismatch like that, when you're like "this just doesn't seem right." And then of course as you grow, being off by a couple percent can means more and more amount of money. So any kind of mismatch is kind of the thing to look for. [00:07:15.670] - ChaseYeah I mean it's just a snowball effect. Like "oh it's just a few dollars" but that can add up. [00:07:20.760] - AriAnd I wouldn't blame the developers for a lot of it. Some of it's just that Shopify's native tracking and their native Google Analytics integrations are fine, but they're just not that sophisticated. And as we all know, part of that's because they have this really awesome app ecosystem. So you kind of have to find the right tools to make sure it works so that nothing is missing. I mean, I've been guilty of it too, not tagging campaigns consistently, like when you're making your Facebook campaigns and then you start to add more, like the snowball effect. Like how do you really organize them or make sure everything's tracked right? [00:08:03.980] - ChaseThere's just so much in there. So I just want to bring it down to simplify it a bit for our listeners. So, you know, I've got Joe's shoe shop. We're selling sneakers and we're real business. This isn't like a side hustle, this is my full time job. What are the KPIs I should be looking at in Google Analytics? Let's just try to educate people about Google Analytics a bit. [00:08:28.600] - AriSo one thing you should be looking at is how detailed...like if you start to wonder "is this product group performing well?" so stuff that's sort of outside normal questions about overall how's the business doing. So stuff like payment cart abandonment, products being added to the cart, particular pages getting more views than other pages. What are some of the basic thing is that make sense? Like it's the sort of details if you think about merchandising or you're thinking about the next season or what you're going to do for a promotion if you want to go in and look in GA to try to figure out a data-driven view of of what to sell or what to promote or things that might get more subscriptions. [00:09:26.500] - AriLet's say the shoe business is on subscription, running shoes where you've got a new one every month or every quarter or something. You'd want to go into GA and be able to see the type of product that you should promote. [00:10:55.390] - ChaseI think a common oversight with analytics is "it's just data." It's just a bunch of numbers and you have to extrapolate from those numbers and make inferences. You use that data to drive your business and if there isn't like a on-size-fits-all approach to it, it's definitely business-specific. [00:11:20.650] - AriYeah for sure. And so for us, you know with Littledata, what the app does is first, fix the tracking, so then for your particular business, you can go in and figure out the key metrics to to pay attention to. With ReCharge, I'm sure you have a lot of clients doing subscription business. And we're definitely seeing a lot of people that are either experimenting with subscriptions or that's like all of what they do, you know for like athletic supplements or workout clothes or whatever it is. [00:11:52.240] - AriI'm just bringing it up but I think it's a really good sort of case study in how a basic fix in analytics can really help. And you might want to just see if your advertising campaigns are leading to more first time purchases or recurring purchases, like people signing up to get stuff every month. And unless you've set up tracking correctly for the checkout flow, you'll go into Google Analytics...you could be running your company for years and go in (to GA) and suddenly realize there's no way to see that that split. [00:12:29.870] - ChaseYeah that's definitely important information. [00:12:32.720] - AnnetteThis might be a left field question, but can the app at all help with search engine optimization like work the organic there if things are behind the scenes are running smoother? Like could it help you notice things that would help you rise to the top a little bit more? [00:12:51.440] - AriIt's definitely not the main focus, but we do have some fixes (both sort of audit checks) and actually website benchmarks against other sites which you can also see in the app, against Shopify stores and things. For technical performance stuff like page load speed, it actually does have a big effect on SEO. [00:13:12.810] - AnnetteOh cool. So just to make sure I understand this, inside the app, you will have competition in there and I could see like their page speed load compared to mine? [00:13:22.070] - AriExactly. [00:13:22.170] - AnnetteOh that's awesome. OK. Now that's that's a huge value. [00:13:26.460] - AriYeah. We have those benchmarks broken down by sector, so you could look and say (obviously you can't see the actual stores it's all anonymized, I should say that upfront) but you could go in and say against other people selling shoes with an average order value around one hundred dollars per purchase, "is this a good page load speed, is this a good conversion rate?" stuff like that. [00:13:53.300] - AnnetteThat's really valuable. [00:13:53.410] - ChaseIt is. So there's data everywhere. Is it only Google Analytics you guys are taking a look at? [00:14:00.220] - AriSo the main app does connect with Google Analytics. Our main Shopify app is called Google Analytics by Littledata. By the time this podcast comes out, hopefully we will have launched an app for Segment. So Segment is sort of a connector between all kinds of different apps and platforms. And what this app will do is pull Shopify data, and again making sure everything's tracked correctly (checkout steps, sales, etc.) and pull that into Segment, so then you can connect it from Segment to any destination, which includes Google Analytics. [00:14:46.640] - ChaseThat's wonderful. Yeah I'm over here on the website and I see there's so many connections you guys have set up. [00:14:51.160] - AriCool, yeah. We're building out more, so to the listeners, if there are things you'd like to see, or if you've found a particular analytics problem, let us know and maybe we can fix it or help you find a way to automate or automatically check if it's working or not. [00:15:11.540] - AnnetteDo you want to explain those connections. Like I'm actually looking at your site right now too. So if I were to call in to see if I could get the app, what are some of those things that you would talk, about like the Facebook Ads connection that you have? [00:15:22.710] - AriSure yeah. So basically, for all the connections other than Segment, first you connect to Google Analytics. We're using that as sort of the ultimate source of truth. We always recommend to clients that it's good to gather lots of data and you want to be able to get detailed, but you really want to focus on just a couple of core metrics that are most important (like we were saying earlier) to your business. [00:15:59.700] - AriSo for some people, that will be how their Facebook Ad cost contributes to a particular detail about sales for one kind of product or a new product type or sales type or whatever it is. So what the Facebook Ads connection does is actually pull your ad costs and campaign details into GA so that then you don't have to rely on what Facebook is telling you in terms of how well the ad has performed and how many conversions you got. Instead, you can look and say "oh this campaign actually led to people adding a bunch of this type of product to the cart" or "it ended up leading to X amount of subscription revenue" [00:16:41.740] - ChaseSo you can drill down to the product level to see what had been added to the card from that campaign. [00:16:48.590] - AriExactly. Google makes that pretty easy to do with their own products, but they make it fairly complicated for people using other platforms. And so what a connection like that does is pull in the Facebook data and then suddenly plug that in along with everything else. [00:17:04.710] - ChaseCan I use this app to also see that information from Google AdWords and Google Shopping? [00:17:09.600] - AriYou can. The AdWords connection works a little different whereas it's pulling...I mean the effect is similar, but it actually lets you pull your Google Analytics data into AdWords so you can see sales again...like product sales next to campaign performance. [00:18:20.720] - ChaseWell I'm one hundred percent going to do a demo of this app. This is awesome. [00:18:25.160] - AnnetteYeah I have a question...Chase, you might be able to answer this too. So for instance, are my Facebook Ads currently connected to Google Analytics automatically, or do you have to have an app like Littledata to do that for you? [00:18:41.420] - AriI'd have to take a look at yours in particular, but in general, unless you've gone through and set it up, no they won't be. You might have Facebook as a source, but that won't give you much detail. [00:18:54.640] - AnnetteRight because, specifically going back to what you guys just talked about, I have an ad running right now for a piece of equipment that's a higher dollar and I'm making sales not the ad, but I'm not selling that particular product and I want to drill down and see exactly what I'm selling off of the ad, but I can't do that in Facebook Ads but this would enable me to do that, correct? [00:19:18.940] - AriExactly. That's the perfect test. Yeah. [00:19:21.080] - ChaseAnd you can take it one step further and see if those people are viewing that expensive product for a long time or create a segment to retarget those people and educate those people. Set up some drip campaigns if you have their email? [00:19:37.360] - AriExactly super smart. It's kind of like maybe they're not buying it but they actually were really interested in it. They're like "oh I'll try this first" [00:19:46.890] - ChaseAnd then it's your job to market them and educate them. Here's the thing, I think with just any advertising campaigns, people go for the kill, like instantly it's "buy this buy this buy this." You need to explain what the product is first and educate them about the product, especially if it's an expensive product. No one's just going to drop one hundred dollars plus on something that they didn't know existed before your ad. [00:20:12.500] - AnnetteThey won't drop 500 not knowing what it is? (laughs) [00:20:15.150] - AnnetteI'm going to run this ad, new product 30 days and do it. But what's happening (exactly my issue, so sign me up for the Littledata app today) because I don't know what they're buying. They're not buying the high dollar, they're buying other products and I want to see how that ad is tricking down to that. That's something before we even started this conversation — I didn't know that that connection would do that. [00:20:42.740] - ChaseWe have clients ask all the time to drill down like, what are people doing from the ad if they're not...It's like yeah you made money off the ad your turned out fantastic but they're like cool, like what were they buying? There's no easy way to see that in Facebook. [00:20:56.000] - AriTotally. And even when we started Littledata, we didn't realize that at first. And as we started working with more companies, we were doing custom setups with Google Tag Manager to try to figure this out, and then we were like "wait a sec. If we could just build something that would pull this into Google Analytics, voila." [00:21:16.320] - AnnetteThat is so valuable. My brain is kind of rocked. That's awesome. [00:21:23.960] - ChaseYeah you just ruined Annette's weekend. Now she's going play with this. [00:21:31.610] - ChaseIt takes time to get data that you can make a decision from. You don't need to be looking your data everyday. Unless you're getting so many page views and sessions a day, which is top tier million dollar companies, you don't have enough data to make a decision from 24 hours ago. Even with ads, if you're not spending thousands of dollars a day you know your ads run for like a week before you see what the hell is going on. [00:22:03.040] - AnnetteActually Chase, you taught me that. Like this specific ad that I'm running right now...t's what, the twenty eighth of the month? We started running it at the beginning and I said "hey I'm not even going to look at this. Let's just let it roll, like let's not even look at." I looked at it yesterday and I was like "wait, what's happening here?" I would know if I sold that high dollar product. We didn't. And I'm like I'm just going to let this roll for a while just not even pay attention to it and focus on everything else. And when I looked at it yesterday...we're selling stuff, we're not selling that product, the ad is working, but how? [00:22:32.730] - ChaseYeah the attribution on Facebook is unique in and of itself...and honestly you can get some sketchy agencies that make that thing really long. And they get that attribution up and they're like "Yeah, we made you all this money" but you're like where is it? Where's that money? [00:22:52.300] - AriYeah. [00:22:52.370] - AnnetteBeing a store owner, I have wonderful developers that I work with but sometimes I try to do some of this stuff myself. So when I now, after my mind's been blown and I get the app, is this something that you need to have a developer connect for you, or is it easy enough for a DIY store owner to do themselves? [00:23:17.790] - AriYeah we've definitely tried to make it easy enough. And the good thing is for Shopify (and we do have clients on other platforms like Magento, BigCommerce) it's fully automated. So unless you have a really customized theme (in which case we do have separate setup steps where our support team can help you) it all should just happen automatically [00:23:39.020] - AnnetteAnd that is for Facebook Ads also? [00:23:41.340] - AriYeah. [00:23:42.560] - AnnetteOh wow. OK. [00:23:44.030] - AriIt'll give you a guide in the app. You'll have to make sure that the campaigns have been named in a certain way. There's some things we can't do automatically. But for those few things that we can't do it, it gives very clear steps. [00:24:00.760] - ChaseSo what size stores does this make sense for? [00:24:07.720] - AriI always say anyone who wants to grow should start tracking things early, because otherwise you'll get to a point where you can't go back and get a start date if the tracking wasn't set. Basically once you start to introduce traffic, our basic plan runs up to about five hundred orders per month. We have the pricing tiered based on sessions, orders or sales, but the number of orders is a pretty good indicator. So once you're starting to get traffic and have some orders come through, it's a good time to go with it. And then for our enterprise plans, where we do help with custom setup and reporting and things as needed, those are generally larger — you know, bigger DTC brands doing maybe five to 50 million a year. [00:24:55.020] - AnnetteAwesome. Just for our listeners (this is something I always like when apps offer this), Littledata offers a twenty five percent off discount if you pay the annual fee upfront so you can save some serious dollars. [00:25:09.330] - AriOh yeah. Hey you're doing my job for me! That's a good point. [00:25:13.420] - AnnetteIt's always nice to be rewarded if you're going to pay for something upfront, as a consumer. [00:25:22.160] - AriYeah. And we do find like Chase was saying, it takes a while to start gathering the data for advertising campaigns, and also just for understanding user flows on your site because you really need a lot of information. You don't want to start redesigning the site or changing your product line based on a really limited sample, because it could be just random. So the more data you can get, the more you can make sophisticated decisions. [00:25:47.740] - ChaseAwesome. I think that is the gem of the podcast right there. And with that I think we're going to wrap this one up. [00:25:54.700] - ChaseIs there anything that you want to leave with our guests? I know everyone probably want to go check out the app. It's Littledata.io slash Shopify (90 percent of our listeners are probably on Shopify). [00:26:05.430] - AriYeah, nothing in particular...ifyou're using ReCharge, our Shopify ReCharge connection is really powerful will probably solve a lot of tracking issues that you thought couldn't be solved. So check that out. And that's about it. It's a great podcast. Good to be here. [00:26:23.970] - AnnetteNo, thank you! I do appreciate it. You actually answered the question I was going to ask Chase after the podcast (laughs). [00:26:30.500] - ChaseI hate when we have podcasts when it's like a sales letter, but for this app, it's just so fancy — it works. It solves problems and that's what people want. [00:26:41.840] - AnnetteActually it's solving problems I didn't even know there was a solution for. So that's exciting. Thank you Ari. We appreciate having you on today. [00:26:52.690] - AriOh and you just one more thing...If anyone has questions, even if they don't need the app, we do a lot on our blog around analytics issues. So feel free to write to us with topics you'd like covered and we'll sort of investigate. [00:27:09.790] - ChaseOh cool awesome I'll check that. I'll check the blog out too. Awesome. Well thanks a lot.

Google Analytics is used by tens of millions of websites and apps around the world to measure web visitor engagement. Due to some users choosing not to be tracked or blocking cookies, Google Analytics can't measure 100% of visitors. But when set up correctly, GA measures over 95% of genuine visitors (as opposed to web scrapers and bots). At Littledata, our customers come from a range of industries. But when they first come to the Littledata app for help fixing their analytics, we hear many of the same questions: Is Google Analytics accurate? How do I know if my Google Analytics setup is giving me reliable data? In this blog post, we dissect some common issues with Google Analytics before providing a solution to help your ecommerce tracking be as accurate as possible. 6 common issues with Google Analytics (and how to fix them) 1) Your tracking script is not implemented correctly There are two common issues with the actual tracking script setup: It's implemented twice on some pages It's missing completely from some pages When the script is duplicated, you’ll see an artificially low bounce rate (usually below 5%), since every page view is sending twice to Google Analytics. When the script is missing from pages, you’ll see self-referrals from your own website. How to fix it Our recommendation is to use Google Tag Manager across your whole site to ensure the tracking script is loaded with the right web property identifier at the right time during the page load. 2) Your account has lots of spam When it comes to web traffic and analytics setup, spam is a serious issue. Spammers send 'ghost' referrals to get your attention as a website owner. This means that the traffic you see in Google Analytics may not come from real people, even if you have selected to exclude bots. How to fix it Littledata’s app filters out all future spammers and Pro Reporting users benefit from having those filters updated weekly. 3) Your own company traffic is not excluded Your web developers, content writers and marketers will be heavy users of your own site, and you need to filter this traffic from your Google Analytics to get a view of genuine customers or prospects. How to fix it You can do this based on location (e.g. IP address) or pages they visit (e.g. admin pages). [subscribe] 4) One person shows up as two or more users Fight Club aside (spoiler alert), when the same person re-visits our site, we expect them to look the same each time. Web analytics are more complicated. When Google Analytics speaks of 'users', what it's really tracking is a visit from a particular device or browser instance. For example, if I have a smartphone and a laptop computer and visit your site from both devices (without cross-device linking), I’ll appear as two users. Even more confusingly, if I visit your site from the Facebook app on my phone and then from the Twitter app, I’ll appear as two users —  the two apps use two different internet browser instances. How to fix it While Google is looking at ways to use its accounts system (Gmail, Chrome, etc.), there's not a lot which can be done to fix this at the moment. 5) Marketing campaigns are not attributed to revenue or conversions If the journey of visitors on your site proceeds via another payment processor or gateway, you could be losing the link between the sale (or goal conversion) and the original marketing campaigns. You will see sales attributed to Direct or Referral traffic, when theyactually came from somewhere else. How to fix it This is a remarkably common issue with Shopify stores. That’s why we built a popular Shopify reporting app that solves the issue automatically. [subscribe heading="Get the Littledata Shopify reporting app" background_color="grey" button_text="get the app" button_link="https://www.littledata.io/shopify"] For other kinds of sites, the issue can often be resolved by setting up cross-domain tracking. 6) You aren't capturing key events (like purchases or button clicks) Google Analytics only tracks views of a page by default, which may not be meaningful if you have a highly interactive website or app. How to fix it Sending custom events is the key to ensuring your tracking is both accurate and relevant. Google Tag Manager makes this easier than it would be otherwise. However, you may need to speak to a qualified Google Analytics consultant to decide what to track. For better certainty that your analytics are fully accurate, try Littledata's free Google Analytics audit or get in touch for a quick consultation. We ❤️ analytics and we're always here to help.