If you’re running a store, you’d want to know the characteristics or traits of your customers. Why are only some people coming into your store, and others not? You want to know how people interact inside your store. A worker in an offline store has the benefit of interacting with customers. But if you’re running an eCommerce Store on Shopify, you may never get a chance to talk to your prospective customers. That’s where Data Analytics comes into the picture.
With the stores moving online, Data Analytics can help you observe, adjust and improve your business in such a way that the needs of your customers are met accordingly. If you’re running an Online Store, you need your Analytics Report to have detailed insights on “Sales” and “Revenue“, you want to understand your customer’s behavior in-depth and optimize your Return of Investment (ROI) in the best possible way.
Google Analytics lets you do just that. You want to collect this data into Google so that you can learn about what your customers are doing, what are your weak and strong points, and based on that you can build a Marketing Strategy that actually works. On top of this, Shopify Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking lets you further deep dive into the world of data.
The finest Google Analytics setup will tell you much more about your customers than you could possibly think of. In this article, you’ll be taken through Google Analytics for your Shopify Store. You’ll learn how to integrate Google Analytics with Shopify and how to set up Shopify Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking. But beforehand, let’s discuss the two platforms in brief.
Table of Contents
Introduction to Shopify
Image Source: www.ecommercenext.org
Shopify is a Cloud-Based Software as a Service (SaaS) Shopping Cart Solution that allows you to set up your own Online Store with just the click of a button. If you don’t want to go through the hassle of building your own website, setting up a Shopify Store is the best thing you can do for your business.
Shopify is an eCommerce platform that lets you sell your goods and products online with no hardship. You can literally sell anything on Shopify, as long as it’s legal of course, from Handcrafted Jewellery to Online Classes, Shopify offers great versatility. Shopify hosts your business and helps it to grow by allowing you to conduct secure transactions, customize your website as per your liking and market your products. Shopify’s easy-to-use Design Templates let you customize your website without writing any code in real-time. Suitable for businesses of all sizes, Shopify offers multiple plans and pricing to choose from.
Worried about your website crashing during peak hours or hackers breaking into your network? Shopify has got you covered. Shopify offers reliable and secure hosting of your website. With its Secure Payment Gateways, your data is in safe hands.
Shopify also allows integrations with plenty of third-party services, such as Google Analytics, to help you get detailed insights to grow your business.
Introduction to Google Analytics
Image Source: www.commons.wikimedia.org/wiki
Google Analytics is one of the most popular Web Analytics Service that allows you to track and analyze all of your Website Traffic, Purchases, Signups, and other aspects of Customer Behavior. Google Analytics is a must-have tool for anyone who wants to have comprehensive information on all user activities happening on a website. Google Analytics helps companies keep track of user details and advertising campaigns using a simple Javascript Plugin.
Google Analytics lets you see a lot of things like how many visitors you’re getting to your website, where are they coming from, how long are they spending on your website, which pages are they clicking on, what is their age, what is their city or country and lots of important data. On top of this, Google Analytics also allows the owners to measure and monitor the performance of their Marketing Efforts, Content, and Products. So having a website but not having Google Analytics is like driving a Cruise Ship with a blindfold on.
So, if you are looking to grow your website through effective Digital Marketing, setting up Google Analytics is the best thing you can do for your business.
Why Integrate Google Analytics with Shopify?
Image Source: www.ecommerce-platforms.com/articles
If you run your eCommerce Store on Shopify, you can learn about your Sales and Customers in great detail with Shopify’s in-built Analytics and Reports functionalities. So, what do you need Google Analytics for? Well, there are some inherent issues with Shopify Analytics that often pose challenges to shop owners.
Here’s why you need to set up third-party Analytics Services, such as Google Analytics if you want to boost the performance of your Shopify Store:
- To start with, Shopify Analytics Reports are dependent on the Shopify plan that you’re subscribed to. For the basic Shopify plan, your Analytics Reports will be quite limited. To get better insights, you will need to upgrade to an advanced plan. On the other hand, there is no such limitation in Google Analytics. Google Analytics lets you generate the Analytics Reports at your convenience.
- With Shopify Analytics, you have access to data of a maximum of 250,000 Customers only. Naturally, many eCommerce Stores have more customers. Google Analytics can prove to be a better option for such stores.
- Google Analytics is the most popular and robust Web Analytics Service used by online businesses. With a name that big, Google Analytics doesn’t compromise its reputation. Every now and then, there are new features and additions to Google Analytics. These features can help you get a better hold of your Customer and Website.
Hevo Data is a No-code Data Pipeline that offers a fully managed solution to set up data integration from Shopify, Google Analytics, and 100+ Data Sources (including 30+ Free Data Sources) and will let you directly load data to a Data Warehouse or the destination of your choice. It will automate your data flow in minutes without writing any line of code. Its fault-tolerant architecture makes sure that your data is secure and consistent. Hevo provides you with a truly efficient and fully automated solution to manage data in real-time and always have analysis-ready data.
Get started with hevo for free
Let’s look at some of the salient features of Hevo:
- Fully Managed: It requires no management and maintenance as Hevo is a fully automated platform.
- Data Transformation: It provides a simple interface to perfect, modify, and enrich the data you want to transfer.
- Real-Time: Hevo offers real-time data migration. So, your data is always ready for analysis.
- Schema Management: Hevo can automatically detect the schema of the incoming data and map it to the destination schema.
- Scalable Infrastructure: Hevo has in-built integrations for 100’s of sources that can help you scale your data infrastructure as required.
- Live Monitoring: Advanced monitoring gives you a one-stop view to watch all the activities that occur within Data Pipelines.
- Live Support: Hevo team is available round the clock to extend exceptional support to its customers through chat, email, and support calls.
Sign up here for a 14-day free trial!
Setting up Google Analytics on Shopify
Let’s go ahead and install Google Analytics on your Shopify Store. After installing Google Analytics, you’ll be taken through Shopify Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking as well. To set up Google Analytics for Shopify Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking, follow the below-mentioned steps:
Step 1: Sign Up with Google Analytics
The first thing you need to do is actually head over to Google Analytics and Sign Up for free.
Add your desired Account Name in the space provided and click on “Next”. You can just enter your website name or business name here.
Image Source: Self
Now, within your account, you’re going to be asked to set up a “Property”. Enter the name of your “Property” in the space provided. Once you have selected the appropriate “Time Zone” and “Currency” for your website, click on “Next”.
Image Source: Self
Now, you can fill out some basic information about your business like the “Industry Category” and “Size of your Business”. Once you’re done with this you can click on “Create” and accept the “Terms and Conditions”.
Image Source: Self
Just like that your Google Analytics Account is now up and running.
Step 2: Create a Data Stream
Google Analytics will now ask you to set up a Data Stream to start collecting data. This will help you to record data points and customer behavior on your Shopify Store. Since you have a Shopify Store, select the Web Setup and retrieve the URL of your website and paste it in the space provided. Enter the name of your business in the “Stream Name” section and click on “Create Stream”.
Image Source: Self
Now, here comes the part where most people get confused.
What you need to do is go down and click on the “Global Site Tag”. Now, you have to copy this entire piece of code and install it into your website on Shopify. So, click on the “Copy to Clipboard” icon as shown.
Image Source: Self
Step 3: Connect your Shopify Store to Google Analytics
Now, you have to install this piece of code into the backend of your Shopify Store. So, head over to your Online Store, and from your Shopify Admin, go to Online Store > Themes.
Now, click on Actions > Edit code.
It’s very straightforward to inject this piece of code into the backend of your Shopify Store. Just click on “theme.liquid”.
Image Source: www.help.shopify.com/en/manual
Now, here you can see the “theme.liquid” code. Simply paste the code that we copied from Google Analytics below the “<head>” (3rd line). That’s it. Now just click on “Save” and your asset will be saved.
Image Source: www.getshogun.com/learn
As you can see, it’s as simple as that to integrate Google Analytics into your Shopify Store. Now, you’re just one step away from setting up Shopify Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking.
Step 4: Turn on Shopify Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking
Without eCommerce Reporting, you’re not realizing the full potential of Google Analytics. With Shopify Enhanced eCommerce Reporting, you can have a detailed overview of your product’s performance. You can get detailed insights on Conversion Rates, the Average Value of Orders, the Number of Refunds, and more. You can also generate a detailed Shopping Analysis Report to get some insights into the Cart Abandonment Cases.
To enable Shopify Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking, from Shopify Admin, go to “Online Store” and click on “Preferences”. Check the ‘Use Enhanced Ecommerce’ checkbox under the Google Analytics section of your Shopify dashboard. Save the changes.
Image Source: www.marketlytics.com/analytics-faq
Now, open your Google Analytics account. From your homepage, navigate to “Admin”. In the “View” column, click on the “Ecommerce Settings” option. Turn on the “Enable Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting” toggle and click on “Submit”.
Image Source: www.marketlytics.com/analytics-faq
That’s it, you can now leverage Shopify Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking for detailed insights.
Conclusion
You have now successfully enabled Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking for your Shopify Store. Google Analytics is now ready to receive your Shopify Enhanced Ecommerce Data. So, it’s as simple as that to install Google Analytics on your Shopify Store and to set up Shopify Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking.
You can now start optimizing your Shopify Store and start leveraging Google Analytics for reports.
This article discussed the importance of Google Analytics for your Shopify Store. You were taken through a detailed guide on how to install Google Analytics into your Shopify Store and set up Shopify Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking for the same.
visit our website to explore hevo
Hevo Data, with its strong integration with 100+ Sources & BI tools such as Shopify and Google Analytics, allows you to not only export data from sources & load data in the destinations, but also transform & enrich your data, & make it analysis-ready so that you can focus only on your key business needs and perform insightful analysis using BI tools. You can easily extract data from Shopify and Google Analytics using Hevo to track the performance of your Shopify Store and optimize it further to increase revenue. In short, Hevo makes your Shopify Enhanced Ecommerce Analytics pretty easy.
Give Hevo Data a try and sign up for a 14-day free trial today. Hevo offers plans & pricing for different use cases and business needs, check them out!
Do you use Shopify? Share your experience of working with Shopify Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking and Google Analytics in the comments section below.