DEV Community: Gloria Maldonado ✪

Top 5 Shopify SEO Apps (2023)

Gloria Maldonado ✪ — Sun, 02 Jul 2023 10:21:10 +0000

You’ve painstakingly curated an exceptional product selection, crafted engaging content for your product pages and blog, built your email list, and you’re eagerly awaiting your first customers. Yet, despite all your efforts, your store isn’t attracting any visitors!

So, how can you address this challenge? The answer might lie in Shopify SEO apps and tools! The good news is that Shopify has foreseen this need and provides a wide array of SEO apps to help elevate your online presence and draw more traffic to your e-commerce store.

Without further ado, let’s dive into it!

1. Risify ‑ Ultimate SEO Solution

Easily identify and fix technical issues that are holding your Shopify website back from top search engine rankings. Track your keywords and competitors. With Risify, you can audit your store based on Google guidelines and SEO best practices. You can get a professional audit and actionable roadmap for your store’s SEO success. Keep an eye on how your store and competitors are doing in search results by using our keyword-tracking feature. Our Meta Tag generator, which uses AI, can create well-crafted meta tags for your products. Our expert support team is happy to help with guidance and more strategic suggestions.

Key Features of Risify

Real-Time Content Analysis: Instant feedback on your content and products helps you optimize SEO on the go.
Competitor Analysis: Understanding your competitors’ SEO strategies and performance can guide your own optimization efforts.

2. SEO Booster

As an intelligent SEO app, SEO Booster lives up to its name by automating the task of SEO optimization on Shopify stores. From handling broken links to optimizing product images, SEO Booster covers a wide range of SEO factors.

Key Features of SEO Booster

Automated SEO Optimization: Simplifies SEO tasks with intelligent automation, freeing up your time to focus on core business operations.
Keyword Suggestion Tool: Provides keyword suggestions based on your products and industry, enabling you to target the right audience.

3. Smart SEO

Smart SEO is an excellent tool designed to streamline the SEO process, minimize time investment, and maximize your site’s visibility on search engines.

Key Features of Smart SEO

Automated Meta Tags and Alt Tags: Enhances your website’s ranking by automatically generating meta tags and alt tags for your products and images.
Structured Data Support: Implements JSON-LD structured data to help search engines understand your website content better, improving your search appearance.

4. SEO Manager

SEO Manager provides a robust suite of features, enabling users to control their online store’s SEO health effectively.

Key Features of SEO Manager

SEO Scans: Regular scans for SEO issues and provides easy-to-understand solutions.
Keyword Suggestions: Delivers keyword recommendations to help optimize your site content and improve ranking.

5. Plug in SEO

Plug in SEO stands out for its simplicity and effectiveness. It offers comprehensive SEO solutions including regular checks and fixes for potential SEO issues.

Key Features of Plug in SEO

SEO Issue Detection: Automated detection of SEO problems such as broken links and page speed.
Instructions for Fixes: Offers simple, step-by-step instructions to fix detected SEO issues, enhancing your site’s performance.

Conclusion: Unlocking eCommerce Success with Shopify SEO Apps

The right Shopify SEO apps can propel your online store’s visibility, driving organic traffic and increasing conversions. These apps simplify the SEO process, automating various tasks and providing valuable insights to optimize your website content. Harness their power to navigate the competitive world of eCommerce effectively.

Source: https://smartseotools.org/blog/the-best-shopify-seo-apps-boost-your-ecommerce-visibility

When Will Shopify Support GA4?

Gloria Maldonado ✪ — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 06:15:58 +0000

It's no secret that Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms out there, but one thing that's been puzzling many Shopify users is when it will support Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

As a powerful analytics tool that can provide invaluable insights into website performance, and an ability to track customers across multiple devices and channels, GA4 offers a lot of great features, including more accurate tracking, robust data analysis, and more.

But the question remains - when will Shopify support GA4?

Let’s look at what GA4 is, how it works, why it’s important for Shopify store owners, and what you can do about GA4 & Shopify.

Here are the key takeaways:

Google is set to sunset Universal Analytics
Google Analytics 4 is going to replace Universal Analytics in early 2023
GA4 has become a powerful & essential tool for Shopify store owners
You can set up GA4 on Shopify using Google Tag Manager

Read on and find out when & how you can use GA4 with your Shopify store.

What is Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?

If you're a Shopify store owner, you may have heard about Google Analytics 4 (GA4): Google's latest analytics solution, designed to help businesses measure and optimize customer experiences.

Standing out as an advanced platform that utilizes AI and machine learning to provide insights into user behavior and engagement, GA4 allows you to take actionable steps in order to improve the customer journey.

With Google Analytics 4, you can track the performance of your websites, apps, and other digital properties in real-time, which helps you to understand how, why, and to what extent customers interact with your brand.

Additionally, Google Analytics 4 can provide detailed analytics on customer journeys and how users are engaging with different marketing channels, allowing you to optimize your campaigns so you can get the maximum results.

As a Shopify store owner, you can gain valuable insights into customer behavior and create more personalized experiences for your users with the help of GA4 since it:

Runs across multiple platforms without relying solely on cookies,
Uses an event-based data model,
Provides more actionable & useful data, along with user-friendly reports
Supports seamless & powerful integrations with other Google products and services,
Comes with an AI & machine learning structure.

It’s a fact that doubts have been coming up on whether GA4 is better than Universal Analytics, which is set to stop working by early 2023, but the truth is that GA4 is constantly improving, with Google rolling out new features that make it even better.

Why is GA4 Important for Shopify Store Owners?

GA4 is becoming a powerful & essential tool for Shopify store owners day by day, as it offers an incredibly comprehensive suite of data-driven insights that allow them to better understand their customers and their shopping behaviors.

With GA4, you can easily track user engagement, sales, website traffic, and other key metrics, giving them an invaluable edge in the competitive e-commerce marketplace. In short, it provides you with the ability to access more detailed and actionable insights than ever before.

In addition, GA4 lets you easily segment customers into different target audiences, allowing you to target your marketing efforts and optimize your Shopify store for each specific audience. You can measure the effectiveness of your campaigns, helping you make informed decisions about your marketing strategies.

On top of each and every great feature that comes with GA4, it easily provides you with the most important e-commerce reports that you should check out regularly for your Shopify store. For example, if you check out these reports:

Traffic & Attribution
Product & Category & Brand Performance
Purchase & Order Level
Retention & Lifetime Value
Analytics Intelligence Insights

You can get a deeper understanding of how your business performs, and build a strategic plan and vision to improve your business. You don't have to be an expert, but knowing the fundamentals of these essential reports can be a game-changer for you.

GA4 For Shopify: How to Use Google Analytics 4 on Shopify?

As Google is set to sunset Universal Analytics (UA) in July 2023, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will replace it as their only data analytics solution, providing much better solutions & user experience.

And according to what Shopify announced earlier, you will be able to start using Google Analytics 4 on your Shopify store by March 2023.

However, it’s very important to start using GA4 on Shopify as soon as possible because you won’t be allowed to carry your data in Universal Analytics over to Google Analytics 4.

Although there’s no native solution for Shopify & Google Analytics 4 (GA4) integration at the moment, there’s an open-source solution that makes things work:

You can set up GA4 on Shopify with the Shopify GA4 kit using Google Tag Manager. Once you follow the step-by-step instructions, you secure a fully functional GA4 integration on your Shopify store with no fees included - and no apps needed.

Thanks to its event-based data model, Google Analytics 4 provides a seamless view of user journeys across your website and apps. As it leverages Google’s machine learning to fill in data gaps with predictive modeling and insights, you can optimize your outcomes and enhance your business.

Furthermore, since it tracks users without relying on cookies, Google Analytics 4 is well-equipped to monitor a changing digital landscape and give you meaningful insights about your customers, even with incomplete data.

Most Important Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Settings for Shopify Merchants

Google Analytics 4 is a robust tool that can be utilized to its maximum potential when set up properly and all best practices are followed.

You can apply the following settings to improve the performance of your GA4 & Shopify integration.

1. Enable Google Signals
Google shares user data with your Google Analytics account, providing more precise cross-device reporting and increased visibility into your visitors' data. The new Google Signals feature stands out as an invaluable advancement for Google Analytics users.

To enable Google Signals, go to Google Analytics 4 Admin > Data Settings (under the "Property" column) > Data Collection > Enable Google Signals.

2. Set Data Retention to 14 months
By default, user and event data retention is set to two months. However, you can extend this to 14 months in order to gain a better understanding of user behavior over a longer period of time. You have to make sure that you are compliant with GDPR and any other applicable privacy policies based on the country in which your business is located.

To perform this, navigate to: Google Analytics 4 Admin > Data Settings (under the "Property" column) > Data Collection > Date Retention

3. Link Google Ads with GA4
This integration will improve your Google Ads performance as the data sharing between these two platforms is incredibly powerful.

To integrate Google Ads with GA4, go to Google Analytics 4 Admin > Product Linking (under the "Property" column) > Google Ads

4. Link Google Search Console with GA4
Google Search Console is the most reliable source for analyzing your organic search results. By connecting your Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4, you will be able to access keyword-based performance reports.

To do this, go to Google Ads > Google Analytics 4 Admin > Product Linking (under the "Property" column) > Search Console

In conclusion, Shopify is a fast-growing e-commerce platform that is constantly looking to improve its features and capabilities. At this point, Shopify has not officially announced any native solution to support Google Analytics 4.
Yet, you don’t need to wait for Shopify to release a native solution as you can easily perform a Shopify & GA4 integration using the Shopify GA4 kit.

How to Set up Google Analytics on Shopify [4 Methods Explained]

Gloria Maldonado ✪ — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 14:40:13 +0000

Ever since I started to work with Shopify clients, I realized they all have problems with their Shopify Google Analytics integration.

They either didn’t know how to set up Google Analytics on Shopify completely or they had discrepancies with their data. Their data simply wouldn’t match, or it wasn’t reliable.

It all comes down to setup methods and mistakes during the setup process on Shopify Admin and Google Analytics.

In this post, I will show you how to set up Google Analytics on your Shopify store and start tracking important metrics like traffic, conversions, and sales. There are a couple of alternative options for setup, and I’ll touch base with each of them so you can make your own choice.

After setting it correctly, you can make data-driven decisions to grow your business and provide a better experience for your customers. Let's get started!

GA4 vs. Universal Analytics - Which is better for Shopify?

The short answer is both! You should be using both of the Google Analytics versions. The reason is simple, Universal Analytics is going away, and the data won’t be carried over to GA4. And Google Analytics 4 will be the only active version.

If you want to know the differences, you can check out my other post: Universal Analytics vs. Google Analytics 4 Explained for Shopify Merchants

Here is a summary:
GA4 is the latest version of Google Analytics and introduces several new features and improvements over Universal Analytics. Some of the key advantages of GA4 include the ability to track events and user interactions in more detail, improved integration with other Google products like Google Ads, and a more user-friendly interface. Additionally, GA4 has a stronger focus on privacy and security, and provides more data protection options for users.

On the other hand, Universal Analytics is a well-established and widely used version of Google Analytics many third-party tools and integrations support that. It has a robust feature set and is suitable for a wide range of uses, from simple tracking to more advanced analysis. Universal Analytics also allows for greater customization and can be used to track more complex data.

Setup Method 1: Shopify Google Analytics Native Integration

Shopify has a native Google Analytics integration under the Shopify Admin > Online Store > Preferences. However, it only supports Universal Analytics, the old version as of now.

Here is how it looks like in the Shopify admin panel. You simply need to copy your Universal Analytics measurement ID and paste here and then it will work. Here are the steps for setting up Google Analytics on Shopify using the native integration.

Step 1: In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Preferences.
Step 2: Scroll down to the Google Analytics section, and click the checkbox next to Use Google Analytics.
Step 3: In the Google Analytics account field, enter the Google Analytics tracking ID that you obtained when creating your Google Analytics account. This is typically in the format of UA-XXXXXXX-XX.
Step 4: Click Save to apply the changes.
Step 5: You can verify that the setup was successful by checking your Google Analytics account. The Shopify data should appear in the Real-Time > Overview report.

When will Shopify support Google Analytics 4?

The official announcement below shows that Shopify will support Google Analytics 4 in March 2023. You need to use the alternative setup methods until then. Please check Method 2 and Method 3 below.

Setup Method 2: Shopify GA4 Kit

As recommended above, you should set up Google Analytics 4 before it is too late so that you can start collecting data.

There is an excellent open-source solution called Shopify GA4 Kit. The Shopify GA4 Kit is built by Shopify app developers, and it allows merchants to easily set up and use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) on their store. It provides a streamlined way to set up GA4, track key events on your store, and view reports in the Shopify admin. This makes it easy to get started with GA4 and start tracking important metrics like traffic, conversions, and sales without having to configure the tracking code or use additional tools manually.

The Shopify GA4 Kit is an open-source solution and is available to all Shopify users. The Shopify Google Analytics setup process is:

Step 1: Visit the Shopify GA4 Kit page on Github and download the Google Tag Manager container.
Step 2: Copy the Shopify data layers and paste them into the theme.liquid and thank you page additional scripts.
Step 3: Paste your GA4 measurement ID into the GTM container’s relevant section.
Step 4: Test the whole setup using Google Tag Manager preview mode.
Step 5: Verify the setup using Google Analytics 4 Debug View.
Step 6: Publish all the changes and activate the GA4 Kit on your Shopify store.

Once enabled, the GA4 Kit will automatically track key events on your stores, such as product views, add-to-cart events, and checkout completions. You can view the GA4 reports in the Shopify admin or connect your GA4 account to the Google Analytics website to access more advanced features and analysis.

Overall, the Shopify GA4 Kit makes it easy for Shopify users to set up and use GA4 on their store, and provides valuable insights into their store's performance and customer behavior.

Setup Method 3: Shopify Analytics Apps

You should use professional Shopify Google Analytics apps for the best results. There are 100+ apps in this category. View my other relevant post where I deep-dived into the relevant topic: Top Google Analytics Apps for Your Shopify Store

Using a Shopify Google Analytics app can provide several benefits for your store. Some of the reasons to use a Shopify Google Analytics app include:

Professional setup support: Apps like Analyzify offers a Done-For-You setup option where the experts handle the setup for you. In this way, you don’t risk your data connections.
Improved tracking and reporting: A Shopify Google Analytics app can provide more detailed tracking and report for your store beyond what is available with the default Shopify GA4 Kit. This can include tracking custom events, tracking user behavior on specific pages, and more.
Enhanced analysis and insights: A Shopify Google Analytics app can provide advanced analysis and insights into your store's performance, such as customer segmentation, funnel analysis, and more. This can help you better understand your customers and make data-driven decisions to improve your store.
Integration with other tools: Many Shopify Google Analytics apps can integrate with other tools, such as marketing and advertising platforms, email marketing tools, and more. This can provide a more comprehensive view of your store's performance and help you optimize your marketing efforts.
Ease of use: Shopify Google Analytics apps are designed to be easy to use, and often provide a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to access and analyze the data. This can save you time and effort compared to manually configuring tracking and analysis.

Overall, using a Shopify Google Analytics app can provide valuable insights into your store's performance and help you make data-driven decisions to grow your business.

Setup Method 4: Set GA4 up Using Shopify Pixels

Shopify recently launched a new feature: Shopify Customer Events. This video and article walks you through this method and helps you set up GA4 on Shopify using Shopify Pixels.

Shopify customer events are a feature of the Shopify platform that allows you to track specific actions taken by customers on your store. These events can be triggered by various actions, such as viewing a product, adding an item to the cart, or completing a purchase. By tracking customer events, you can gain valuable insights into your customers' behavior and use this information to improve your store's performance. Custom customer events can provide even more detailed insights into your customers' behavior and can be used to optimize your store's performance.

Conclusion & Action Plan

As you can see, there are many methods for setting up GA on your Shopify store. I tried to cover all the important methods.

My humble recommendation is:

Use Shopify’s native integration for Universal Analytics
Set up Google Analytics 4 using Shopify GA4 Kit
Purchase professional apps/services if you have budget.

After setting up Google Analytics, make sure to use it for analyzing your store’s performance.

Resources:

Top Google Analytics Apps for Your Shopify Store

Gloria Maldonado ✪ — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 07:59:58 +0000

Google Analytics is a go-to solution for thousands of Shopify merchants around the world as it offers a variety of powerful data-related solutions. Yet, setting up Google Analytics correctly applying all the best practices might not be a piece of cake for many.

As the best reporting software on the market, Google Analytics only gets better with an impressive set of updates every year.

To meet Shopify merchants’ demands in the best way possible, GA:

runs across multiple platforms without relying solely on cookies,
offers more actionable & valuable data,
provides essential cross-platform insights,
is powered by AI & machine learning.

To leverage your data as a Shopify store owner, you can use Analytics apps to set up Google Analytics on your store easily. Setting up Google Analytics apps on your Shopify store will also help you improve the quality of your reports, letting you perform advanced settings to get more data with no headaches.

Why Should You Use Googe Analytics Apps for Your Shopify Store?

Here is a quick look at how using a Google Analytics app can be a game-changer for your business as a Shopify store owner:

Set up Google Analytics with ease

The best funnels, advanced path analysis, meaningful audiences, enhanced integrations, and so on. Google Analytics provides you with all the features you need to make something valuable out of your data. Therefore, it’s definitely a must for you to set up Google Analytics for your Shopify store.

However, it might not be as easy as it looks to get everything done properly in order to relish a seamless Google Analytics experience. Instead of getting lost trying to configure everything and avoid data inaccuracy, you can go ahead and try these applications on the Shopify app store.

Get enhanced Google Analytics reports

Google Analytics comes with a wealth of valuable data & reports that you can use to optimize your store and grow your business. With the reports provided in GA4, ecommerce reports to be more specific, you can gain insight into the entire customer journey, from product discovery all the way to purchase.

These reports offer detailed information about the user's interaction with your store, including product views, add-to-cart events, checkout, and purchase. With this data, you can identify where in the customer journey customers are dropping off or encountering issues, and make changes to optimize their store for higher conversion rates.

Additionally, as a Shopify store owner, you can also use the reports to view sales performance over time and identify customer segments to target for marketing or remarketing campaigns. To get these reports which provide a great bunch of insights, you need a proper Google Analytics setup because even an extra code block or a missing setting can cause discrepancy between GA4 and Shopify.

Perform advanced Google Analytics settings for your store

Referral exclusions, cross-domain tracking, user-ID setup, Google Ads & Search Console linking, IP filters, and etc. Performing advanced settings for Google Analytics 4 can be an intimidating task, especially if you are new to the platform.

With top-notch Google Analytics apps that can help you with all the advanced settings, you can gain deeper insights into your website's performance and make more informed decisions about your digital marketing strategies to level up your sales.

In a nutshell, Google Analytics apps can help you get account-level adjustments and get your hands on better & more merchant-friendly reports - with a clean Google Analytics setup & validation in order to make sure it works with no problems.

💎 Top-Rated Google Analytics Apps for Shopify Stores

Here is a list of Google Analytics apps (including overall ratings) that you can use to get the best results for your business as a Shopify store owner:

1️⃣ Google Analytics Toolkit (4.2 overall rating)

Google Analytics Toolkit helps you with evaluating and configuring your Google Analytics account, as well as providing special and customised dashboards and reports. Here is what they claim to offer:

Free Audit: Use our free audit tool to check if your google analytics is configured correctly and optimally for your Shopify store.

1-click configuration - Get a correctly configured Google Analytics account for Shopify instantly. Our secure, automatic process only takes a couple of minutes.

Dashboards & better tracking - Enhanced tracking enable 100% correct tracking of orders in Google Analytics. Plus integrated dashboards and weekly email reports!

2️⃣ Connector For Google Analytics (4.4 overall rating)

Connector is an app that works with Google Analytics to make sure your sales data is correct. It also works with other reporting tools like Tableau and Data Studio. Connector can be connected to Google Tag Manager too. Here is what they claim to offer:

Automatic trackingSet up improved tracking in minutes. Track your checkout flow, customer lifetime value (LTV), and more — straight into Google Analytics.

Sales data & recurring orders - Track every purchase, including recurring orders from apps like Recharge, Smartrr, Ordergroove and Bold Subscriptions. Multi-currency too!

Marketing attribution - Server-side tracking for accurate marketing attribution. Track every channel, from paid Facebook Ads to Klaviyo email marketing.

3️⃣ Conversific (4.8 overall rating)

Conversific brings together information from Shopify and Google Analytics. It allows you to compare your business with others, gives you deeper understanding of your business, and helps you monitor your progress by looking at customers and products.

Here is what they claim to offer:

Surpass your competition - Get a direct look into your competitors data with our industry benchmarks! Use this unfair advantage and get business insights to grow.

Know what drives your profit - See the complete picture with accurate profit calculations! Use product & customer analytics to find where to focus your marketing efforts.

Forget about Spreadsheets - Obtain analytics reports to track your true profit and 100+ KPIs (Sales, Cost, ROAS...). All data in one dashboard, no spreadsheets needed!

4️⃣ Analyzify (5 overall rating)

Analyzify provides a turnkey data analytics setup for Shopify merchants, offering two different setup options in ‘Done-For-You’ and ‘Do-It-Yourself’. With Analyzify, you get features such as data layers, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics 4, and other integrations that native Shopify doesn’t offer. Plus, it tracks events like add-to-cart, product list visits, and product list/category clicks.

Here’s what they claim to offer:

We offer an all-in-one Shopify data-analytics app, which takes care of all your data & tracking needs for your Shopify store within 8 minutes. We also offer a Done-For-You setup option at no extra cost.

In direct support we trust: The Analyzify team provides setup service, direct support at configuring data layers, and open source materials regularly with updated solutions.

Accurate and improved tracking for GA4 & UA: GTM Integration and data layers provide quality data flow for better reporting.

Pro solutions with beginner-friendly delivery: Analyzify features insights to advanced settings like referral exclusion, cross-domain tracking, user-ID setup, Google Ads & Search Console linking, IP filters, and more.

Discrepancy Problems in Google Analytics for Shopify Merchants

Gloria Maldonado ✪ — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 11:24:01 +0000

We have to admit that the relationship between Google Analytics & Shopify is not very much like a legendary one that we can see in movies, as they don’t always get along. This is what causes data discrepancy problems between GA4 and Shopify at the end of the day.

It also means that you need to pay some attention to find solutions that work for this sort of problems. While we can easily say that it is impossible to reconcile everything and resolve all the issues between Google Analytics and Shopify, you can figure out what causes them to produce effective solutions.

What Causes Discrepancy Between Google Analytics & Shopify

Here is a quick look at what can be behind all the Google Analytics discrepancy problems that cause headaches for Shopify merchants:

Poor Google Analytics setup
Browsers, VPNs, adblockers
GDPR - CCPA
iOS updates & Safari
Page builder apps

Now, let’s deep dive into each of these points that could potentially create some data mismatch between Google Analytics and Shopify.

Poor Google Analytics Setup

If you are new to data analytics, a Google Analytics setup that will never do well for your Shopify store can be pretty much inevitable.

Surely, you don’t have to be a data analytics expert to have a proper GA4 setup but securing a Google Analytics setup that works in an effort to collect and track your data can sometimes be more challenging than you think.

Right at this point, starting off with an Analytics health check would be a great idea to see if everything is alright. You can check out this complete guide to go ahead and perform a decent check on your Google Analytics account after you complete the setup process.

Browsers, VPNs, and Adblockers

Ad blockers, VPNs, or some private browsers are capable of bypassing Google Analytics, which might cause data discrepancies between Google Analytics and Shopify in the end.

For example, with an ad blocker, a user can stop Google Analytics from collecting data right away. Therefore, Google Analytics can’t track this user's session or actions, and this results in inconsistencies in the data provided. That’s where server-side tagging comes into play.

Browsers with different privacy protection methods, such as VPNs and Tor, can also damage the data collection method used in Google Analytics. For instance, Firefox's incognito mode is super helpful for hiding user data.

GDPR - CCPA (User Consent)

As a Shopify merchant, you have to make sure that you get user consent before the tracking starts on your website. In order to secure a GDPR-compliant store, most Shopify merchants use a variety of Shopify apps, which sometimes causes inaccuracy in the data transfer between Shopify Analytics and Google Analytics.

However, you should know that this sort of data discrepancy is acceptable under GDPR regulations because user consent stands as one of the most important topics especially for European merchants who have some serious responsibilities when it comes to GDPR.

iOS Updates & Safari

Each browser opts for different third-party cookie policies. Safari, for example, reduces the cookie's lifespan and makes tracking way more challenging. As a result, these limitations by Safari may have an impact on tools that rely on 3rd party cookies such as Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel

Page Builder Apps

There are a lot of page builder apps on the market. It’s no surprise that they come with many different benefits. However, they mostly require some specially crafted Google Analytics integration to make it possible to track & monitor actions and events on pages. It might not be as easy as it first appears to provide this integration for all elements.

Therefore, if you are utilizing a Page Builder app, especially for your landing pages, this may also contribute to the data discrepancy problems between Google Analytics and Shopify.

All About Shopify Analytics

Gloria Maldonado ✪ — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 11:00:21 +0000

You always have a ton of questions as a Shopify merchant, don’t you? It’s no surprise that most of these questions are analytics-related, and they are mostly mind-boggling:

Where do my visitors come from?
What is my conversion rate?
What channels do I generate the most traffic from?
How is my recent marketing campaign performing?

And so on...

Well, Shopify Analytics and the reports provided are designed to clear your mind off some questions as you see above. Let’s have a look at what Shopify Analytics is, and what it is not.

What Does Shopify Analytics Provide?

Shopify Analytics allows you to monitor your store’s recent activity, offering insights into your visitors, your online store speed, transactions and etc. Overall, you get a better understanding of how your store is performing considering some key metrics.

As stated by Shopify, what you get from Shopify Analytics depends on how you use the platform. While the Analytics page is accessible and available for everyone, some sort of reports such as the ones that demonstrate orders or sales are only available for Shopify Plus users.

Here is a quick overview of what is available under which plan:

As you can see, you are provided with a bunch of reports even under the Basic plan, however, you may find it insufficient to have a thorough understanding of your Shopify store’s performance. To see more detailed reports & data, Shopify requires you to upgrade your plan.

On the other hand, you can export your data to a different tool, use a third-party software, or set up another analytics service such as Google Analytics 4 if you want to edit or examine your data in different & more effective ways.

Shopify Analytics Reports

You can get your hands on the Shopify Analytics reports once you click Analytics > Reports on the left-hand menu. Here is a breakdown of what you can expect from the reports provided.

Acquisition Reports

These reports highlight visitors to your website under three important metrics:

Sessions over time: This displays the number of visitors over a certain period of time.
Sessions by referrer: This indicates the number of visitors and sessions brought in by a specific source, like a Facebook advertisement or affiliate link.
Sessions by location: This shows the countries and places from which users are visiting your online store.

Here, you should keep in mind that it utilizes client-side tracking which depends on the cookies, meaning that almost every action occurs on the visitor’s browser. In addition, a visit automatically ends after 30 minutes of no activity or at midnight UTC.

Behavior Reports

Behavior reports lets you analyze users’ shopping behavior, providing insights into actions they take on your store’s website. This way, understanding how customers engage with your store might help you make better decisions.

By monitoring and analyzing the data provided in this section, you can improve your product marketing both online and offline, upsell to your best target audience, and increase your average order total by creating promotional pricing and product bundles.

Customer Reports

You can learn more details about your clients by taking a look at the reports generated in the customer reports section. These details include average order count, average order totals, and expected purchase value.

It’s important to note that these reports are limited to 250,000 customers, though. You should go for other solutions such as Google Analytics if you want to access customer data for more than 250,000. In addition, they are only available to Shopify, Advanced Shopify, or Shopify Plus plans.

Inventory Reports

With inventory reports, you are provided with a monthly overview of your inventory which helps you monitor the amount and percentage of inventory sold per day. Inventory changes may take up to 72 hours to reflect in reports.

Marketing Reports

With marketing reports, you can analyze your conversions monitoring what attracts consumers to your online business and what converts them into paying customers. Based on their interactions with your online store, the statistics can demonstrate which of your marketing channels is bringing in the most people and the most valuable customers.

Order Reports

Order reports provide you with valuable data on your order volume, shipping times, and returns. These can help you determine your best-selling products and the ones that get returned frequently which might add to maintaining customer satisfaction.

Profit Reports

Profit reports offer important details on the costs, margins, and profit of your online store. It’s important to track all these in an effort to better manage your accounting.

You can click here to discover more about other reports and what each one of them presents.

Shopify Analytics vs. Google Analytics

The first thing to mention about Shopify Analytics is that your tracking starts automatically - without you needing to perform any additional setup. You can go to ‘Analytics’ on the left when you open your Shopify dashboard to see these reports.

However, there are a ton of disadvantages of relying on Shopify Analytics reports only. For example, your data and reports depend on the Shopify plan you use. If you choose the basic plan, you either pay $79 a month for standard Shopify reports or you just get the most basic sales reports.

Another important point to consider is that Shopify does not support cross-domain tracking. If you need to compare data between two related domains, you have to go for Google Analytics, which allows you to do that with some adjustments.

Shopify gives you the option to monitor your overall pageviews, but Google Analytics offers more precise data by distinguishing regular and unique pageviews. You may get a better understanding of how many pages your users are viewing by counting unique pageviews. If there is a remarkable difference between total pageviews and unique pageviews, it may suggest that users are having difficulty locating what they are looking for.

In addition to that, Shopify’s Live View provides you with four key metrics in real-time: visitors, daily totals, page views, and shopping cart behavior. Google Analytics, however, takes things to another level by offering the most up-to-date access to the number of visitors on your site, where your current visitors are located, the keywords that referred your current organic visitors and etc. It’s important to note that Shopify real-time data is updated every 5 to 10 minutes on Shopify whereas it gets updated within seconds in Google Analytics.

Over and above, Shopify doesn’t allow you to benefit from other powerful tools. With Google Analytics, you can perform integrations and get the most out of the likes of Google Search Console, Google Ads, Google Optimize, and some other third-party integrations.

In conclusion, Shopify provides you with some valuable analytics tools, but if you want the most powerful and comprehensive data and reports for your Shopify store to get a thorough understanding of how things are going, you will need to rely on Google Analytics.

Universal Analytics vs. Google Analytics 4 Explained for Shopify Merchants

Gloria Maldonado ✪ — Sat, 19 Nov 2022 08:43:02 +0000

GA4 is the new version of Google Analytics. Universal Analytics shortly UA, also known as GA3, is the previous version. With this technology, new features were brought, and existing features were improved. It is called Google Analytics 3 because it is not a product that receives Universal Analytics core updates. Since Google Analytics 4 is a more advanced service, Google suggests parallel tracking - not directly using ONLY UA but UA and GA4 together.

While these suggestions can be made through communication channels such as e-mail for users who already have accounts, At the same time, the instructions created under the "GA4 Setup Assistant" title in the Property section provide a guide for its users to start using GA4. If the user does not have an account, the account and property can be created from the website https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/. With the "Create Property" button in the "Property" column on the main page, after entering the property name, property time zone, and currency information and completing the necessary operations successfully, there is no need to take any action to use Google Analytics 4; is used by default.

Can I still create a Universal Analytics account?

Google also offers this option. Universal Analytics can be used by selecting the "Create a Universal Analytics property" option from the "Show advanced options" section after entering the property name, property time zone, and currency information with the "Create Property" button in the "Property" column on the main page.

In summary, Google Analytics 4 is promoted by Google and is used by default in newly created properties. If the user has an account, they can use it in Universal Analytics if they want, but for best practice, it is recommended to use both.

Should I Upgrade to Google Analytics 4?

The short answer is yes!

Although the upgrade used here is not a correct definition, it is very frequently used. The process is to define a new account for the currently used account rather than leveling up. If the user has an existing account, a new account can be defined with the necessary instructions from the topic titled "GA4 Setup Assistant" in the property column. With this process, the UA account is linked to the GA4 account.

The GA4 Setup Assistant is a tool that you access from your Universal Analytics property. It adds a Google Analytics 4 property alongside your Universal Analytics property. When you click on the GA4 Setup Assistant, this window welcomes you.

The Setup Assistant provides and guides you through the steps you need to complete to complete the setup of your Google Analytics 4 property. By clicking the "Get Started" button, you can successfully follow the steps and complete the setup. If you are worried that your old account or data may be lost, you have no reason to worry. This is just creating a new property - and they will work together. anything won't get lost.

Why GA4?

GA4 is the default version now for Google Analytics. The fact that this product is a default feature means that every new development and update created by Google will be integrated and supported fast, stable, and successful. Some of the new features are:

Data collection: Event-based data collection method
Basic configuration: Automated event collection
New User Interface: Different organization and interface
User recognition: Improved user ID recognition with Google Signals
Real-time reports: API and included improved real time reports in APIs
New audience builder
Conversion tracking
Debug view: Built-in debug view within GA4
Funnels: Best and more funnels ever with great features
Path reports: New elements in path reporting and backwards pathing
BigQuery: BigQuery integration

What will happen to Universal Analytics?

Nothing will change; it will remain as it is. The reason for this is Google recommends that parallel tracking. It is suggested that it is better to use both GA4 and UA accounts and follow the reports.

Parallel tracking is done by using both accounts at the same time. Your Universal Analytics property remains 100% up and running. This is because you won't feel pressured to upgrade and potentially lose existing data. At the same time, by starting to use Google Analytics 4, the users will have the chance to benefit from new features and get used to the platform.

How to set up GA4 on Shopify?

There are 3 ways to set up Google Analytics 4 on your Shopify store: Shopify Apps, Set up Google Analytics 4 on Shopify with Google Tag Manager (GTM), and Shopify GA4 Kit.

The first method is to use Shopify apps. Various paid Shopify apps support Google Analytics 4 which can be found in the market. The apps passes the relevant data to Google Analytics 4 mostly using Google Tag Manager. Analyzify is a solution for Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics 4, Facebook Pixel, Google Ads Conversions and many other data-analytics integrations.

The second method is to use Google Tag Manager. GTM has always been the best method for data solutions. As Analzify, we have created a complete course on Google Tag Manager - Shopify integration, and it includes three lessons related to Shopify - Google Analytics 4 integration. The course is accessible on Youtube, and you can get detailed information about Setup Google Tag Manager on Shopify, Install Gooogle Analytics 4, Set Up Purchase Data Layer on Shopify and Set up GA4 Ecommerce Tracking in 4 steps.

The third method is a free and app-free way created by Analzify: Analyzify GA4 Wizard. You can experience this alternative way, created for users who do not want to pay for applications, in just 6 steps and 10 minutes. The following code block will be the e-commerce tag that the Analyzify team specifically created for you. This is where the magic happens with Shopify GA4 Kit.

Detailed information about setting up the GA4 can be found in the article Google Analytics 4 for Shopify on the Analyzify Hub.

Best Practises for Shopify Stores as a summary;

Keep your existing UA integration
Add Google Analytics 4 within Universal Analytics
Assure that has e-commerce and user-level tracking
Get help from the Analyzify app & team if it is needed.

Top 5 Google Ads Extensions for Shopify Stores

Gloria Maldonado ✪ — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 07:49:56 +0000

If you utilize Google Ads for your Shopify store, you should unlock its full potential as an important marketing strategy. Starting off by understanding what Google Ads extensions provide would serve as a great way to help you along the way.

Coming up with quality ads always adds to your overall quality as a Shopify store owner. It’s not enough to create good ads and improve your website so that you can improve the user experience, however. You should make sure that you provide extra information to help users.

That’s where the Google Ads extensions come into play.

How Do Google Ads Extensions Work?

Google Ads Extensions are add-ons that let you increase the space your ads cover on Google searches. With these extensions, you can improve the effectiveness of your ads by providing more detailed information on your products.

This way, you get a much bigger advertising space full of significant insights and have a great opportunity to impress your potential customers who search for your products on Google. Here is what it generally looks like:

Why Do You Need Google Ads Extensions for Your Shopify Store?

If you can make use of the right extensions for your Google Ads, you can improve your overall ad performance since it lets you stand out from the crowd by enhancing the user experience and increasing the rate of reaching qualified users.

Google lets you utilize 14 different & useful ad extensions. You can effortlessly expand your ad content by going for the ones that are most appropriate for your business needs. While offering thorough information about your products and services with extensions, you can emphasize your competitive advantages, which allows you to boost preferability and click-through rates.

As a very large portion of users doesn’t intend to click on the ads that don’t match the features they look for, you can’t get any clicks that would potentially turn into conversions once there’s not enough information shared. It’s possible to change this with extensions, though.

For example, let’s say there are some users who would like to buy digital products from the stores which also provide free returns. If they can see “free returns” in an ad when searching for the products, they are more likely to visit that page. This applies to other features, as well.

The Best Google Ads Extensions for Shopify Stores

Here is a list of the best Google Ads extensions that you can benefit from as a Shopify store owner:

1. Image Extension
You can add relevant images to your existing text adverts. This way, you can visually present your products or services to users and cover more space on the search engine results page. This would allow you to increase your ad performance by making your text advertising more attractive with images.

2. Structured Snippet Shopify Extension
This extension lets you highlight some important aspects of your products or services in ad texts. For instance, If you run a business that sells products from a variety of different brands, you can add these brands by opting for the ‘brands’ category.

3. Lead Form Extension
You can use the lead form extension to let users contact you by filling out a form without even needing to go ahead and visit your website.

4. Call Extension
If you serve customers by phone, you can allow them to see the official phone numbers with your ads. This way, users get an opportunity to reach out by calls with ease.

5. Callout Extension
In addition to your ad text, you can make use of the callout extension to give extra information about your products and services. By specifying some advantages such as free shipping, 24/7 customer service, free return and so on, you can improve your click-through rates.

How to Create Google Ads Extensions for Shopify Stores?

Follow the steps below to create your Google Ads extensions effortlessly:

Step 1: Go to your Google Ads account and choose your campaign or ad group:

Step 2: Click on “Ads & Extensions” > “Extensions” tab on the left.

Step 3: Click on the "+" sign to create a new extension.

Step 4: Choose the extension you’d like to create.

Step 5: Customize your extension such as shown below:

Step 6: Click "Save" and get your Google Ads extension up and running!

A Complete Guide to Importing Shopify Customer Data to Google Ads

Gloria Maldonado ✪ — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 08:16:37 +0000

Did you know that you could import Shopify customer data to Google Ads with a few steps? If no, I’ve got some good news for you here - just read on and transfer your valuable data to Google Ads and make it more meaningful.

First things first, let’s face it: Improving your remarketing performance and results takes a lot of time and effort. You can use many different techniques and methods to make things work. This one can be a game changer, though: importing Shopify customer data to Google ads.

By creating a customer list and importing the related data to Google Ads, you will be able to make more of your data as you will secure a set of detailed & valuable information that you can utilize to target your existing customers.

Why Should You Import Shopify Customer Data to Google Ads?

By performing this with the help of a thorough guide, you can create audiences and optimize them to come up with more effective sales strategies in addition to targeting existing customers more easily.

Once you import your Shopify customer data to Google Ads, you can:

Enhance remarketing audiences
Target users/audiences similar to your customers
Use your time & energy more efficiently to develop remarketing strategies
Find out what products to offer to your customers and increase their satisfaction

How to Import Shopify Customer Data to Google Ads?

Here I share a step-by-step guide that will help you benefit from your Shopify customer data on Google Ads on a different level. We are going to start by exporting the customer data from your Shopify store:

Step 1: Navigate to your Shopify store and find ‘Customers’ on the left. Then, click ‘Export’ as shown below:

Step 2: Next, choose the options of exporting to ‘All customers’ and ‘Export as CSV for Excel, Numbers, or other spreadsheet programs’ before clicking on ‘Export customers’ down below.

At this point, the CSV file that includes your customer data will be sent to your admin email by Shopify.

Step 3: Once you get the related data in the form of a table, you need to optimize it considering what sort of specific data you will need & use. Here, it’d be wise for you to keep the data you need and delete the other columns to ensure a clearer & more meaningful look.

Step 4: Save your data after customizing the data according to your needs, and go to your Google Ads account. Find ‘Tools and Settings’ on the upper right corner, and then choose ‘Audience Manager’ under ‘Performance Planner’.

Step 6: Click ‘Segments’ end then the plus button right next to that.

Step 7: Go for the ‘Customer list’ in the drop-down menu that appears next.

Step 8: Add a segment name and choose your data type.

Step 9: Choose the CSV file you created earlier and apply the settings as seen below. Then, click ‘Upload and create’ to finalize the process.

You have successfully imported your Shopify customer data to Google Ads! Keep in mind that you might have to wait for 48 hours to see your audience reflected in the Google Ads account. Then, you’ll be able to utilize your customer data on Google Ads effortlessly.

How to Set up Facebook Pixel on Shopify

Gloria Maldonado ✪ — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 07:39:39 +0000

What is Facebook Pixel?

Facebook Pixel can be instrumental for you to better understand your target audience and grow your business as a Shopify store owner.

It offers valuable insights you can capitalize on to create much more effective Facebook ads targeting the right audience. Once you allow the pixel to track the user actions & behavior on your Shopify store coming through a Facebook ad, you can ramp up your conversions by:

Monitoring when a customer takes action following your Facebook ad
Focusing on retargeting particular customers thanks to the Customer Audience feature
Advertising for people who are more likely to take action and convert
Seeing which products attract more interest by analyzing every action on your website
Measuring cross-device conversions

Read on, and get yourself a detailed & step-by-step guide on how to make Facebook Pixel work on your Shopify store!

How Does Facebook Pixel Work with Shopify?

Once you integrate, Facebook Pixel functions as a tracking pixel that lets you analyze how effective your ad campaigns are. It operates on the browser side by transferring the user behavior & data to Facebook when users visit your website.

Browser-side (also known as client-side) tracking is the typical tracking method that is preferred by nearly all websites. When you opt for this sort of tracking, it means that almost every user action takes place in the user’s browser.

On server-side tracking, though, you get a specific Google Cloud server that receives all the requests from your website. The pixels related to both marketing and tracking are rendered through this server, rather than the browser which provides better results.

The native Facebook Pixel integration works well for Shopify stores - although you might want to set up the Facebook Conversion API to get even better results because of some inaccuracy problems caused by browser-side tracking.

How to Set up Facebook Pixel on Shopify?

Here I share a 4-step-process so you can get Facebook Pixel up and running on your Shopify store. Before you start, you should make sure to:

Install the official Facebook Channel App on your Shopify store
Have the Facebook Business Manager with admin rights there

Now, you can move on with the steps:

Step 1: Navigate to Shopify Admin > Online Store > Preferences > Setup Facebook

Step 2: Authorize your FB Business Manager account and choose the Pixel later on.

Step 3: You should choose “Maximum” here in order to make sure all the data is shared and then confirm.

Step 4: Go to FB Pixel Settings > Automated Advanced Matching, and set all the fields (from Email to External ID) ON to finalize the process.

Congratulations! Now that you’ve completed the Facebook Pixel - Shopify setup, you’ve got yourself an effective & free tool that can help to show your ads to the right people, which can let you increase your conversions at the end of the day. You can track your conversions, understand your audience by using a vast variety of metrics, and level up your remarketing campaigns.

How to Set up Facebook Conversion API on Shopify

Gloria Maldonado ✪ — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 07:22:49 +0000

Having accuracy problems tracking data through Facebook Pixel? Hold on: It’s time to sing the Facebook Conversion API’s praises as it will help you secure much better results in no time.

Your browser-based, vintage Facebook Pixel fails to deliver accurate and consistent data due to ad-blockers, cookie blockers, etc. because it works on the browser side. On top of all that, the latest iOS updates put you in a tight spot when it comes to tracking & monitoring data through Facebook Pixel.

The Facebook Conversion API comes to the rescue, though. It works on the server side and gets all your purchase data in the back end, providing much better results at the end of the day.

Here, I’ll help you to set it up on your Shopify store - with no additional apps required.

3 Things You Should Do Before You Set Up Facebook Conversion API on Shopify

There are a couple of things to get done before taking action. First things first, you need to make sure that you:

Install the Facebook Channel App on your Shopify store.
Get Facebook Business Manager with admin rights.
Use the native FB app to set up FB CAPI on your Shopify store.

The Easiest Way to Set Up Facebook Conversion API on Shopify

You can benefit from the native integration using Facebook Sales Channels to secure a solid setup that works. Just follow the steps below:

1- Navigate to the Shopify Admin > Online Store > Preferences > Setup Facebook

2- Authorize your FB Business Manager account and select the pixel. Make sure you opt for ‘Maximum’ to let all the data possible flow. Then, confirm.

How to Validate Your Facebook Conversion API on Shopify

The native Facebook Conversion API setup on Shopify includes the browser pixel as well, and this is very useful for your validation. You should first check the Facebook Pixel to see if it includes the variables/data that FB CAPI needs.

Step 1: Check browser-based Facebook Pixel

Go ahead and download a Chrome extension named Facebook Pixel Helper to kick things off. Then, go to your Shopify store’s homepage.

Here, you should activate the extension. To do that, click the icon on the upper right corner and then the little pin icon as you can see below.

Important: Keep in mind that you need to deactivate your adblockers, if you have any, because they cause a malfunction by blocking the Facebook Pixel.

After you activate the extension as told above, go to your store’s website. You should now see the extension like this:

Here, the PageView should be triggered on your homepage. Ideally, I recommend that you make use of one pixel but some merchants might want to do multiple pixels although it’s not a good practice.

You can see the Event ID when you click the PageView event.

Here’s a quick reminder that you can use the Event ID to de-duplicate events. Visit this page to get more in-depth information on the topic.

Also, you can go to a product page on your store and see the ViewContent event on your FB Pixel Helper. It lets you monitor product-level data such as ID, price, name, category, etc. as shown below:

At this point, you can level up your pixel by taking the following actions:

Navigate to FB Pixel Settings > Automatic Advanced Matching.
Re-adjust the settings (set all of the fields ON)

At this juncture, there's yet another thing to do so that you can get the best out of pixel: You need to navigate to FB Pixel Settings > Automatic Advanced Matching. Then, you should re-adjust the settings that are already in use. That's to say, make sure you set all of the fields (from Email to External ID) ON.

Step 2: See your data on Facebook Business Manager

You can go to FB Business Manager > Events Manager > Pixels section to check your data. It would be wise to say that you should check your data after a couple of days as it takes some time for the data to be monitored.

Then, navigate to Facebook Business Manager > Data Sources > Events Manager

Here, you need to make sure that you check the correct pixel - you can compare the Pixel IDs.
Then, you can see the events listed. You should see “Browser - Server" in some events to understand everything works well.

You should also check the "Last received X minutes ago". Although it’s not updated instantly, you can see your data here in a couple of hours. For instance, if you can’t see some data related to a purchase here after 12 hours or so, it means that there’s something wrong with the setup.

Then, click “Purchase” and see the parameters section, the last received time, and then click View Details as you can see below:

You should also see all of your latest sales in detail once you go to the Recent Activities:

You can see the Event Parameters section to monitor which parameters are being sent - and whether they are being sent correctly.

Just some useful tip here: you can see the order details in the URL section. This helps you detect which orders are being counted and which ones are not so that you can have a much better idea on what’s going on.

Everything is set! Are you ready to set up Facebook Conversion API on your Shopify store and make much more of your data?