Use Shopify with Google Analytics

Having a comprehensive report about current trends and shoppers' attitude is vital for your store's profitability.

The need to monitor and keep track of your customers' demographics is crucial to your overall sales strategy and profitability. What better way you can achieve this if not with Google Analytics. As a store owner, you need to know the areas of e-commerce that are catching the buzz with customers to help you tailor your projections and drive traffic. Integrating your e-commerce store with Google Analytics helps you resolve some of the lingering setbacks affecting your store.

What is Google Analytics

Using Google Analytics helps you to increase your sales by allowing you to reach your target market. Once you can know your target audience and customer behavior and understand the market trends, then you can be assured of turning around your sales performance for the better. Integrating Google Analytics with Shopify gives you that cutting edge you had so wanted.

Integrating Google Analytics With Shopify

The whole idea of Google Analytics is hinged on providing the details of how important it is to know who your customers are, what they want, and how beneficial your store is to them. Google Analytics reveals many important details, including how often shoppers search for your store and the duration they take.

Armed with this crucial piece of data, you can develop innovative methods to improve your sales by offering your customers what they desire. At first, you may find the process of interpreting the details of your data quite complicated for your reach. However, it doesn't take long before you begin to come together. Setting up Google Analytics aims to improve your sales and gain revenue by creating a sales strategy built on your customers' interests.

With Google Analytics, you can carry out e-commerce tracking of shoppers' activity in your store and try to figure out their shopping patterns to establish a strategy to improve sales. For instance, within you add Google Analytics to Shopify, you can see the number of times shoppers successfully buy a product. The number of times products are added to the cart is abandoned. These data make it easy for you to review your sales strategy and work on your optimization objectives.

How can I add Google Analytics to Shopify?

Shopify Google Analytics is one way of enhancing the shopping experience for customers to tell your store apart from 5.23 million live websites. In setting up Google Analytics to your store, ensure you understand the process. One question that has continually lingered on some store owners is how to go about setting up Google Analytics for their store. Setting up Google Analytics is quite easy and straightforward. You would begin by ensuring that all the necessary tools you need are available for you to begin, including creating an account for Shopify and an account on Google Analytics for your Shopify website.

To keep track of your analytics on Shopify, you would need to open a Gmail account. The essence of having Google Analytics on your Shopify store is improving your performance and giving you an edge in the highly competitive e-market. So you begin by signing up on Googe Analytics which is quite an easy process. Let us break down the process into simple and easy steps to setting up Google Analytics to your Shopify store.

Step 1: Verify every piece of information

You have to check if you have enabled Google Analytics in the past before you get started. You can do this by going to your Shopify admin account:

1. Click on Online store navigation;
2. Then preferences;
3. Ensure that the box is empty or delete anything that might be outdated before entering your Google Analytics tracking info.

If you notice something like analytics or gtag.js, .ga.js, it signifies you already have Google Analytics enabled on your Shopify account. To delete, click on Themes, then Actions. To get to the Layout section, you need to Edit Code. Once you are in the layout section, click {/}theme. Liquid to remove any Google Analytics enabled in the past.

Step 2: Create or set up a Google Analytics account

If you do not have a Google Analytics account, you can start by creating a new account on Google for your Shopify website. If you have disabled Google Analytics on your Shopify account, then you can set up your account to begin the process again. To create a Google account, you would first create a Gmail or use a previous Gmail account if you already have.

Opening a Gmail account is quite easy. It entails visiting google and choosing an email address you would like to use in creating an account for Google for your Shopify website. After which you can then do the following:

• Enter your store's name.
• Copy and paste your Shopify store URL.
• Select the industry you work in. E.g., heath, hospitality.
• Hit GET " Tracking ID.
• Accept Googles Terms and & Conditions.

Step 3: Enable Google Analytics

To enable Google Analytics, visit their website and enter your account, then make sure you click sign up. Proceed by filling in all the published required fields. You can move on to other pages to access your Global site Tag.

Once you are there, you can copy the global site tag, then proceed to your Shopify admin page. You then move on to the Online Store tab and click on Preferences. Finally, paste your Google Analytics tag into your account field to complete the process.

In a situation where you have previously used Google Analytics, sign in to your Google Analytics account, then select the account you want to use. Click on Admin to create an account. Make sure You then add all the necessary information and property column for your Shopify store website.

You would also need to click on the Get Tracking ID to select the country you are in with the drop-down menu. Click on save and accept the terms and conditions to move on to the next page. You would still need to copy your Global site tag and add it to your Shopify admin's preferences section in the Google Analytics account column. Note that it can take up to 24 hours for your Google Analytics to start collecting data. Don't panic when you don't notice anything immediately after setting up your Google Analytics account.

Step 4: Enhance Ecommerce tracking on Google Analytics

Setting up your account is just the first step involved in running a successful e-commerce tracking and store. Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can then explore the numerous features available on the platform. You can select to enable basic or enhanced e-commerce tracking from your e-commerce Analytics Google page. While you can get revenue and transactional data from basic e-commerce tracking, enhanced e-commerce tracking tells you more about those who visit your Shopify website.

You can choose to try an Advanced Shopify plan for free. The Advanced Shopify plan is a top package that comes with delightful features that enhance your Google Analytics experience. To choose this plan, click on Advanced plan on the navigation setting to enable and get started. However, do not forget to cancel or change plans before the end of the trial period to avoid being charged.

How to add a domain to the referral exclusion list

Step 1: Go to the admin section of Google Analytics property and click on the referral exclusion list in the tracking info session.

Step 2: Click on the add referral button.

Step 3: Enter your domain name and hit the create button.

How to install Google Analytics tracking code

Step 1: Find the tracking code for your snippet and sign in to your analytics account.

Step 2: Select the tracking code snippet.

Step 3: Copy and paste your tracking code snippet.

Upgrading to Universal Analytics

To enjoy a more fulfilling Google Analytics experience on your Shopify store page, we recommend you upgrade to Universal Analytics. The tool is the latest version of Google Analytics that enhances your experience and makes for easier and effective e-commerce tracking. It comes with an amazing feature known as cross-device reporting used in knowing how your customers are interacting with your website on mobile compared to desktop.

There are tons of benefits of upgrading to a Universal Analytics account on your e-commerce store. Aside from making your store thrive, Universal Analytics gives you tremendous insights on how best to improve your e-commerce tracking and enhance the shopper's experience. Universal Analytics is the ultimate tool for efficiently tracking key e-commerce analytics crucial to your store's success.

You can know vital details such as the number of views your products have had and the number of times shoppers have clicked on a product. Universal Analytics help improves your e-commerce tracking by capturing all the important details you need.

Understanding the basics of Google Analytics to Shopify

It is one thing to set up a Google Analytics account to your Shopify online store and another to understand it once the process begins. At first, you might find it a bit confusing. However, with a little effort on your part in studying handy guidelines on Google Analytics, you would certainly pull through.

You should also check out Google's guide on the introduction to analytics. Similarly, you can also find Shopify's Google Analytics support page very helpful. For this guide, let us take you through some basic terms and key metrics you encounter from time to time on your dashboard section.

Sessions - This is the number of interactions one visitor makes in 30 minutes when they visit your online store. The 30 minutes duration is Googles's default time frame. So if a shopper visits your site, buys a product, and exit in under 30 minutes is counted as one session.

Bounce rate - This is a term used by Google to qualify the number of times users to click on a page and hit the back button. Most times, users click on the back button when they do not find what they are looking for. Bounce rate enables you to know the number of times visitors are doing this on your site. A high bounce rate could be very frustrating for online retailers. So it would help if you reduce your bounce rate for these reasons:

• To help achieve a higher conversion rate.
• To make visitors stay longer on your site.
• To make your online store generate more sales.

They are those who have initiated at least one session on your site. Note that a visitor who spends a session on your site and returns hours later is considered one user with two sessions.

Average session duration - refers to how long hours, minutes, or seconds an average session lasts.

Conversion Tracking in Shopify and Google Analytics

This section you would need to familiarize yourself with as you will be interacting a lot with it. The goal of every store owner is to convert as many visits as possible into actual purchases. The goal is to earn profits and generate revenues and make long-term profits. So the question is, how can you achieve your goals using Google Analytics? Integrating Google Analytics to Shopify allows you to oversee your long-term objectives using certain parameters.

Basic Metrics on Google Analytics

Let us look at some standard metrics you need to monitor your Shopify Google Analytics account column closely.

Revenue - It is the total money generated from the sales of products on your Shopify store. Revenues come in before expenses, and other operating costs are deducted.

Profits - Everyone in business aims to make profits. You must know how much you are truly making from the business after deducting your operating costs.

Revenue per Visit - This metric shows you a summary of the conversion rate and the average order value. The goal is to identify the kind of traffic that brings profit to your business.

Return On Investment

Making profits alone does not guarantee that a business is healthy. You would need to know the returns of investment on that business to ascertain how well the business is going. For instance, if you are spending so much on ads with minimal profits in return, then it means your return on investment is low. To access the ROI of your Shopify store, you should deduct the total amount of investment from the total gain. Thereafter you divide the result by the cost of investment to get your ROI.

Average Order Value( AOV)

This is the average amount of money a buyer spends per transaction on your Shopify store. You can do this by dividing the total revenue by the total orders.

How to Enable Enhanced Ecommerce in Shopify

One of the best ways of enjoying Google Analytics on your store is to enable Enhanced Ecommerce. While Google Analytics has a general appeal, Enhanced Ecommerce has been built specifically for online store owners. Depending on just the typical Shopify analytics alone could be a potential problem.

This is because you might lose track of your customer after they have clicked your product and gone through a Spotify checkout page. Adding Enhanced Ecommerce to your Shopify Analytics is a great way of enriching your Shopify checkout page and shop pages. Use Enhanced Ecommerce to give you the extra edge in tracking your customer's activities, including clicking to purchasing a product.

To enable Enhanced Ecommerce Analytics on your Shopify, go to your Shopify admin tool's preference section and tick the box. Head to the Online Store in the left navigation. Then move to the preference section and check the box tagged Enhanced Ecommerce. Proceed by ticking the button labeled Enhance Ecommerce to upgrade to your store's Google Analytics. Note that you would need to enable Enhanced Ecommerce tracking in your Google Analytics account.

To do this, head to your Google Analytics account, then search for Enhanced Ecommerce settings in your store's account, select the Enable Enhanced Ecommerce status then turn it on. Once you enable Enhanced e-commerce tracking on your Google account, you would be privy to see credible and vital information Shopify sends to Google on the product performance.

Shopify Premium Reports - how to upgrade:

Running an online business requires you to be up to date with every data available. Managing these loads of data may become overwhelming as you might confuse which data you need to track. Shopify premium account can help you deal with such challenges. While a typical Shopify plan would give you access to basic reporting levels such as an overview dashboard, like views, finance reports, upgrading to a Shopify plan gives you the chance to know more about your customers to improve your overall business strategy.

An advanced Shopify plan gives you a clear and precise breakdown of your store's key data in real-time. A basic Shopify plan might be adequate for starters to start a tour journey in the e-commerce market. However, if you want to grow your e-commerce store and increase revenues and profits, you would have to upgrade to the Advanced Shopify plan. The following are the three unique reports of the Advanced Shopify plan.

Shopify Sales Report

Google Analytics allows Shopify users to evaluate the following:

• Shopify sales report gives a precise presentation of how well your store is performing on a month-to-month basis.
• The report reveals the traffic channels that bring the most sales in real-time.
• It emphasizes the best selling products and product performance.

Shopify Customer Reports

The Shopify Customer Reports come with several filter options. With this, you can know the countries of your customers and their rankings based on patronage.

Shopify Customs Report

Shopify Customs Report is grouped into five categories: payments, taxes, sales, visitors, and customers. It helps to align reports in a way that is precise by filtering only the relevant information you need.

How to Drive More Traffic on Shopify

Driving traffic to your store is key to generating the much-needed sales and revenue you have always desired. Besides using Google Analytics, exploring best Shopify blog apps can enhance your content marketing strategy, driving even more traffic to your store. Google Analytics helps to keep track of where a specific amount of traffic comes from in real-time. Traffic usually comes from multiple sources in Shopify.

They include direct traffic, referral links, paid traffic, email marketing campaigns, search engine optimization, etc. Google Analytics gives you clear and concise data on areas that drive the most traffic to your store. Once you are armed with this vital information, you can make more strategic decisions on effectively running marketing campaigns for online products.

Final Thoughts

The goal of adding Google Analytics to your Shopify store is to optimize your website and provide you with insights needed to improve your sales strategy. Google Analytics is the number one tool you need to transform relevant data into credible insights to turn your business for good.

You do not need to be a tech guru to get started. Adding Google Analytics to Shopify might be one of the smartest decisions you would have taken in your e-commerce adventure.