You’ve all heard the shocking news that Google is sunsetting Universal Analytics in less than a year. This places Shopify merchants in a tight spot as Shopify hasn’t come up with a native integration option as of now (July 2022).
You shouldn’t let that become some sort of stress looming over you, though. There are great solutions for setting up and maintaining Google Analytics 4 (aka GA4) on your Shopify store - and you are about to discover a lot about them.
In this guide, you will find answers to questions such as:
What should you do as a Shopify merchant on this matter?
How can you integrate your store with GA4?
What should you do with Universal Analytics?
What benefits does GA4 offer?
and more.
Now, let’s kick things off.
Shopify & GA4 Action Plan
We know you’re puzzled without a solid roadmap showing what exactly you should be doing. Let’s start with a clear action plan, then!
You will get the details & tutorials in the next sections.
**You should start using GA4 asap **
Your existing data in the Universal Analytics will NOT be transferred into GA4. That means your Google Analytics journey will almost start from scratch with no data. That’s the reason you should start collecting data for GA4 right now.
**Parallel tracking first. **
Don’t ditch UA yet. You have almost a year ahead to keep using UA. Universal Analytics is still the favorite and most-used analytics tool in the market, and you know how to use it. So, start using GA4 on top of your existing Universal Analytics integration. Both properties will receive data, and you can keep using UA as your reporting tool.
Don’t miss GA4 e-commerce tracking
GA4 offers (and will offer even more) new ML(machine learning) & AI capabilities. You want to feed GA4 with as much data as possible, and ML & AI needs your data to learn about your business. Ensure your e-commerce tracking is set - GA4 knows about your sales, revenue, products, categories, and more.
Connect GA4 with Google Ads & Search Console
GA4 offers in-depth integrations with other Google products. You should integrate as soon as possible to get the most out of these powerful tools.
**Consider BigQuery integration **
As default, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) retains the event-level data for two months. You can also increase it to 14 months by changing the settings. However, this might not be enough for merchants who want to own and use more in-depth historical data. You can connect your GA4 account with BigQuery so that your raw data will be hosted there forever (well - as long as you pay to Google Cloud:D)
It’s time to dive into more technical details, now.
How to set up GA4 on Shopify?
As mentioned above, you don’t have a native Shopify & GA4 integration yet. However, there are already great solutions in the market, both paid & free (open-source).
You will find a lot of tutorials online. Still, most of them don’t cover the e-commerce tracking correctly. They are mostly about copying & pasting the GA4 tracking code into your theme.liquid file. Well, that’s better than nothing - but this will help you have e-commerce reports.
To properly execute a Shopify & Google Analytics e-commerce integration, you need to have:
Data layers on both product pages & checkout completed (thank you) page,
A Google Tag Manager account and it needs to be connected to Shopify properly,
Google Analytics 4 tags (Global, Product View, Purchase) on your Google Tag Manager.
And more often than not, these setups don’t work well because too many elements are connected. Therefore, a tiny mistake can cause the whole setup to go wrong.
The great news is that our friends at Analyzify have prepared an open-source solution for Shopify merchants. It’s a do-it-yourself solution called Shopify GA4 Kit. The kit includes pre-built files, detailed video tutorials, and validation.
You can find the following events/data with the Shopify GA4 Kit:
Global tracking (classic tracking - page view and other default events)
Revenue tracking (purchase events)
Product performance (product view events + product-level data in the purchase events)
If you want more comprehensive data, including the whole e-commerce tracking flow, you should consider one of the paid Shopify apps:
Analyzify (Our recommendation comes with an audit & setup support at no extra cost)
Littledata
Elevar
EasyTag
“You do not need to rush with a paid app or full integration. But you should rush with the essential GA4 e-commerce integration at least so that your GA4 account starts collecting data. We have built our open-source solution for this purpose.” * Erman Küplü, Co-creator of Analyzify
Benefits of GA4
Google Analytics 4 stands out with its new design and functionality, which help Shopify merchants to a great deal. Here is a quick look at the exciting features of GA4 before going into detail:
With GA4, you can
Track and thoroughly analyze data on the top-performing products, categories, and brands.
Utilize the brand-new segment & audience builder, and benefit from the audiences in Google Ads.
Get more accurate user-matching reports powered by Google's database & Google Signals.
Build custom funnels and reports with advanced report builders.
Run across multiple platforms without relying solely on cookies.
Use the same GA4 property to track your mobile app and website data within different data streams.
Configure audiences with any combination of events, demographics or channels, and then sync it with Google Ads.
Let’s see some details now.
A New Homepage
GA4 offers a brand new homepage placed through the left navigation. It helps you get personalized content as you keep using GA4.
For instance, “Recently viewed” and “Because you viewed frequently” provide a seamless experience by offering easy links and cards to guide you through.
New Integrations
Google Ads, Optimize, Search Console, BigQuery, and Merchant Center have been a big boost for quite some time. Now, GA4 also allows you to utilize Display & Video 360 for your properties.
This allows you to export your audiences and conversions to Display & Video 360 and see your advertiser as a traffic source in your cross-channel reports.
Advanced User Interface
GA4 provides you with an improved dashboard that lets you navigate to your reports more easily and have a clear overview of them.
Predictive Audiences
GA4 makes use of Machine Learning in audiences by adding the predictive audience feature into GA4. You can build an audience with a condition based on a predictive metric. For example, you can create an audience for likely 7-day purchasers, including users likely to make a purchase within the time given.
Funnels
Previously, advanced and in-depth funnel features were only available in the paid Analytics 360. Now, GA4 offers many funneling features that online stores and businesses benefit from. Some of these include Open Funnels and Trended Funnels that let you have time-based tracking and advanced path analysis.
FAQ on Shopify & GA4 Integration
Here are some of the most popular questions that we have received on the topic:
When will Shopify support GA4 natively?
As mentioned above, there isn’t a native Shopify & GA4 integration. We’ll update this post as things change. Shopify has not announced a specific date until now- so we don’t know precisely when a native integration will be launched.
Should I use a Shopify app to have a proper Google Analytics setup?
Ideally, yes. Shopify Analytics apps increase the accuracy, enriches the data, and solve known problems with the Shopify - Google Analytics connection.
Is GA4 better than UA?
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the new and default version of Google Analytics. Even its first version has many features that weren't available in Universal Analytics (UA), and Google keeps delivering new advanced features for GA4.
Will I lose my data in Universal Analytics if I switch to Google Analytics 4?
No, because GA4 and UA are completely different properties. You will not lose your existing data in UA, but keep in mind that your data won't be carried over to GA4.