How to Add and Use Google Analytics on Shopify

Why you need Google Analytics for your Shopify site

Numerous amazing features are available in Google Analytics. It enables you to track how visitors complete certain tasks, and funnel reports allow you to track the path visitors take across your site (such as reaching a product page or contact form). If you already use Google Analytics for other projects, you'll be able to see all of your stats in one place.

The following are the primary benefits of GA:

1. You'll be able to see how many users depart without viewing additional sites or responding to CTAs.
2. You'll see where the majority of the traffic originates.
3. You'll discover how much time individuals spend on various web sites.

After you’ve decided to use the tool on your website, you’ll need to create an account in Google and set up your analytics.

Before you start: set up Google Analytics account

If you have already registered at Google, you can follow the steps given below to open a new Analytics account. 

Follow the steps below to launch your account: 

1. Get to Google Analytics and log in with your Google account. 
2. In the left sidebar, find ‘Admin’. 
3. In the left drop-down list click ‘Create new account’. 
4. The setup page of your new Analytics account will show up. 
5. Enter all the required data and click ‘Save’. 
6. That’s it! You’ve effortlessly launched a Google Analytics account! 

When you have a Google account for your business, then you are probably getting lots of feedback on the platform. Consider placing your customer Google Reviews on your website to improve its performance.

After that you’ll have to get a Universal Analytics tracking ID. 

How to get Google Analytics Tracking ID

1. If you aren’t logged into your Google account, do it, and then click the 'Admin' tab at the top of the page. 
2. Ensure that the correct ‘Property’ and ‘Account’ are picked. 
3. After you’re done, click on the 'Tracking Info', choose 'Tracking Code' and there you’ll see your Tracking ID. 
4. Copy the Tracking ID and paste it in the Google Analytics Account Number field. 
5. Click ‘Save’. 

Keep in mind that in certain cases it requires nearly 24 hours for the statistics on your Shopify website to add to Google Analytics. After it opens up, you can go ahead to using the tool and getting helpful data for your website stats. 

Now let’s check that your event tracking works properly. 

How to check if Google Analytics event tracking is working

In some cases, confirming the event data can be done manually. If you see that your website is suspiciously low on visitors, go to the 'Real Time > Events' panel in the Analytics and double check if everything’s ok. 

Sometimes it can be rather tricky work. If you’re doubtful if the event setup was carried out properly or if your Shopify website is really busy, then identifying any good effect of your alterations becomes nearly unachievable. Making certain that the event tracking is working on your website is a substantial part of employing Google Analytics. And Google has an instrument to make it easier for you to find this out. It’s called Google Analytics Debugger. It is a Google Chrome extension which you can simply get on the Chrome web store. 

After installing it to your browser, go to the page with Google events created. Then open the console by performing a right click -> inspect element, and after that click the console tab. Afterwards, follow these steps: 

1. Hit the plugin icon in the taskbar. This will start the plugin. 
2. The page will refresh and the console will be filled with lots of stats. 
3. If you’re seeing it, everything works fine. 
4. Find the 'Clear Console' button in the top left corner and perform the event. This will give you a clean table. 

It’s better to spend some time on researching the console and its work as it will be of a really great help in understanding what data exactly is being sent to Analytics. 

How to find the most popular pages on Google Analytics

After the stats on your Shopify website can be viewed and your Tracking ID has been found, it's the right moment to see what pages get the most views per year. First, look at the left sidebar and search for the 'Behaviour' section. Click it and select 'Site content' - 'All pages'. 

You’ll see a generated report for all of your pages and the total number of page views. Bear in mind that a page view only stands for the fact that the Shopify page was loaded by a browser. It’s a primary way of measuring your website reputation, but it will help you to quickly discover the top pages. All that is left for you to do is to browse the list of the most popular pages on your website and choose the ones you’d like to feature. 

After you learn the essentials, let’s see how you can see if Google Analytics is working correctly on your website. 

How to check if Google Analytics is working

Setting up the Analytics on your Shopify website correctly is important as it can’t get statistics correctly if something was done wrong. First of all you should verify if anything goes wrong is the tracking code - it must be active on your site. In addition to other tools, you’ll also need Google Analytics Debugger. 

Users who have faced any issues with the work of Google Analytics on their websites, can use this tool to regulate their tracking code as well. 

Like we said, the tool can be explored on Google Chrome Web Store. If you don’t have, do it, it yet and then follow this easy guide: 

1. Open the website that needs to be tested. 
2. To turn the Debugger on, click on the Debugger icon in your browser. 
3. Press 'Ctrl-Shift-J' to open the Chrome Javascript console. 
4. Check whether your Analytics code contains any error messages in the ‘Console’ section. 

You can discover a bunch of other extensions for various browsers, for instance, Ghostery or Analytics Debugger. Install them to prevent your work with Analytics from any bother. 

After checking the work of Analytics, you can start tracking some more enhanced metrics for the Shopify site. 

What is the bounce rate in Google Analytics and why you should track it

Bounce rate in GA means an event when a user lands on a Shopify website page and then exits without triggering other requests to Analytics, such as opening some other pages, clicking call-to-actions, etc. So, if a user opens your website page from Google search, then walks through the page, but does not click any internal links or interact with your website in any other meaningful way, then such a user is regarded to be bounced. 

Bounce rate is specified as the percentage of sessions that start and end on the same page - sessions that end in bounce. Each page’s bounce rate affects the site's overall bounce rate. 

You can find info on bounce rates of your Shopify website on the Behavior, Conversion, and Acquisition tabs of the Google Analytics left sidebar. 

Improving a bounce rate requires a consistent strategy to make your web resource more attractive. You may try to embed Google reviews on any website

Are there any differences between bounce rate and escape rate in Google Analytics?

Some reports in Google Analytics include the Escape rate metric. It’s not the same as the Bounce rate and here’s why. 

Bounce rate is only reported in case of a separate page session occurrence on your Shopify site. On the contrary, if a user visits any of your ecommerce site pages, then moves to the product page or to the shopping cart and leaves, this exit influences Exit rate. 

Why should I track my website’s bounce rates?

Bounce rate is a crucial metric for understanding in what way your website visitors use some particular pages on the website. Aware of it, you can optimize your marketing strategy by requesting Analytics to motivate your website visitors to interact with your Shopify website pages. 

Remember that in individual cases great bounce rates are not inevitably bad. Here’s why: 

• It’s ok to have a high bounce rate if you have a one-page website. For example, it can be a landing page for an online course, or if your website content is meant for single-page sessions. 
• High bounce rates are not good for sites that are depending on users’ visiting more than one page - ecommerce first of all. 

After working out the best solution on working with bounce rates on your Shopify website, it’s time to use other features of Analytics. Including tracking campaign URLs. 

Use Google Reviews Shopify app to improve your bounce and conversion rates.

How to to find tagged URL data in Google Analytics

Tagging URLs with UTM codes helps website administrators define some certain referral sources in GA for your Shopify site. By using this feature, you can keep apart users referred to certain campaigns to get better comprehension of how they behave and also form more thorough audience lists. 

If you wish to apply tagging URLs with UTMs across your marketing campaigns, it’ll be necessary to know where to look in Analytics to see the information the tags provide. 

If everything is organized correctly, go to the Acquisition section in the left panel of the Google Analytics, then choose Campaigns and click on All Campaigns: 

All the info there will be divided by the name of the campaign. Bear in mind that if your campaign hasn't received any clicks, this URL won’t appear in the reports until it’s been clicked.