Discrepancies between Analytics and Shopify visitors

[MichelleSprieg]

Hi there guys...
Erm... have found great discrepancy between visits::: How do I solve this?



I know that there is a difference between Visitors and page views... but Visitors should ALWAYS be less than Page Views.

Any suggestion how I can solve?

I always check analytics for a more reliable data... so I trust that platform more than shopify´s ...

[Julie]

Hi, @MichelleSprieg!

Julie, here from Shopify Support. 

It's great to hear that you're focusing on analytics; gathering data about who is visiting your website and how often is crucial to understanding how your marketing campaigns are performing. 

When it comes to Google Analytics and Shopify's own analytics reporting, there are some known discrepancies. This is because all analytics services use different tracking mechanisms, so your visitors aren't recorded equally. We actually have a help doc on these analytics discrepancies you can find here. While there are many possible reasons for differences in tracking results, some of them include:

• Differences in how page reloads and unique visitors are counted. Google counts every page reload, but a browser doesn't count reloads of cached pages.
• Google can only count visitors with JavaScript and cookies enabled. Some visitors might not allow cookies or JavaScript.
• Customers can use browser extensions to block Google Analytics from tracking their sessions and purchases.

It's also a great idea to make sure you have set up Google Analytics properly and that you don't have any duplicate Google Analytics tracking tags. For example, you may have one added in Online Store > Preferences > Additional Scripts, and one inserted manually into your theme's theme.liquid file. We recommend only having the tracking tag added in the Additional Scripts section. If you also have other code added in this field, then it would be a good idea to remove any other code, leaving only the Google Analytics tracking code.

You can also use the Google Tag Assistant to determine whether or not you have too many tracking scripts active on your website. Google Tag Assistant is a Chrome plugin from Google that scans the webpage you're on and provides some information about the Google Analytics tracking scripts active on it. More importantly, it'll provide you with some indication of whether or not the tracking scripts are installed properly, and if they're actually working. If Google does notice something slightly off, they'll provide links to their documentation that explain what might be wrong, and suggestions for what you might be able to do to fix it. 

While I recommend ensuring that your tracking is set up correctly in Shopify, it's also important to keep in mind that discrepancies are completely normal and to be expected. As a rule of thumb, I always suggest referring to the Shopify Analytics reports, as this will give you the most accurate data. 

Are you running any marketing campaigns right now? One of the most important things to track in Google Analytics is your marketing campaigns. Google Analytics allows you to quickly create and automatically track campaigns but simply using a special URL.  All you have to do to track campaigns automatically is use Google’s Campaign URL Builder tool to create a trackable URL. This will help you determine which campaigns are performing better than others so you can focus your marketing efforts accordingly.

Let me know if you have any further questions!

[Maneet_Deol]

Hi Julia, We have Installed our Analytics code properly, and give or take were having relatively the same numbers of sessions tracked over google analytics and Shopify analytics. Now all of a sudden for reasons unknown the number of users shown on analytics has become 1/4th of what's showing on Shopify. We know the number on Shopify is correct as we can confirm them with all the other marketing platforms we are using to drive traffic to our shop. We have also realized the tracking is off for our Facebook pixel and any other tracking tool we are using. We suspect that this is because users are denaying the cookies but that is strange as they were not denaying them a month ago so why will all these people start this now at the same time. It just doesn't make sense, It would be great if you or anyone else could shed some light on why are we getting this discrepancy all of a sudden?

[Rae]

Hi, @Maneet_Deol! 

This is Rae from the Shopify team. I'm helping out my colleague Julie with this thread, and I wanted to offer some more details on why your analytics may look off. 

As a starting point, is it your Google Analytics information that doesn't look correct? If so, I recommend contacting Google about this directly for more information. However, the following reasons that Julie shared may also be contributing to the discrepancies you're noticing: 

• Differences in how page reloads and unique visitors are counted. Google counts every page reload, but a browser doesn't count reloads of cached pages.
• Google can only count visitors with JavaScript and cookies enabled. Some visitors might not allow cookies or JavaScript.
• Customers can use browser extensions to block Google Analytics from tracking their sessions and purchases.

This document that Julie previously linked can also help explain any analytics discrepancies you're noticing. 

In terms of the tracking being off on your Facebook pixel, can you please tell me a bit more about what you're noticing? Are the standard events linked here still being tracked correctly? 

Keep me posted!