Discrepancy Between Shopify Orders and GA4 Thank You Page Views

[FBLSON]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently using a custom pixel in Shopify to load GTM (Google Tag Manager), and tracking store traffic through Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

However, I've noticed a significant discrepancy between the number of actual orders and the number of "Thank You" page views reported in GA4, and I’d appreciate any insights into what might be causing this.

Between June 1 and June 15, the data shows:

Actual orders on Shopify: 2,961
Thank You page views in GA4: 1,129

That’s a gap of nearly 3x.

In GA4, the "Thank You" page views are being counted based on URLs that include /thank-you. 

Has anyone else experienced this kind of mismatch? Or does anyone know potential reasons why GA4 might undercount the Thank You page views?

For reference, here’s the GTM code I added via Shopify’s Custom Pixel feature (GTM-XXXXXXX is replaced with my actual container ID):

(function(w,d,s,l,i){
w[l]=w[l]||[];
w[l].push({'gtm.start': new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});
var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],
j=d.createElement(s),
dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';
j.async=true;
j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;
f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);
})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-XXXXXXX');

Any suggestions or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

[J_mah]

Hi FBLSON,

Thanks for your query.

There could be various reasons: 

Many users have ad blockers or privacy extensions that prevent GA4 tracking. furthermore some browsers blocks 3rd party cookies like GA4, google ads to track the users activity like brave, Mozilla and IOS 14 update. 

The trigger for the GA4 page view might not be properly configured

solution:

The most widely recommended and practical solution is to configure GA4 tracking using Google Tag manager GTM.

GTM is a manual configuration that allows us to send data from both the browser and the server containers. browser/client side tracking often gets blocked but server side tracking is pretty consistent, bypassing all the cookie and ads blockers. because configuring server side tracking enables you to configure first party domain/subdomain to store first party cookies instead of 3rd party 

To understand the difference between client/browser side tracking vs server side I have attached an image that shows sometimes browser fails to track purchase but server is consistent. 

Feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Thanks

[Amlani]

hi. 

this is a widely faced issue that many users have reported in the past. apart from orders, views, etc., you might even notice a discrepancy in the revenue number. 

to deal with it, you must ensure that the "thank you" page is not blocked by any browser settings, ad blockers, or even extensions. if that happens to be the case, then GA4 data might be skewed. 

[FBLSON]

Thank you very much.
I am currently tracking store data in GA4 via GTM, but is it possible that only about a third of the data is tracked versus the actual number of orders?

[J_mah]

Yes possible because tracking from browser or web container is backdated nowadays. Many users use ad blocker extensions, cookie booking browser or turn off marketing cookies. in that case you may miss tracking events if you have browser side tracking. 

That's why Google has introduced server-side tracking for accurate tracking. 

server-side tracking with first-party domain/subdomain can bypass all kinds of cookie blockers and ad blockers by storing first-party cookies under your website instead of 3rd party domains like googletagmanager.com

I have attached an image where you can see the request URL is sa ubdomain of stape using a custom loader. 

Feel free to ask if you have any question.

Thanks

[FBLSON]

Thank you very much.

I understand that server-side tracking can be used to get more accurate data,
Do we need to use some kind of application or external service to actually implement this?

Also, is it possible to track the thank you page (/thank-you) on the server side?

[J_mah]

Yes, we would need external server provider for  server url to configure the server container in google tag manager. Through server URL

server container receives data from the web container in GTM. 

currently google cloud platform and stape.io provides server URL for server side tracking.

Yes from server side tracking it Is possible to track each and every event you configure in web container for any platform. 

i have attached an image where you can see all the e-commerce events received and fired the server tag in the server container preview

[Amlani]

it is. also @FBLSON are you using custom pixels for google ads or facebook ads?