Major increase of conversions from direct traffic after use of Shopify Payments

SanderVelden
Tourist
17 0 2

Before I used Mollie as my payment provider, but because of the extra transaction fees and about 30 percent missing conversions I changed to Shopify Payments.

Now I have about 95% accuracy for conversion vs real orders in Shopify so that goes well. But now the conversions from direct traffic increased from 5 to 50 percent. And it's caused by the payment process since using Shopify Payments. A lot of conversion are now with a landing page that starts with /checkout/processing/ (see screenshot) and a total duration of the visit between a few seconds and one minute. So in the payment process the real source of the visitor got lost because Google Analytics sees this as direct traffic.

I already had a lot of contact with support, but in the end they couldn't help me. Anyone that had this problem too or a great idea to fix it?

Screenshot 2021-03-16 at 20.39.44.png

 

Replies 27 (27)

Josh_Uebergang
Shopify Expert
1012 43 268

@SanderVelden A helpful start to isolate weird analytics problems is to create a segment in analytics for these people. That way everything you look at in analytics is about these people.

Another step is to go to Audience > User Explorer with that segment enabled. From there, you are better equipped to understand the common threads among users with a particular analytics issue.

Run Google Shopping ads? Get the free definitive guide to Google Shopping for Shopify (no optin required): https://www.digitaldarts.com.au/google-shopping
SanderVelden
Tourist
17 0 2

@Josh_Uebergang Thanks for your reply. So I did that and then I see about the same results (in percentages) as in my first example. So for the selected period almost half of the conversions have a landing page with 'checkout' in it. So the segment includes all sessions with a landing page that contain 'checkout'. So can you maybe give some directions what to do next? I was hoping someone experienced this same problem after using Shopify Payments. Since this wasn't an issue when I used Mollie (third payment provider).

Screenshot 2021-03-30 at 09.10.53.png

SanderVelden
Tourist
17 0 2

@Josh_Uebergang And if I look into your suggested next step I see also more confirmation that this isn't correct. Mostly the session duration is too short to finish an order. Any suggestions how I can find out how to solve the issue that Shopify Payments caused? 

Screenshot 2021-03-30 at 11.45.22.png

Josh_Uebergang
Shopify Expert
1012 43 268

Find the order IDs in GA for those users then check them in Shopify. It could be linked to a particular payment gateway given those session durations.

It's been a while since I've investigated but it's possibly related to a 2-minute cross-domain window:

When you invoke the plugin, it returns a URL query parameter which includes the Client ID as well as a signature which is valid for 2 minutes. So, if you visit a different domain URL with the query parameter within the two minute window, cross-domain traffic could be setup between the two domains.

Run Google Shopping ads? Get the free definitive guide to Google Shopping for Shopify (no optin required): https://www.digitaldarts.com.au/google-shopping
SanderVelden
Tourist
17 0 2

@Josh_Uebergang Thanks, I'm gonna look into this information.

SanderVelden
Tourist
17 0 2

@Josh_Uebergang Can I aks you for a short check of my understanding of the following:

- Chapter 5 of https://www.digitaldarts.com.au/google-analytics-shopify mentions that if possible you need to set-up something on the other domain.
- On https://www.simoahava.com/analytics/troubleshooting-cross-domain-tracking-in-google-analytics/ they explain with GTM, which is not possible to use because of my Shopify plan.
- On https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/linker I did some more research.

Is it as simple as adding below code to the 'Additional scripts' field in Shopify and replace destination.com by my own domain name? Since I can't affect the Shopify payment (third party) workaround, I assume that can be ignored.

// Loads the Linker plugin
ga
('require', 'linker');

// Instructs the Linker plugin to automatically add linker parameters
// to all links and forms pointing to the domain "destination.com".
ga
('linker:autoLink', ['destination.com'], false, true); 

 Note: I will also test this, but if you might think this can ruin more than it helps I might remove it earlier than I have enough data.

SanderVelden
Tourist
17 0 2

@selina10261 Good to know. Which options have you already tried? I'm now testing something (see previous message) but as I expected that seems not to be the solution. It also felt that was too easy but I wanted to give it a try.

Dutchiemixed
Tourist
5 0 1

Same here. 

hooks.stripe.com is used to redirect the traffic. After adding this as an exclusion in google analytics, the conversions are coming in as direct / none...  we buy our traffic via paid channels so this is frustrating in terms of attribution... 

 

Shopify do you have a solution for this?

When is the GA4 implementation coming to shopify? 

SanderVelden
Tourist
17 0 2

@Dutchiemixed Yes, indeed. Seems like exactly the same problem. I did some further research on the suggestion of @Josh_Uebergang and asked Shopify (based on his links) what they can do about their part of the suggested steps in the articles. But it seems that they don't want or can't do anything. 

--- Response Shopify

I have read through the website you sent as well as through the previous emails, and I understand you're having issues with this step:

  • When entering the target domain via a link in the source domain or an iframe, the URL of the page loaded in the web browser must have the _ga=1.234567.234567.234567 URL query parameter in place - Jump to details

Everything that needs to be done within Google's side is a bit out of our knowledge scope, as we only support the Google Channel within Shopify. After scrolling down a bit, it looks like this needs to be within the Google Task Manager, which I'm not familiar with so our help with this matter is limited, as our technical support team also deals with the Shopify side of things, not what goes on within Google.

---

But I think it's strange since it already seemed a problem 4 years ago (https://community.shopify.com/c/Shopify-Discussion/Direct-Traffic-in-Google-Analytics-is-including-c...) so I expected Shopify had already a workaround for it or otherwise the experience to know what we do wrong on our side so we can fix it ourselves.

@Dutchiemixed @selina10261 Please let me know if you have more insights.

Dutchiemixed
Tourist
5 0 1

@SanderVelden thanks for replying. 

if they say it is a google thing it means there is not solution. Google tag manager is only for shopify plus. 

I’m going to try GA4. Let’s see if this solves anything. 

@Josh_Uebergang any tips or new work arounds for this? Thanks in advance! 

 

Regarding the reaction of shopify on the google app. I understand what they are saying hence the google app is meant to connect to Google Ads. I tested it and the conversion actions are firing correct. 

If I find a solution I will let you know! 

SanderVelden
Tourist
17 0 2

Yes maybe then there is no solution. Only with Google Tag Manager in Shopify Plus. But I asked them if they can give a response in this topic based on the experiences with the users of the other topics. At least it would be nice to have the confirmation if your assumption of Google Tag Manager is correct. Then we can stop putting effort in it.

And that's a good thought about GA4. Really curious about your experiences. If that solves this problem I'm gonna make the switch to GA4 a priority.

Josh_Uebergang
Shopify Expert
1012 43 268

There is no native Shopify integration for GA4. I've seen some people try to roll out GA4 in the past few months and they have all been piss-poor implementations with no advantage.

You can insert Tag Manager into the Additional JavaScript section of Shopify. Though in the past month, Shopify's policy on this has been unpredictable. You can see my FB post on the issue.

If you want to go GA4, the guys at Elevar do good work.

Run Google Shopping ads? Get the free definitive guide to Google Shopping for Shopify (no optin required): https://www.digitaldarts.com.au/google-shopping
SanderVelden
Tourist
17 0 2

@Josh_Uebergang Thanks for the reply and good to know that Google Tag Manager might be something to consider / try via the additional javascript section.

But I guess your suggestion that it might have something to do with the 2-minute cross-domain window will not be solved by using GTM right? It then only needs other instructions to implement it.

And regards to my earlier question (see below) I experienced that it was not as simple as adding the custom 'linker' code to the additional javascript section. But I understood in the articles that for the correct implementation you need some custom help from the other domain (so Shopify in this case) but they were not able to help they said. Or did I misunderstand and can I implement it completely on my side? In that case I just gonna dive deeper in it to better understand it.

Thanks in advance.

--- earlier post ---

@Josh_Uebergang Can I aks you for a short check of my understanding of the following:

- Chapter 5 of https://www.digitaldarts.com.au/google-analytics-shopify mentions that if possible you need to set-up something on the other domain.
- On https://www.simoahava.com/analytics/troubleshooting-cross-domain-tracking-in-google-analytics/ they explain with GTM, which is not possible to use because of my Shopify plan.
- On https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/linker I did some more research.

Is it as simple as adding below code to the 'Additional scripts' field in Shopify and replace destination.com by my own domain name? Since I can't affect the Shopify payment (third party) workaround, I assume that can be ignored.

// Loads the Linker plugin
ga
('require', 'linker');

// Instructs the Linker plugin to automatically add linker parameters
// to all links and forms pointing to the domain "destination.com".
ga
('linker:autoLink', ['destination.com'], false, true); 

 Note: I will also test this, but if you might think this can ruin more than it helps I might remove it earlier than I have enough data.

SanderVelden
Tourist
17 0 2

@Josh_Uebergang I did some further reading on the link you sent and I added below code to the Additional Google Analytics Javascript in Shopify:

// Loads the Linker plugin
ga('require', 'linker');

// Instructs the Linker plugin to automatically add linker parameters
ga('linker:autoLink', ['stripe.com', shopify.com'], false, true);

ga('allowLinker': true);

Do you think this is correct? My assumption was to add the links of the payment providers to send them the correct parameter.
Until now (after just 7 orders) no problem yet, but I'm also missing 3 conversions in general in Google Analytics. Might be a coincidence (I need more data for it).

SanderVelden
Tourist
17 0 2

@Dutchiemixed Do you already found a solution? I tried a few things and tested it for a week everytime but it's still not solved.

Dutchiemixed
Tourist
5 0 1

Hi, 

 

Well the difference in conversions happen because of the apple pay/google pay solutions Shopify offers. This is the reason why there is a difference. 

I let go of finding a solution. What you can do is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoeis7WHc_s 

 

Cheers! 

SanderVelden
Tourist
17 0 2

Thanks for the reply, that seems something different than my problem, but good to know 🙂

Have a nice day.

Roelvdk
Shopify Partner
3 0 0

Did any of you found a solution? 

Normally with other webshops and paymentproviders I'm able to fix it bij adding a ?utm_nooverride=1  parameter on the return url, but that's nog possible right now. Or maybe do I mis something? 

Cheers! 

SanderVelden
Tourist
17 0 2

Shopify is still looking into it. It's strange that it's not a problem with Mollie but it is with Shopify payments. So it looks like Shopify can make some improvements here.

I don't know about your suggestion, I don't think we can add it ourselves right?

As soon as I have a solution I will post it here.

Roelvdk
Shopify Partner
3 0 0

Great, thanks! So will I 

ConversionToGo
New Member
4 0 0

Hey guys, did anyone ever fix that or found a solution for it? 

 

Still having the same issue here. 

SanderVelden
Tourist
17 0 2

No, I think it's getting worse.

 

Shopify says the acknowledged and addressed the issue, but it's already for more than 6 months 'under investigation' since it's not an easy fix. So for my personally it feels they don't really prioritize it. This feels strange for me, but  I kinda gave up keep asking for statuses. The reply is always the same (it's still in progress at the development team).

MarTech-Matt
Visitor
2 0 0

This is probably because of Cookie-Blocking GDPR Apps.

 

These Shopify Apps block tracking in your shop, but not the nativ checkout tracking.

 

If users don't optin to your tracking, they still will be tracked in your checkout. That's why they are "New Users" in your checkout.

SanderVelden
Tourist
17 0 2

That sounds as something that can be the reason indeed. Did you test this before? I started a test yesterday but today I already see one order with the same problem.

So I'm curious if you tested this already. In that case I'm gonna do more research, maybe then I did something wrong with my current test.

Thanks in advance.

MarTech-Matt
Visitor
2 0 0

Yes, I can confirm that this is the reason.

 

In one of my Shopify Plus shops where I use the GTM and Cookiebot this issue does not occur. Simply because everything is well configured (and respects consent). Tracking does not rely on the nativ GA tracking but can be controlled with the GTM according to Cookiebot's consent status.

 

You will still get some direct conversions in your checkout, but these should be minimal:
* Cart abandonment mails without proper UTMs

* Users from Social Ads which use the In-App Browser in e.g. Facebook but switch to Safari/Chrome during checkout (=new cookies, new user)

* misconfigured payment gateways

 

ConversionToGo
New Member
4 0 0

Yep. For CookieBot + GTM Tracking I don't see the issue either (doesn't really help all the Shopify Basic Shops who can't use GTM without being able to get to the checkout.liquid files though). 

Parasoul
Shopify Partner
15 1 6

Do you have any updates on this? I'm seeing this even more in GA4