Measuring Sales with Analytics and Shopify

[MichelleSprieg]

Hi there guys at the Shopify Community! 

I am starting this trend cause i have some troubles measuring sales with my current campaign:
The thing is that I am confronting  numbers between Shopify and Analytics and I got this data:







The thing is that when I get into the Analytics account to check the mediums of each transaction I get the same amount in that part of Analytics and in Shopify, but when I go to the ¨Goals¨ section, it shows me 15 instead of 11 


Even though my major concern is that this part of the analysis shows me that 9 of the transactions  were made by users who access the site directly (Direct: the simply write the URL in the navigation bar!!!) which is VERY VERY unlikely.

I know that this could be a basic e-commerce trouble (and more, just thinking that we have Amazon and Paypal as Payment Methods.... the users ¨leave¨ my page to access these other payment platforms and then come back to my page... so.. analytics marks them as ¨Direct¨users)


How can I solve this?

Is there a way to figure it out? 

[DuaneBrown]

If you have goals configured correctly in Google Analytics. You could be looking at a to short of a date range for it to match up as close as you would like. Have you tried a 30 or 60 day date range?

[MichelleSprieg]

Yes.. I guess the amount ¨discrepancy¨ is not that important at all..
But I am a little worried about those ¨direct¨ sales? 

Could it be possible to set up Analytics or Shopify to get the real data UTM of the sources?  

[DuaneBrown]

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@MichelleSprieg wrote:

Yes.. I guess the amount ¨discrepancy¨ is not that important at all..
But I am a little worried about those ¨direct¨ sales? 

Could it be possible to set up Analytics or Shopify to get the real data UTM of the sources?  

---

If you setup a goal in Google Analytics, it's have the real data in GA. The only place that is tricky is Facebook and Instagram as they made it hard to track stuff on purpose. Hope you found this helpful, if so please click "like" below to let me know.

[socially-kevin]

The term is attribution and sadly there is always a discrepancy.  Google also does a bit of obsfucation when it comes to source.  That can be frustrating.  On multiple accounts, the medium is 50% direct and I have yet to be able to provide the client with a solid answer.  

[MichelleSprieg]

Thanks!

Erm.. any other suggestion to just jump this discrepancy and know more about this? I know there is discrepancy.. and there is some sort of ¨grey¨ or ¨unknown¨ thing.. any suggestion to solve it?

Cause we also have the same problem once we have to give a correct answer about it!

Also.. do you fin also discrepancies in the visits between Shopify and Google Analytics? 

[socially-kevin]

MY quick advice, is to just ignore the discrepancy.  Most of the time.

Shopify will be 100% accurate with sales.  Obviously, because the checkout occurs with Shopify.  I mostly trust Shopify's  visitor numbers, but I don't trust any kind of breakdown in traffic source or marketing or ...  It's just not an area of expertise they are in. 

I do look at the events in GA (or GTM) and make sure they line up with Shopify.  It is normal for Google's or Facebooks numbers to be lower (within 10-20%) but they should never be higher.  So I use Shopify's numbers to make sure that that Google or Facebook aren't double counting due to some flaw in the theme code.

Shopify's numbers are accurate enough for general wayfinding.  IE am I doing better or worse than before?  How Shopify, Google and Facebook attribute visitors are different.  Their is no standard.  IMO when in doubt trust Google.  Unless it's about facebook ads, then trust the Ads Manager. 

We try to make sure we set client expectation early on.  The shopify dashboard is like a compass, not Waze.  If you think about it, true statistical significance requires a lot of data.  IE lots of sales and tons of visits.  So if you have 200-500 visits a day and 4-10 sales a day, that's just not a lot of data to make decisions on.  If you have 2000-5000 visits a day and 40-100 sales, you are using Google ads or Facebook ads.  Those platforms specialize in visitor tracking.  Trust that.  Hope that helps.

Kevin