Hi, this is Alex from the Pandectes GDPR compliance.
We have seen countless cases of analytics discrepancies, and I would like to suggest a couple of useful tips in order to avoid them.
That said, let me clarify that these tips can help with most cases of analytics discrepancies, and they do not account for cases where there might be a bug in the analytics measurement system.
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If you are selling to Europe, and need to be compliant with GDPR, a cookie banner can sometimes create discrepancies. And that’s to be expected, as you can only track the users that provide consent. If the user declines, no tracking happens. You will find tips on how to increase the rate of customers consenting in this article. Making the cookie banner have these characteristics can get you a rate of over 90%.
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Make sure Shopify’s customer privacy Settings are correctly setup. This is important for Shopify analytics! The customer privacy Settings dictate in which regions Shopify needs a strict banner, and where it needs to be loose (Strict means tracking does not happen without consent, Loose Is the opposite of that).
If you are aiming for the European GDPR compliance, make sure you have selected the 31 European (recommended) countries!
Along with step 1, this solves most discrepancies.
If you are not required to follow GDPR, you can disable all the countries in customer privacy settings. This means that Shopify will not be blocked from tracking before giving consent. If you continue having tracking issues after this, the problem is somewhere else. Here is a guide on how to set them up.
If you need help with the above, you can contact our support from inside the Pandectes GDPR compliance, and we will try to help you with your specific case.