Best way to connect GA4 to shopify store - Google Tag Manager vs Shopify Sales Channel

Technical Q&A
1

Hey all,

I have just spent hours researching how to correctly insert GA4 to Shopify.

But to be honest, I still dont know if i should just use Shopify’s Google App or if its better to use Google Tag Manager. (Same goes for Google Analytics)

Basically, I would like to use GTM because I will need it anyway for other code snippets (Clarity, etc). However, as far as I know, GTM will not track anything in the checkout process, only the thank you page.

The question is: Will there be more available data, if I use Shopify apps for tracking (Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc) or should i rather use Google Tag Manager?

Would be amazing to get some clarification on this topic, cheers!

2

Checkout is indeed not tracked, if you don’t have checkout.liquid

I do not know if the Google Channel app tracks everything. I have read another user saying add to cart is missing. So I am guessing its not fully functional at the moment.

I recommend manually installing the coding and accept you may not see checkout data if you don’t have checkout.liquid.

Of course you do track conversions, just not the steps between the cart and thank you page.

3

How does this work with the new checkout since checkout.liquid will be deprecated?

4

I believe it is Shopify Pixels that needs all coding added: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/promoting-marketing/pixels/overview

5

Any idea if you install de GA4 identifier in the new Google Channel App and also add the Tag manager code to theme.liquid, if that means duplicate tracking? Polluting the data?

Thanks

6

Yes that will duplicate, only add it once.

7

@dagern :
I did both and i suggest you to use Shopify Google App, i saw so many advantages from there which solve 80% of work to configure GA4 as standard.

  • All GA4 standard variables will be put correct from Shopify
  • You can track purchase + other events on payments (like add payment info, view checkout,…)
  • You don’t need to figure product data between view, add to card, purchase (Ecommerce purchases on GA4)
  • Multiple currencies are solved

What you don’t have now is you figure or fix all of them because it’s automatically from Shopify, but why we need to fix when Shopify code is good? sometimes will have issues but we can raise and wait to fix.