GA4 Roadmap for Shopify and Salvaging Data

Technical Q&A
1

Hi,

I work at a Shopify Agency, and am trying to figure out the best way to implement GA4 for our existing clients. This topic is pressing since Google just announced that they are sunsetting Universal Analytics in July of 2023.

After a lot of digging, the following seems true as of writing this:

  1. Shopify does not have a native integration for GA4.
  2. Google has produced ecommece tracking in GA4, but it requires a high-touch integration that requires you to create your own data layers (i’m reading through this documentation as I think about this). While this makes sense, it would be a fairly large project for our small-ish agency.
  3. There are some third party tools that have created data layers for Shopify implementation, but I’d rather not lean on code I don’t trust / get for free on the Internet.

A few questions arise, and would love the community’s feedback here:

  1. Are my assumptions correct, or have I missed something?
  2. Is there a native integration for Shopify and GA4 that allows for thorough ecommerce tracking?
  3. Is this an item on Shopify’s product roadmap? If so, is there a good indication of when it’ll be completed?
  4. Are there tools that produce data layers that other’s trust? If so, please link.
  5. Given the intricacies of GA4, would it be worth producing one’s own data layer object to have more control over data and reporting in GA4? This last question is obviously subjective, but curious to hear other’s thoughts on the matter.

Thanks!

Taylor

2 Likes
2

Hello, Taylor!

I can’t answer all of the questions you’ve asked here, but I just want to assure you that Shopify is aware of Google’s GA4 announcement.

Once we have news to share, we’ll update the Setting up Google Analytics page in the Shopify Help Center, as well as the Shopify Changelog. In the meantime, the Online Store > Preferences section of the admin will continue to support Universal Analytics.