Creating an online site to manage and track your business may seem easy. However, in practice this is not at all easy. Thus, some difficulties may be encountered during the process. To this end, as part of traffic tracking, it is not uncommon to have challenges with the use of google analytics code. What is google analytics code? How to put the tracking code on your shopify site?
Google analytics: What is it?
Google Analytics is a free web analytics service that provides basic statistics and analytical tools. This is done as part of SEO search engine optimization, and for marketing purposes. The service is accessible to anyone with a Google Account. It allows website owners to analyze their visitors to interpret and optimize site performance. Google Analytics can track all forms of digital media and reference upstream web destinations, banners, contextual ads, and emails. It also integrates with other Google products.
Why use Google analytics?
Using Google analytics allows you to know how many people have visited your site. This allows you to know the number of visits and pages visited in real time. It also allows you to know which pages are the most visited and which ones generate the most traffic. It also makes it easier to know the number of times visitors spend on the site. You can also determine the source of traffic.
Ultimately, ecommerce merchants use Google Analytics to increase marketing efforts on the one hand. On the other hand, the tool will be used to improve sales made on commercial platforms such as Shopify, Amazon, Commerce Cloud…
Google analytics: How to use it?
The proper use of google analytics stems from a few essential points.
- Know the social media platforms that generate the most traffic.
- Calculate the ROI (Return on investment) of your social media campaigns.
- Checking the match of traffic attracted through social media and target demographic data.
- Know which content works best on each social media platform.
- Discovering how many conversions your business has through social media.
However, to perform these various listed tasks, you need the Google analytics code.
The Google analytics code
The google analytics code, also known as the analytics tag, is a JavaScript code snippet that promotes the collection and sending of data to Analytics from a website.
You can add the Analytics tag directly to the HTML code of each page on your site. But also indirectly through a tag management system.
How does the google analytics code work?
The google analytics tracking code works with a fairly large JavaScript file on the Google server. This makes it possible to collect information on each usage activity on the site. Each time the site is visited, the code traces the information which is called google analytics tracking. The code also sets a cookie on the device of each person who has visited the site. This provides anonymous information about visitors in order to create identifiers for them.
One of the significant examples is the use of google analytics on shopify.
However, if you later change your site’s theme or want to add Analytics to another part of your site, you’ll need the code again. Strangely, there is no easy and obvious way to find your tracking code, but you can still find it.
Shopify: How can it be defined?
Shopify is a software service platform that offers the ability to create a commerce site. It also allows the use of its virtual shopping cart solution. This service is used for the sale, shipping and management of your products. By using this service, you have access to its admin panel which is easy to use. This allows you to process orders, while adding products and entering data from the store.
The monthly subscription is $29, giving you the right to create a fully functional virtual store. You can use your store to market digital products or physical products.
How do I open an online store on Shopify?
Signing up for Shopify and getting started with your online store couldn’t be easier. A 14-day trial is offered free of charge to help you get started.
To start trading on Shopify, you will need to create an account on the site. For the creation of the account, you will have to follow a few steps.
Sign up on Shopify
- Go to the official website of shopify.
- Use the registration form to open an account.
- Enter the requested information and click on the “Start Free Trial” button.
The name used for your store will have to be unique or the platform will ask to change it by choosing another name. Afterwards, you will be asked for further details. Your name, address, country and contact number will also be requested.
Start setting up your online store
Once you have registered, you will be directed to the admin screen of your store. You can now start customizing your store. You can already start by putting products and start setting up payment and shipping methods.
Choose your theme
Shopify also has its own official theme store. These themes ensure that you have the full support of the designers.
All these themes are followed by a complete list that can contribute to any changes to be made without having to touch the coded line. There are also premium themes that contain a lot more changes than the free ones.
Change Shopify settings
The majority of Shopify themes allow you to make simple changes that can significantly change the look of your store. So you can rest assured that you won’t end up with a website that looks like a clone of thousands of other stores.
Add your products to the store
Arrive at this step, you will see on the site the whole procedure for putting your articles online.
Google analytics code: How to put it on shopify?
You have to follow these steps to put the google analytics code on shopify
- Create an account for your Shopify website.
- Enter the name of your store.
- Copy and paste your Shopify store URL.
- Select the industry in which you operate, i.e. the type of items you market.
- Tap on “Get Tracking ID”.
- Accept Google’s terms and conditions.
- Copy the code you will receive.
- Open Shopify and select Online Store.
- Go to preferences.
- Paste the code into the Google Analytics area.
- Save.
You’ve set up Google Analytics on your Shopify store, but nothing has happened, don’t worry. It can take up to 24 hours for Google Analytics to start gathering the data.
In addition, the use of google analytics has several advantages, but also some disadvantages.
Some advantages and disadvantages
Like everything derived from the new technology, Google analytics has several advantages, but also some limitations.
The advantages of google analytics.
- It’s free, so anyone can use it.
- You can also use it on different digital environments. These are websites, mobile apps, kiosks, or anything else that has an internet connection.
- There is a Google Analytics Academy where you can get detailed information about the platform.
- You can also connect your Google Analytics account to your Shopify account.
- Collect data from different platforms and sources such as business connections, industry references and more.
- You can create custom goals and track your ecommerce platform.
- You can create custom reports based on your needs. This way, you can track specific information based on your industry.
- It is quite simple to self-navigate although some digital commerce managers ask for the help of a Google Analytics consultant.
Some limitations of google analytics
- To understand the intricacies of Google Analytics tracking code, you need to learn the technological language used. Unfortunately, good resources are often hard to find online, and the instructions can be confusing, time-consuming, or overwhelming. For those who do not have experience in intermediate analysis.
- The general feel of the platform may seem difficult to understand. There are many dashboards, settings, user views…
- The free version of Google Analytics is suitable for beginner users and almost anyone. Nevertheless, if your web traffic is high, and you want to upgrade to the premium version, there is a price. This price is set at $15,000. It now remains to be seen how many people are able to pay such a sum.
In addition, if you encounter some difficulties in relation to the full use of google analytics, you can take part in google analytics academy in order to have more advanced knowledge for better use.
In addition, there are frequent mistakes made by e-merchants that prevent them from taking full advantage of the use of Google analytics.
Some mistakes to avoid to take full advantage of using google analytics on your shopify store
When google analytics tracking code is used correctly, it can tell you almost everything you need to know about your marketing strategy. Here are three of the most common mistakes made by online store or website owners that prevent them from getting the most out of Google Analytics:
Don’t install Google Analytics correctly
All the data that Google Analytics has collected about your shopify store is sent via a tracking code specific to each property on the website. If this code is not installed correctly or if it is not installed on every page of your website, all data returned by Google Analytics will be incomplete or incorrect. New website owners are sometimes guilty of placing the tracking code in the wrong part of their HTML or installing it only on their homepage. There is also marketing information made available in Google Analytics will also be made almost useless if your online sales or conversion process involves multiple websites, but you haven’t enabled cross-domain tracking.
Don’t set goals
“Goals” in Google Analytics are actually a way to measure conversions. This is an industry theme for a website visitor who performs a desired action on your store such as: making a purchase, submitting your contact form, or downloading a brochure. Only with this information will you know what visitors actually did when they visited your site, and therefore, whether your marketing channels are working well. You can even assign monetary values to goals so you can directly compare the results with the costs of each of your marketing methods.
Don’t link other Google services
Google Search Console gives you insight into how Google interprets or sees your site, which is important because it uses several hundred factors to determine your site’s ranking for specific search terms. If you haven’t already enabled it, it’s easy to get started with Google Search Console, but it’s also important to link Search Console to your Google Analytics account. Connecting the two accounts allows you to see more clearly how search engine traffic translates into specific activity on your site.
What can we remember?
Google Analytics code allows you to discover the performance of your website and marketing efforts in order to optimize your results. It’s pretty easy to set up and offers a lot of benefits, so there’s no reason not to use it. Be sure to focus on actions that can help you make informed decisions to improve your website while taking into account the mistakes to avoid. Above all, you need to take advantage of all the different reports available in Google Analytics to learn more about your visitors and how they interact with your website. Create personalized visitor segments to better understand and satisfy your audience.
