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Event Names for Shopify Websites
Event names are generally ignored by analysts and developers alike, and PMs don’t even care to ignore them, but they have a huge impact on data quality and analytics output. Seems unlikely, right? We get used to whatever events are named and memorize them over time – incorrect spellings, odd capitals included. But getting used to something does not mean it can’t be better. I understood this purely by chance when I had a bit too much time in 2020 to plan events for a new app. So, i listed down all the issues i had faced due to event…
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How to setup GA4 tracking for your Shopify store?
There are many ways of connecting GA4 to your website. If you have an existing store and you work with marketing / CRO agencies, you likely have more than one implementation and some level of data duplication. The setup part keeps evolving. But, as of 2025, the Youtube and Google App is the most accepted way of setting up GA4 tracking for your shopify store. Analytics Mania covers this best here: https://www.analyticsmania.com/post/how-to-install-google-analytics-4-on-shopify/#option1 Loves Data also has a step-by-step video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB3TaDRnyGw Note – the ‘Google Channel app’ is now ‘Google And Youtube App’ but the GA4 integration works in the…
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GA4 Events: Purchase Part 3
In the previous two posts on purchase events, we focussed on building data models and gaining insights from the GA4 events. But purchase is the only event with a clear equivalent in shopify (orders) and a join key (transaction_id.) This means we can join the data from the two sources! This is how i have answered clients who wonder about data accuracy, trusting GA4 data, or trusting data models! But there’s more to this than shutting up doubters. Let’s explore. Getting data from shopify orders into GA4 Shopify orders table has more details about the purchase than the GA4 event.…
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GA4 Events: Purchase Part 2
In the part 1 of Purchase events post, we looked at the key events and base data models based on those events. Purchase events can be modeled in many different ways to get insights. Some of these models should be scheduled as jobs because while others can be built as needed. In this post, we will explore common analysis on purchase events and the data models required to run these analysis. The models covered in part 1 are required for building the models detailed in this post. I refer to the models from part 1 as base models in the…
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GA4 Events: Purchase Part 1
Introduction I will skip the part where i tell you how important this event is. You know it already. Conversion Rate, AOV, ROAS, ROI – you know these already. These are the most in-demand metrics in every store – no matter what stage it is in, no matter how different the founders are, no matter what time of day it is! And all these metrics are based on a single event – ‘Purchase‘ While purchase is one event, the purchase journey comprises many more events. For analytics purpose, the purchase journey starts from checkout initiation and continues till an order…
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GA4 Events: Engagement Part 2
Introduction In the previous post, we looked at user interaction events (user engagement, scroll, video plays, etc.) that allow us to track user’s growing interest in a store. But these events do not contain the metric that we really want to see – add_to_cart. There’s one more event that does not measure engagement, but has the same structure as ‘add_to_cart’. This is ‘View Item’ event which is triggered when a product page opens. We also get a page_view event for the page, so the view_item is an extra event on page load. But view_item contains the Items Array – an…
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GA4 Events: Engagement Part 1
Introduction What is the best predictor of purchase / subscription for consumer products? In analysis after analysis, i have found the same answer – Engagement. And it makes sense. Users pay for games that they like playing; they pay for tools that they use regularly; they take subscriptions for services that they find useful during free trial. For Shopify stores, visitors make a purchase after engaging with your store – reading reviews, exploring collections, loving your brand story. All of this can be measured through engagement. GA4 Events are bad for tracking engagement GA4-Shopify integration provides excellent events for measuring…
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GA4 Events: page_view
Introduction Page View event is the single most important event in website analytics. Even the ‘purchase’ event pales in comparison to page_view when it comes to use cases. Page View is used in reports ranging from user acquisition, engagement, user journey, and checkout. In the right hands, this event is enough to build an entire analytics stack. For example, You can also run analysis on landing page, get the best performing product and collection pages, blogs and more from just this single event. At AhaInsights, we rely on page_view event to build our free analysis templates. But most analysts use…
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Working with event parameters in Bigquery
Introduction GA4 events are powerful because each event contains a wealth of information in the form of event parameters, item details, device, geo and source details, and more! Working with these parameters makes queries shorter, more robust and more detailed. When you first begin to work with this data in bigquery – it can be overwhelming and very confusing at first. But understanding them is worth the pain because they provide so much detail about the event. I have learned this over multiple projects, and after making my share of mistakes. It took me a couple of years to fully…
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GA4 Events – Initiation
Introduction Most reports and analysis start with two questions about the users: How and Where a visitor lands on your store decides what she will do in the next few minutes. Additionally, we also want to know if a visitor is visiting the store for the first time, or if she is a ‘returning’ visitor. As we will see in this post, we cannot rely on this classification but we can still use it to get some insights. These details form the identity of a visitor. We treat these details as user attributes – because this is the best information…