The Best Way To Connect Google Shopify Channel, Track Conversions & Supercharge Insights
WHAT STEPS ARE REQUIRED TO SUCCESSFULLY CONNECT SHOPIFY STORES TO GOOGLE ADS TAGS AND THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR ALONG THE WAY.
There are a few ways to get started with the basic ability to track conversions from Google Ads on Shopify Stores and doing so by linking the Google Shopify Sales Channel App is reasonably straight forward with no technical website development skill required. The main benefits of using this method include:
It’s relatively straight forward
The App is owned and supported by Google so any issues and updates to the set-up are covered by Google and Shopify support
It automatically creates a number of conversion touch-points to monitor the full conversion funnel
For non Shopify plus stores, it generates conversion actions for steps along the checkout funnel which is not accessible with any other method including GTM
Pre-requisites
I’ve assumed that a fair amount of admin and housekeeping has already been done as this would be a very long post otherwise. You’ve already:
Signed up and created a Google Ads account and a Google Merchant Center account (GMC)
Installed the Google Sales Channel from Shopify. Do this from within your Store.
Linked your GMC and verified it with Google
Google Ad account already created using the same email address as Shopify Admin
As I had already connected a YouTube channel, this is the only conversion action I have so far….Before the channel is linked there will be no “Shopify App” related Conversions in the Google Ads account
Things to watch out for
Within Google Ads, the email address must be listed in the User section. Agency linked Manager accounts is not sufficient.
Make sure whoever is doing this, is doing so has edit access to all required platforms: Shopify, GMC and Google Ads. If you don’t see your Google Ad account in the drop-down section then review the email addresses and access levels. Do not “Create New” ad account if one already exists somewhere.
Shopify Store Pre-requisites
Ready to Connect
Press the green button to Connect the accounts. Google will send a connection request for Shopify to connect to your Store which you need to accept. This allows the Shopify API to create the Conversion Actions. Shopify will also send a Link request on your behalf from the GMC (which is already set-up) to the Google Ads which you can accept within Google Ads “Notifications”
This step may Auto-Complete by Sending and Accepting the Invite on your behalf
Going back into the “Managers” tab of “Access and Security” will show a new link which will be similar to that shown at #4. It does look a bit mysterious but this is how it appears and its nothing to worry about.
Going back to the Conversions Summary shows not just a Conversion Tag but 7 new conversion events in total!
User Journey & Conversion Funnel
This is great! “Out of the box” we can measure and monitor all website visitors and categorise them through the main stages of the marketing funnel. It’s worth pointing out though, that out of all these points, the main, sole, primary, must-have measurement action is (#1) “Google Shopping App Purchase”.
Edit the default Conversion Settings
Each Conversion Action can be clicked on and then edited. The default settings may be a bit too generous and require reigning in a bit. I’m far more “happy” than I used to be to leave these settings on a longer time-scale than limiting them, as ultimately what matters most is more data to power the bid strategies. Do I think a view-through conversion window of 7 days stands-up as a legitimate use-case? No. But I’m no longer measuring success by the attribution within Google Ads, and reporting back this credit is down to my prowess. Pragmatically, I want to provide as much good and relevant data as possible with the understanding it’s not to claim conversions for any given channel but to allow the channel to optimise as efficiently as possible.
As a minimum, edit attribution model from “last-click” to “Data-driven” and use your judgement for the rest.
Behind the Scenes
Linking the Shopify Google Sales Channel App to a Google Ads account allows one of Shopify’s “ Merchant Marketing Accounts” to create the 7 conversion actions
Shopify knows the standard templates used for all Stores and adds the conversion tracking code across all pages of your store
It also knows which pages are “special” points in the journey and can map them to the conversion funnel including the checkout funnel
Shopify can inject this code onto your Store without needing to mess about with your Liquid template files via Trekkie
If generating the conversion actions within the Google Ads account is enabled through the Manager link request is 20% of the solution then the Trekkie code is the other 80% that generates the variables, values and logic as when to send this data to Google Ads.
Trekkie is also used to perform similar tasks for other Sales Channels e.g. Facebook & Instagram
Extra Steps, Extra Insight
I also find it useful to add in at least one other conversion tracking method even if this is literally only for back-up. Once one or both of the back up options below are added, remember to go into the Google Ads Conversion section of Google Ads, and make sure their settings are updated from a “Primary” action to a “Secondary” action. This will ensure the conversions are not double-counted and used in any bid strategy. All 3 conversion actions can also be compared to see how they deviate from each other.
Link Google Analytics (GA4) to Google Ads and import the main ecommerce Transaction
Add a new Google Ads Conversion Tag to the thank_you page either directly on the page or via GTM
The place to add the code for the second option is on the Shopify Settings (Cog in bottom left hand nav) > Checkout > Order Status Page (scroll down) > “Add tracking scripts and other customizations” (paste code into this section).
If there is a Shopify or Trekkie outage of the “Google Shopping App Purchase” conversion then the Google Analytics transaction can be set to “Primary” until the issue is resolved. Read of this post if an outage has resulted in lost conversions so that this period in time is excluded from being factored into the bid strategy for any active campaigns.
Compare Google Ads Conversions to Google Analytics Transactions
Once Google Analytics is Linked to Google Ads and “Transaction” is imported as a Secondary conversion, any attribution differences between the measurement techniques can be quantified directly from Google Ads. To uncover these metrics
the “All” Conversions and “All” Conversion Value type metrics need to be added as new columns
Segment the main column by “Conversions” > “Conversion Action”
With the “All conv.” and “All conv. value” columns included and then segmented by “Conversion Action” we can see the additional conversions that are occurring for the other Shopping actions in the account. As they are “Secondary” they do not appear in the “Conversions” column. In the “Conversions” column we can see all the “Primary” conversion actions (the red boxes) that are being included and are feeding the bid strategy. These include:
The Google Ads “Trekkie” Purchase called “Google Shopping App Purchase”
Android App Purchases (sales from the Play Store App that have occurred (not on the Shopify Store))
Android app Installs (although these have no monetary value). This Conversion Action could be used as part of an App Download Campaign
We can also see in the last row the Google Analytics Transactions that have been recorded during the same time period and that at 1,276 they are 522 less than the 1,798 the Google Ads Integration has collected. This will be as a result of attribution model and inference differences (google ads associates a conversion with when the click occurred (in the past) , GA with when the sale occurred (in the present) and possibly measurement blind spots due to cookie consent.
Shopping Funnel Volumes and Values
We can see how the Google Sales Channel App from Shopify exposes the journey to conversion within Google Ads reporting interface as “Conversions”. The purple boxes in the “All conv. value” is zero for general browsing behaviour such as a product page view. The numbers in the “All conv.” column show how as the path to conversion approaches the volumes decrease, as expected. For example, item views (#6) happen hundreds of thousands of times > Add to Cart (#4) happen 5.8k times > Begin Checkout (#3) happen 3k times and purchases (#1), 1.8k times.
Make use of additional columns & include “Results” & “Results Value”
These columns lift the hood in a more elegant way than using the “All Conv.” column segmented by “conversion action”, in order too see which “Primary” conversion actions are being used at an account and campaign level. “Secondary” conversion actions are excluded for better clarity. It breaks down which conversion actions are at play where:
“Results” shows the number of “conversions”
“Results value” shows the "revenue”
Monitoring checkout funnel is unique to this method (for non-Shopify plus Stores)
The checkout funnel is not normally accessible to standard Shopify Stores as this part of the process is managed by Shopify and does not happen on the owners domain. This includes: Information (Customer details) > Shipping > Payment > {{Purchase}}
None of these steps can be measured outside of Shopify as there is no way to add tracking code (even Google Analytics) to measure them with the exception of the {{Purchase}} stage which can be tracked by adding custom code to the checkout settings
Unfortunately, the Conversion Actions that the link creates does not map directly to this Shopify checkout funnel:
#3 “Google Shopping App Begin Checkout” directly correlates with the Information page of the funnel e.g. domain.myshopify.com/checkouts/c/aiohwh3874/information
but we could use a less reliable equivalent of this if it wasn’t available by tracking a click on the “checkout” button on the Cart page
The Shopify checkout has a step for “Shipping” which does not have any conversion action equivalent in Google Ads
#2 “Google Shopping App Add Payment Info” directly correlates with the Information page of the funnel e.g. domain.myshopify.com/checkouts/c/aiohwh3874/payment but (in this example at least) the data is inaccurate as the value is much smaller than actual purchases!
#1 “Google Shopping App Purchase” would be available to other tracking solutions and marketing channels but only by adding “additional scripts” to the “Order Status page” via Checkout Settings which has its own gotcha’s to consider!
One More Step: Add Audience Segments in Google Ads
These full funnel Conversion Actions are used to drive the bid strategy based on your business objectives. This is going to be driven by the “purchase” conversion. If the set-up is new or sales are few and far between then a different lower funnel conversion action (e.g. Add to Cart) may need to be added into the mix to get the marketing campaigns off the ground and benefit from Google’s machine learning bidding intelligence.
These Conversion Actions are not Audience Segments and the Audience conversion funnel still needs to be defined within the Shared Library. Once created, these segments can be:
combined with other segments to create custom audiences
used to identify an existing customer so that Google can determine who new customers are
which can then be used as part of the bid strategy
added to campaigns as observational audiences which would then be another signal for bidding!
“Conversion Actions are not the same thing as Audience Segments”
It is highly likely that there will be previous “remarketing” audiences in your Google Ads account either from a Google Ads Tag or from Google Analytics and some of these may have been created automatically.
“Previous” automatically created audiences of Google Ads Tag
I’d highly recommend creating new audiences, based on “website visitors of a page with specific Tag Type” i.e. the conversion actions from Shopify.
Add all other conversion actions to their own new Audience Segment
That’s It
Cool, all done!
