GTM(Google Tag Manager) enhancement for GA4 data collection

According to Jeremy Horowitz' post, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager are among the top apps Shopify merchants are using.

However there are a lot of problems with using GA for analytics. Data collection is one of the major challenges.

Yesterday I talked with an international IT firm, who is now working for a top outdoor brand in the United States. James, the head of the data analytics team told me about the issue of their data collection:

We do a lot of tag management analysis, optimization, testing and see more and more clients on Shopify and want to understand what kind of server side support integrations . And I think one of the main things that we're looking for is just like a tool that can send those server calls directly from Shopify. we've just make a GA4 tag go to server side. But if the client side GTM gets blocked, then our server side data is also gonna be incomplete. So we wanna make sure that we get that complete data package from Shopify going either directly to the ends like GA4 or Facebook servers.

Since GTM is quite possible to be blocked by browsers, data collection relying on GTM can be incomplete. There is a better approach to get a complete collection.

Shopify Web Pixels + server+side collection

The Web Pixels has several significant advantages over GTM

1. This first-party cookie is hardly blocked, while GTM is easily by the browser's privacy settings.
2. Web Pixels as an independent data layer, doesn't rely on GTM.
3. Accurate data collection without tag installation, since it's an API. Applications with this API can easily collect customer events.
4. It also interacts with Shopify Customer privacy API to comply with customer privacy preferences.

There are several scenarios to implement this technology.

1. GTM+server-side tracking for collection

If you have GTM+GA4 running and want to enhance the data collection, use this approach. Server-side tracking refills the lost data, and posts back more events that can't be collected by GTM, such as:

• Checkout start
• Payment info submitted
• Contact info submitted
• Shipping info submitted

Since the GTM and server-side share the same client ID, GA4 is possible to deduplicate the same events.

2. Pure Sever-side mode

Use this approach if you don't have a GTM installed and you don't want to manage the complexity of tags.

The sever-side collects data from Shopify Web Pixels and Shopify cloud, then posts back via cloud purely.

Since James has done so many jobs on the existing GA4 reporting, "GTM+server-side tracking" is better for him. To decrease the project risk, running " pure server-side mode" with a new GA4 property is the best choice to start a test project.

The impact of consent mode

James also mentioned the impact of consent mode.

How we could stop the tags firing of some region consent. While I know our clients would love to get 100% of their transactions tracked.

The Shopify Web Pixels also applies The Customer Privacy API. So with the consent model, Web Pixels also collects data without user identity information.

For transaction tracking, Applications like Attribuly send CRM customer data to GA4 to identify the user. It also ensures the complete tracking of transactions.

The result

The result? James and I will run this pilot project shortly, I will update you on the comparison before & after. ??????