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Transitioning to GA4 may sound daunting, especially if you’re part of a smaller ecommerce team that may not have an in-house data analyst. But, we’re here to help you through it.
If you’re new to the world of GA4, we recommend starting with the foundations. First, you’ll need to understand the key differences between UA and GA4 and learn how to set up your GA4 account.
As a quick refresher, here are a few important GA4 characteristics:
- GA4 introduces enhanced cross-device tracking, allowing data from web and app interactions to be stored in one place.
- GA4 and Universal Analytics (UA) can be installed side by side until July, after which UA will no longer populate data.
- GA4 uses an event-based data collection model, whereas UA used a session-based model. Events include actions like page views, clicks, and transactions, and users can define their own custom events.
- Benefits of GA4 include more accurate user views, capturing web and app users in one place, and the ability to customize events and track user behaviors.
Overall, GA4 offers significant advancements in data measurement and analysis. We recommend that ecommerce teams get started with GA4 as soon as possible. Why? There’s a learning curve with GA4, so the more time you have to learn the new system, the better. Plus, the sooner you get started, the sooner your data will begin to populate.
At Tydo, we're focused on ensuring a smooth transition to GA4 for our users. In May, we launched our GA4 integration for Tydo customers. We’re excited to continue helping merchants learn the new system, leverage its exciting features, and unlock new data possibilities.
In this blog post, we sat down with two members of our data team, Ceyda Dirin and Alex Romac, to discuss Tydo’s exciting GA4 advances.
Let’s dive in!
GA4 Advances in the Tydo Platform
At its core, GA4 ushers in a new future of possibilities around site performance data. For Tydo, our GA4 integration allows us to surface event-based data and create an even better user experience.
With our new GA4 integration, we can offer support for both Universal Analytics (UA) and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) properties. What ultimately sets us apart? Our ability to provide a unified analytics experience by allowing customers to view UA and GA4 charts side by side, notice discrepancies, and leverage historical data.
Note: UA data is only available for Tydo merchants who’ve onboarded prior to the forced migration (before July 1, 2023).
Tydo merchants can view this data on the site performance chart in Store Overview and keep a pulse on key metrics like conversion rate, orders, and sessions.
“Launching this integration was very important for us,” says Ceyda Dirin, one of Tydo’s data scientists. The goal? To encourage merchants to get set up with GA4 and to start populating data from GA4 as soon as possible, instead of waiting for the July 1st deadline. “It’s better for users to have both data properties side by side until then, so when UA stops populating in July, the shift to GA4 isn’t too difficult,” she adds.
The result? A shorter learning curve and more informed, data decision-making in the long run. Even better, this approach also enables Tydo users to gain a holistic understanding of their data.
At Tydo, our reporting goes beyond the surface. We dive deep into sessions, site performance, and conversion analysis by medium. We’ll continue to leverage our GA4 integration to surface even more data insights and unique visualizations for Tydo customers over the upcoming months.
“There are a lot more possibilities with GA4, especially with the new machine learning models. With these developments, we can definitely expect to unlock even more data-driven insights and recommendations.”
GA4 Advances in Tydo Custom
GA4 supercharges our custom analytics capabilities.
The possibilities go beyond what you'll find on our platform.
At Tydo, we understand that every business is one-of-a-kind, with its own set of challenges to tackle. Our solution? Customized reports and expert recommendations from our data team, built to address your business’s specific needs. We're all about delivering results that are as unique as you are.
“With Tydo Custom, we are helping merchants focus their data consumption on the areas that matter, most to their business,” says Alex Romac, Tydo’s Senior Data Engineer. “GA4 is amazing, and we’re going to be able to leverage GA4 data in incredible ways moving forward.”
One way our data team is currently addressing business-specific challenges is by analyzing attribution-sensitive events such as free trials, product sampling, and material swatches.
“For data like this, it’s difficult to see the full picture with a simple Shopify data export,” Romac explains. “How much revenue do we need to make to know if our sampling program is working? What's our target repeat rate? These are questions that aren’t easy to answer or calculate. With our GA4 integration and custom reporting toolkit, we can instantly unlock these answers.”
With GA4’s customizable event-based data feature, our team can understand the impact of key events (i.e. free sample or swatch) and highlight the outcomes to Tydo Custom clients. Leveraging this data, we can build advanced first and last-touch attribution models for our clients.
Even further, GA4 also boosts BigQuery capabilities, enabling our team to dive even deeper into the raw event-level data. We can use custom filtering and sorting to understand each customer touchpoint across multiple channels.
“For the first time, you can easily trace a customer's order history and overall session history all the way back and draw even more insights from that first touchpoint from a database,” Romac adds.
“Ultimately, with Tydo Custom, we’ll be able to present that information in a format that makes sense for business owners.”
What to pledge- How to improve
- Which tools will set you up for success
Resolution
I think the most important thing brands can do in 2023 is to better manage their customer data—both ethically and effectively. There’s an opportunity for brands to know their customers better than ever before—a clear benefit for both the customer and the brand. When you manage your data correctly, you’ll create stronger and more personalized ads, creative, site experiences, and so much more.
Tip
This is a classic: Let the data guide you. Go where the buyers for your products are and communicate with them on a personal level (i.e. by persona and funnel position) and nurture those relationships (past, present, and future customers). It’s possible—all through data.
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Resolution
We recommend that Shopify brands analyze and update their websites using data-driven decisions. Using analytics tools such as heatmaps and scrollmaps can help brands better understand how customers are interacting with their store.
Tip
Store owners tend to make assumptions about the way customers interact with their website. Most never go back and analyze their design choices to find pain points or areas of opportunity. By using heatmaps and scrollmaps, they can see where real customers are clicking and concentrating their attention. Leveraging this data, brands can start to iterate on design and make their online store experience streamlined and intuitive.
Tool
Hotjar provides a simple way to implement heatmaps, scrollmaps, and recorded user sessions on your site, helping you acquire incredibly informative user data. Additionally, it gives you the ability to create on-site surveys, which allows you to obtain direct and often critical feedback from users about their experience.
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Resolution
Test various attribution models and analyze the impact on your business. At Fifty Six, we are always here to help our clients identify and optimize their approach—a critical step in any successful marketing strategy.
Tip
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times–Customer Lifetime Value. And even more importantly, Future Lifetime Value (FLTV). With the ever-growing importance of first-party data, it is crucial that brands take a good look at their CRM and FLTV metrics.
Tool
OrderlyEmails is our go-to tool for transactional emails. It helps us level up our brands’ email aesthetics with customizable, quick-to-implement Shopify templates.
Lately, I’ve been really interested in Smile.io’s loyalty platform. Their UX is fantastic for teams with low bandwidth!
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Resolution
Stop allocating budgets to low-hanging fruit that doesn’t move the needle on conversion. Think about what’s really going to improve your CX and the return of undertaking different initiatives—not just on what’s top on your list of bugbears on the site!
Tip
One of the best ways to understand your customer behavior is by using HotJar. Their heat-mapping and screen recording tools shine a light on where customers are navigating to and from on your site, where they're rage clicking and experiencing frustration, and where conversion is dropping off within real life customer journeys and flows!
Understanding your customers’ pain points via data and analytics , will allow you to work with your CRO/CX Agency to solve customer frustrations and improve conversion.
Tool
Rewind backs up all product, customer, and order data for Shopify sites—essential since Shopify itself doesn’t provide this solution. It's saved so many of our clients time and money from administrative accidents.
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Resolution
33% of customer service inquiries are pre-sale questions. What does this mean? If you’re not investing in customer service, you’re missing out on revenue-generating opportunities.
Tip
The benefits of elevating your customer experience:
- 10% to 25% increase in AOV for customers who engage with live chat pre-purchase
- 21x higher conversion rate for customers who reach out via Live Chat or SMS compared to other site visitors
- 87% of customers who have a great customer experience will make another purchase
- 72% of customers share positive experiences with 6 or more individuals
Tool
Gorgias is our favorite Helpdesk platform. They can reduce costs by 35%, primarily by decreasing the average ticket handle time. Their machine learning algorithms are trained on millions of ecommerce-related interactions across Gorgias’ customer base and provide accurate, automated replies for the most common ecommerce inquiries. This helps our agents resolve tickets faster, which provides the customer a seamless experience.
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Resolution
Trust your agency! Agencies do the same things across multiple brands and niches, so we see the trends and have the practice and experience!
Tip
Don't be afraid of data and insights. If customers aren't clicking on your emails, try a new CTA. If your ads are driving good metrics at a small spend, start scaling. If your customers are complaining about a product, look into QA! If the data tells you something isn't working, let it go and try something else!
Tool
I'm supposed to say Tydo, right? 😉
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Resolution
Double down on differentiation. There will be a lot of headwinds this year and standing out from the crowd will set you apart.
Tip
A picture is worth 1,000 words. A video? Probably millions. In ecommerce that value translates into engagement, acquisition, and retention—everything you need to impact your bottom line.
At soona, we've seen the we've seen the impact of creative and the continuous split testing of it yield results. Our resolution is to challenge ourselves and double down on innovation and creative optionality so that each brand we work with can distinguish themselves in a crowded sea of D2C ecomm. We'd love to see our brands share this resolution and keep pushing the creative limits.
Tool
Klaviyo. We're using it to power our email and newsletter at soona too!
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Resolution
Optimize your returns strategy! This can lead to valuable customer insights, enhanced user experiences, and increased revenue and customer loyalty.
Tip
Brands need to dive deeper into understanding their customers to set themselves up for success. Conduct research to gain insights into customer needs, preferences, and behaviors. By doing so, you can develop targeted strategies that will enhance customer experience and boost overall retention.
Tool
Right now I would say Gorgias. Having a good customer service tool is crucial to building strong customer relationships.
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Resolution
Start paying heavy attention to data, specifically around retention. We see a lot of effort put towards acquisition with the assumption that once someone buys, they are your customer forever. Instead, get to know your customer, understand their needs, and analyze their behaviors once they are on-site and judge their sentiment after they have visited. Work with a retention focused and data-driven agency to implement tools that contribute to repeat business and customer delight. It will pay dividends.
Tip
When surveyed, about 80% of ecommerce merchants think that they are delivering a great experience to their customers. However, when the same customers are surveyed, only 8% of those customers think that they are getting a great experience from the merchant. Now, more than ever, retaining loyal customers is an essential part of any online business and you should spend time with your customers to judge their experience with your website and products and offer improvements based on that feedback.
Tool
Tydo's report cards are an essential tool, along with Klaviyo for email and SMS, Recharge for subscriptions and memberships, Okendo for reviews and surveys, Rebuy for AI driven collections and upsells, Loop for self service returns... each tool is great on their own, but their strength as the ultimate tool comes from when they are used together!
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Report Cards
Report Cards is a customized glimpse into your business, delivered to your inbox for free.
Report Cards consolidates all your key metrics across platforms for an at-a-glance pulse of your business.
Discover metrics for every team member so they can stay updated with the right data on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
It's free because we believe everyone should have access to the basics.
Portfolio
Portfolio is a hub for analytics across multiple Shopify stores. The perfect tool for agencies.
See an aggregate view of all your data for all your stores in one place.
Make real time assessments on marketing initiatives across every storefront you manage.
Analyze the performance of one store versus another in seconds.
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