How to achieve 100% accurate tracking on Shopify with sGTM and Data Store
Written by
Vlad Kononov
This article explores how to achieve 100% accurate Shopify tracking using Stape and sever GTM. Learn how to prevent data loss, improve attribution, and optimize your marketing performance with a reliable and effective tracking solution. Accurate Shopify analytics is crucial for achieving your business goals.
You need reliable data to decide how to allocate budgets, see the performance of your campaigns, and return on invested money. Knowing which eCommerce KPIs to track helps you make sense of that data and act on it effectively. Losing track of conversions can lead to an incomplete picture and misguided decisions. Luckily, Stape has you covered, and in this article we will explain how it is possible to track 100% of your purchases on Shopify no matter what and deliver all necessary data to the analytics and/or marketing platforms so that you could get better insights, accurate attribution reports and train your pixels more effectively.
Although Shopify released a web pixel API that allows us to subscribe to different events and track them more precisely, you may have noticed that sometimes you’re still missing a percentage of orders that weren’t reported to your advertising or analytics platforms. This can happen for various reasons - ad blockers, ITP restrictions, slow internet, a failure on the user’s device, or even just an unfortunate coincidence. Any of these can cause you to lose track of your conversions.
But don’t worry, Stape has you covered! With Shopify server-side tracking, you can bypass these common issues.
The Data Store feature is available on the Pro subscription plans and higher. If you’d like a custom solution, you can contact our sales department.
Skip manual event setup
Stape Conversion Tracking for Shopify with Setup Wizard installs GTM server side in minutes, auto-generates key eCommerce events, and loads ready-to-use tags for Google, Meta, TikTok, and more. Events run through Stape’s server-side tracking platform, helping you capture up to 40% more conversions and improve ROAS.
Step-by-step configuration
In short, the implementation flow looks like this:
- 1.Set up event tracking as usual using web and server GTM containers.
- 2.Write marketing and/or analytics cookies in Data Store and have them available as a fallback if the purchase event has not been reported off the web container.
- 3.Every purchase event reported from the web is stored in the Data Store. Thus, we will be able to check what transactions have been reported.
- 4.Set up a webhook using the Stape's Conversion Tracking app available in the Shopify marketplace or native Shopify webhooks that will report all created orders to sGTM.
- 5.Once the webhook is received on sGTM - we check if such an order has already been written to Data Store - that would mean that this transaction has been reported live off the web container. If we cannot find this order in Data Store, it means that for some reason it hasn’t been reported, so we need to process the webhook, retrieve necessary cookies from Data Store, and report to the marketing and/or analytics platforms you need via Conversions API.
Before you begin
Before you start implementing the instructions below, you need to activate Data Store:
- 1.Log in to your Stape account and select your sGTM container from the dashboard.
2. Click the Data Store tab.
3. Click Activate Data Store.
Step 1. Implement basic tracking setup with the Stape Conversion Tracking app
Stape Conversion Tracking app on Shopify allows you to easily install Custom GTM and GA4 Loader and become more resistant against adblockers. After you install GTM on Shopify, this foundational layer handles the client-side data collection required for your server container. Combined with the Cookie Keeper power-up, it will even allow you to bypass ITP restrictions.
We have great articles and ready-made container templates that describe how to implement this step, please check them out:
Debugging Shopify tracking with web and server GTM: a complete guide – once your basic setup is live, don't skip verification. Shopify's sandboxed checkout means tags can appear to work in GTM preview while failing silently in production.
Step 2. Store necessary cookies in Click Activate Data Store.
Now we need to store the cookies we might need in the future in the Data Store.
In our example, we will store Meta cookies on the “checkout_started” event and send them from the Shopify web pixel to sGTM. At this moment, the checkout token will be available to us and we’ll be able to use it as a stitching parameter to later match the webhook with the checkout and cookies.
A similar process can be applied to any other platform you want to report to.
The following code snippet will send a payload with checkout token and Meta cookies to the server container URL. The Data Client will claim this request; by default, it accepts requests on /data path.
analytics.subscribe("checkout_started", (event) => {
setTimeout(() => {
async function getCookiesPayload() {
try {
const payload = {
"event": "store_cookies",
"cart_token": init.data.cart.id,
"fbp": await browser.cookie.get('_fbp'),
"fbc": await browser.cookie.get('_fbc')
};
return payload;
} catch (error) {
console.error('Error retrieving cookies:', error);
return null;
}
}
async function sendCookiesToSgtm() {
const payload = await getCookiesPayload();
if (payload) {
fetch("https://sst.example.com/data", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify(payload),
keepalive: true
}).then(response => {
console.log('Payload sent successfully:', response);
}).catch(error => {
console.error('Error sending payload:', error);
});
}
}
sendCookiesToSgtm();
}, 1500);
});Now we need to store these cookies in Stape Store using the Stape Store Writer tag available in the server GTM gallery, so we can later retrieve them and report to Meta off the webhook. These cookies will be referenced by cart token, which is available to us on ‘store_cookies’ event, and that will also be available in the native webhook payload sent from Shopify.
Here is an example of how the Stape Store Writer tag can be configured:
If applicable, please also keep in mind privacy regulations and store advertising and/or analytics consent status as well, so you can later know whether this user has granted consent and you are allowed to report such conversion. Alternatively, if your consent banner supports Shopify privacy API, you may configure your web pixel to fire only if necessary consent status has been granted.
Step 3. Store every purchase reported from the web container in Data Store
We need to store every purchase reported in a “usual” way from the web container in Data Store, so we can later know if this conversion has already been reported to Meta.
Apply a similar approach used on a previous step, but this time use transaction_id as a document key, which will also be available to us from the Shopify webhook payload.
Here is an example of a Stape Store Writer tag that can be configured for this purpose:
It is better to convert transaction_id “number” variable type to a string to avoid any conflicts between data types used in sGTM, Shopify, and Data Store. There is a variable in the sGTM gallery that easily allows us to do that.
Step 4. Set up a webhook in Shopify
You may set up a webhook in Shopify in many different ways. One of the easiest would be to use the Stape Conversion Tracking app - it has all the necessary payload: cart token, properly structured order and product information, and user data. You may also use native webhook functionality or any other app of your choice.
We would also suggest using Stape’s Request Delay Power Up to ensure that the request sent from the web container reaches the server container before the webhook from the backend. This will allow us to explicitly control the sequence of requests, which is crucial for our case. A delay of 1 minute should be sufficient for the purchase request to reach the server container, allowing all necessary tags to fire and process the required requests.
Step 5. Verify if the order sent via webhook has already been processed
On this step, we already have the following:
- 1.All necessary marketing and/or analytics cookies are stored in Data Store as a
cart_tokendocument. - 2.Every purchase reported from the web container is stored in Data Store as a
transaction_iddocument. - 3.Whenever an order is created in Shopify, a webhook will be sent to the server container with a small delay.
Now, we need to verify whether the incoming webhooks should be processed and reported to Meta or disregarded, since the order has already been processed.
Thus, we take transaction_id from the incoming webhook and check if it is available in the Data Store using the Stape Store Lookup variable.
As a result, our variable will return ‘true’ if this transaction_id is found in the Data Store. This means we should disregard this webhook since this transaction has already been reported off the web container.
If our variable returns undefined or false, it means that this transaction has not been reported off the web container for some reason, and we should process this webhook.
Set up an additional Facebook tag for Shopify CAPI, and fill it with basic information from the webhook, like value, currency, content_ids, user data, etc.
For the most accurate attribution, you should also report the _fbp and _fbc cookies from the Data Store. They can be retrieved using the Stape Store Lookup variable referenced by the cart token available in your webhook. Here is an example:
Stape Store Lookup variable for _fbp should override Browser ID parameter in Facebook tag, and Stape Store Lookup for _fbc should override Click ID parameter.
This Facebook tag should be triggered when our Stape Store Lookup variable for transaction_id check returns a value that does not equal true.
If applicable, perform an additional check for consent status using a similar approach.
Conclusion
This approach allows you to achieve 100% Shopify conversion tracking accuracy, so you’ll never miss a conversion that will be attributed appropriately. It can be extended for any marketing/analytics platform you need; just make sure to store all necessary cookies in step 2. Then, in step 5, you can create an additional tag like TikTok, Snapchat, GA4, Google Ads, etc. You just have to override the necessary parameters with cookie values obtained from Data Store.
For more complex platforms like Google Ads, Stape already offers excellent solutions with a simple authentication process, including the Google Ads Offline Conversion tracking tag and Conversion Adjustment tag reporting, if you have such specific needs.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
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