Shopify app overview

The Stape Conversion Tracking app adds a web Google Tag Manager (GTM) snippet to your Shopify site and pushes data layer events and webhooks to a server GTM (sGTM) container. You can use it on its own or together with another plugin that already injects GTM. Sending the conversion data from the server, rather than only from the browser, can help with client-side tracking limits such as ad blockers or Safari ITP cookie expiration.

Stape's app for Shopify is free, and you can use it without creating a Stape account. You will need a Stape account if you want to use the following functionalities:

• Custom Loader power-up. You can use it on the free subscription plan. 
• Cookie Keeper power-up. You will need a paid subscription plan.
• Customer Match. You will need to enable the Google Data Manager API connection which works only on a paid subscription plan.

How it works

1. The app adds the GTM snippet into the store’s <head> and <body> on storefront pages. You can load that snippet from your own domain in two ways, and it requires a container hosted on Stape.

• Own CDN (recommended) – add a custom domain in Stape admin and set up Own CDN. Own CDN routes the tagging subdomain (for example `sgtm.example.com`) through the same IP as your Shopify store. Safari and Firefox then treat sGTM cookies as first-party, so cookie lifetimes stay intact without Cookie Keeper.
• Custom Loader and Cookie Keeper power-ups – use this if Own CDN isn’t feasible or not wanted (for example you can’t proxy DNS through your Own CDN). Load GTM from a tagging subdomain (for example sgtm.example.com) with the Custom Loader power-up so ad blockers are less likely to block the script, and Cookie Keeper so Safari ITP doesn’t expire cookies such as _ga and _fbp early.

If you don’t have a container on Stape, the snippet will be loaded from Google’s default CDN.

2. Shopify runs checkout, post-purchase, and thank-you pages in a sandbox, so the storefront script can’t run there. The app uses a Shopify web pixel to listen for events such as add to cart, cart viewed, and checkout completed. The pixel collects customer details (name, email, phone, address), cart or order contents (items, price, currency), and visitor IDs, and then the app pushes ecommerce data into dataLayer.

3. Tags in the web GTM container (GA4 or Stape Data Tag) pick up those data layer events and send them to your sGTM container on Stape.

4. The sGTM container receives the events (through the GA4 Client or Data Client). Server tags then turn the data into requests for your analytics platform (GA4, Meta CAPI, TikTok, Google Ads, Snapchat, and others). 

5. When an order is created, paid, or refunded offline, Shopify can send a webhook from the server to your sGTM container. The payload includes transaction data, user identifiers, and client IDs. The conversion can still be recorded if the site visitor had already left; the redirect to thank-you page didn't occur on some payment gateways, or the purchase happened offline.

6. The sGTM container sends the events to the analytics platforms you use.