How to Setup Google Ads Conversion Tracking for Shopify?

Regarding your online business exposure, you must include an effective marketing strategy in your list of priorities. However, at times, laying this out is simply not enough to maximise your reach, as ads prove pointless when their effectiveness is not tracked. Luckily, some eCommerce platforms allow this, Shopify included. This article will discuss how to set up Google Ads conversion tracking for Shopify.

Summary

1. Setting Up Google Adwords Conversion Tracking for Shopify
2. Optimizing Google Adwords Conversion Tracking for Better Results
3. Troubleshooting Adwords Conversion Tracking Issues
4. Track Your Google Adwords Conversions with Shopify Today

Setting Up Google Adwords Conversion Tracking for Shopify

To set up Google Ads conversion tracking for Shopify, you need to create a conversion action, install the global site tag, and then add the event snippet. If you’re tracking purchases, then you also need to edit the event snippet to adjust the value of the conversion based on the purchase amount. Here are certain steps you need to follow to set up the following.

1. Create Conversion in Google Ads

When setting up the Google Ads instructions, you must create a conversion action via the Google Ads instructions. Creating a conversion for tracking purchases helps you see how effective your ads are in generating sales from your eCommerce website. To create this conversion make sure to set the category to Purchase/Sale, and the value to Use different values for each conversion. Once you are done, simply click Create and continue.

2. Install the global site tag

After the conversion action has been created, you must install the global site tag in your Shopify theme code.

Steps:

1. Go to Set up the tag in Google Ads and click Install the tag yourself
2. Go to the Globale site tag section and select the option that applies. You will generate code that depends on your selection.
3. Copy the global site tag provided
4. Open another browser and open Shopify admin. Go to Online store
5. Click Actions > Edit code and open your theme.liquid file>
6. For first-time global site tags, paste the copied global site tag between the and tags to apply the tag to every page in your store. If editing an existing tag, locate the global site tag in your theme.liquid file and change the code as suggested by Google Ads.
7. When everything’s finished, click Save

3. Install the event snippet

Once you’ve installed the global site tag, make sure to add the event snippet to your checkout page. This helps track a conversion any time somebody clicks on one of your ads and ends up on the checkout page of your website.

1. Go to the Event snippet section in Google Ads and select Page load
2. Copy the event snippet code
3. Open another browser and open Shopify admin. Go to Settings > Checkout
4. Paste the event snippet in the Additional Scripts text box If there is already an existing code, you will need to add the event snippet on a new line below
5. Get the global site tag used during installation and add it to the above event snippet added in Step 4
6. To prevent duplicate conversions, for instance, when a customer reloads the checkout page, add tags before and after the event snippet. This is so that the conversion only triggers once per customer.
   • You can set this up by pasting the following code on the line before the snippet: {% if first_time_accessed %}
   • Afterwards, add the following code on the line after the snippet: {% endif %}
7. If your currency is not USD, which is set by default, you can replace ‘USD’ in the event snippet with ‘{{ currency }}’
8. Note that the default transaction ID is blank. To avoid duplicate conversion recordings, go to ‘transaction_id’: and replace ‘ ‘ with ‘{{ order_number }}’
9. Once everything is set, click Save

4. Make the Conversion value dynamic

If your online business offers several products of different values, then it is important to remember that the conversion action you’re tracking must take this into account. For instance, if you are running two different ads through Google Ads, and one product is priced higher than the other, then the total values aren’t the same as well. By determining which is which, you can better determine where to allocate your advertising budget.

To track a different value for each conversion, you will need to edit your event snippet to input specific values for each transaction.

Steps:

1. Go to Settings > Checkout in your Shopify admin
2. Locate the event snippet you just added and replace the line beginning with ‘value’: with whatever fits what you need:
   • To exclude taxes and shipping from the conversion amount, use ‘value’: {{ checkout.subtotal_price | divided_by: 100.0 }},
   • To include taxes and shipping from the conversion amount, use ‘value’: {{ checkout.total_price | divided_by: 100.0 }},
3. When everything is final, click Save

Optimizing Google Adwords Conversion Tracking for Better Results

Now that we have your Google Ads conversion tracking for Shopify set up, how then can we optimize this for the best results?

As an eCommerce website, it is important to remember the main goal of why we are tracking Adwords conversion in the first place. This is so that we can increase purchases and revenue. Having that in mind, it is important to carefully analyze the data that is being presented to us. This data will prove to be useless unless we can understand and make adjustments to reap better results. If there is a high rate of people abandoning their purchases, we must focus on this area to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Furthermore, it is also vital that you make sure there is no duplicate conversion tracking for your eCommerce site. This occurs when the Google channel automatically adds conversion tracking events to your Google Ads account upon set up.

Troubleshooting Adwords Conversion Tracking Issues

To guarantee that you don’t run into issues with Google Adwords, it is important to ensure that other scripts don’t conflict or give errors that prevent Google Ads conversion tracking for Shopify from firing. To ensure this, you must test your conversion code output. However, when you do find yourself experiencing some issues, here are some solutions.

GA4 Reports

Issues can usually be spotted in GA4 Reports. To spot the errors, you must select a time period the day after the most recent change to see the latest form of the data. With that, you can refer to the annotations to determine when the changes affect the data. In addition, you can also change the history of the account. Simply click Admin, select the property you want, and then view the Property Change History.

Debug Mode

In debug mode, you can view events, event parameters, and user properties instantly. No need to worry about delays or distorting data in historical reports. You can access this by clicking Preview in Google Tag Manager and tick the option Include debug signal in the URL. Remember to include the debug signal to use debug mode in GA4. However, use this option with caution as there have been some reports that websites break. Nonetheless, there is a simple debug mode solution you can try to fix it.

Browser Console With Google Analytics Debugger

The best place to input a debug code is the browser console. This is for users who understand development since all the analytics are published here. Simply install the Google Analytics Debugger Chrome extension to interpret the debugger using skills that pay bills. It is important to pinpoint any red messages or aborting messages such as “user has opted out of tracking. Aborting hit.”

Google Tag Assistant

Google Tag Assistant is an online tool that helps in debugging all Google’s tags. This is the best method to identify issues and can be done via Tag Assistant through the preview mode of GTM.

1. In Tag Assistant, connect the homepage of your store. Once connected, the homepage will load in a new tab
2. Return to the Tag Assistant tab and select your desired Google container. If you are debugging this guide, refer to the Google Tag Manager container that begins with “GTM” and the Google Analytics 4 tag that starts with”G-”
3. Check if your GA4 tag sends a “Page View” hit
4. Select the GTM tag then check the tags that fire and the ones that don’t
5. To ensure the issue is resolved, go back to the homepage window in debug mode and make a test purchase. If you have an upsell, test that offer. Lastly, you must review the app settings to identify what products trigger a post-purchase offer.

Track Your Google Adwords Conversions with Shopify Today

Investing in various forms of marketing is essential for an online business. However, making sure each strategy works is just as important. With Google Adwords as one of the most popular forms of online advertising, it is only as good as when it is made sure it gets the job done. Thankfully with Shopify, you can not only utilise Adwords to drive traffic to your store, but you can also easily track its effectiveness. This then helps you constantly pinpoint and improve the necessary aspects of your marketing strategies and contributes to your overall success. Build your eCommerce website with Shopify today and get the most out of its Google AdWords conversion tracking.