Setting up Google Analytics (GA4) – SHOPLINE Help Center

Google Analytics is a powerful website analytics tool designed to help you understand and optimize visitor behavior and conversion rate on your website. GA4 is the latest version of Google Analytics that offers you more advanced features and improved methods for data tracking.

This article describes how to create and configure GA4 properties, including setting up data collection, goals, and conversion events. These clear instructions and steps ensure that you can obtain accurate and valuable website data analysis by successfully setting up Google Analytics (GA4).

Introducing Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free website analytics tool provided by Google. It tracks and analyzes the behavior and interactions of website visitors, offering detailed data to online store owners and marketers regarding key metrics such as online store traffic, user behavior, and conversion rate.

By embedding codes into website pages, Google Analytics collects and reports various data about visitors, including website visits, page views, average session duration, traffic sources, and conversion rate.

Google Analytics helps you learn more about the audience, interests, behavior patterns, and engagement methods on your website. This data is crucial for optimizing user experiences, refining marketing strategies, tracking advertisement effects, and evaluating the overall performance of online businesses. With various reports and analytical tools provided by Google Analytics, you can visualize and interpret data, thus allowing data-driven decision-making and actions.

Creating and Setting Up a Google Analytics Account

Creating a Google Analytics Account

First, you need to set up a Google Analytics account (unless you already have one). Go to create media property unless you intend to create a separate account for your website.

You can perform the following steps:

Go to Google Analytics by clicking on this link.
- If it's your first time creating a Google Analytics account, click Start measuring.
- If you already have a Google Analytics account but want to create a new one, click Create an account under the Account column in the Management section.

Enter an account name and configure data-sharing settings to manage what data is shared with Google.
Click Next to add the first media property to the account.

Google Analytics Property

You can perform the following steps:

In the Property creation step, enter the property name and select Reporting Time zone and Currency for your GA4. Click Next.
In the Business details page, select Industry category and Business size. Click Next.
Choose your business objectives and click Create.
Accept the Data Processing Terms of GA4.
After finishing the steps above, you can start setting up and collecting your data by choosing your preferred platform (web, Android app, IOS app).

Note: About time zone settings

If a visitor accesses your website on a Tuesday in their time zone but it's Monday in your time zone, the visit is recorded on Monday.
If your selected time zone applies daylight saving time, Google Analytics automatically adjusts for the changes. However, if you do not want to adjust for daylight saving time, use Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
Changing the time zone affects future data only. If you change the time zone for an existing property, you may notice stable values or peaks in the data, which result from forward or backward time adjustments. When you have updated the settings, report data may continue using the original time zone until Google Analytics servers process the change.
We recommend that you change the time zone for a property at most once per day for proper processing.

Adding Data Stream

You can perform the following steps:

Select your account in All accounts.
Go to Admin > Property settings > Data collection and modification > Date streams > Web.
Enter the Website URL and Stream name.
You can enable or disable the Enhanced Measurement feature.
After finishing, click Create stream.

Setting up Data Collection

SHOPLINE supports client-side and server-side data reporting methods to better track customer behavior. You can opt for client-side reporting only or enable both client-side and server-side reporting to enhance data analysis comprehensiveness and accuracy.

Client-Side Data Reporting

Client-side reporting collects customer behavior data from the front-end by embedding Google Analytics tracking code into your website. While effective in most scenarios, this method can be hindered by browser privacy settings, ad blockers, or other restrictions, potentially leading to incomplete data reporting.

To enable client-side reporting, link the GA measurement ID with SHOPLINE:

Log into Google Analytics and go to Admin > Property settings > Data collection and modification > Date streams. Click on your stream.
In the Web stream details pop-up, copy the MEASUREMENT ID.
From your SHOPLINE admin panel, click Channels in the left toolbar, and select Google. Find the Data tracking section and click Start tracking.
Choose Google Analytics.
Set Google Analytics 4 (GA4) as your Property Type and paste your stream’s MEASUREMENT ID to the Code ID field. Then, click Confirm to finish the steps.

Server-Side Data Reporting

Server-side reporting ensures data is sent directly from the server to Google Analytics, bypassing browser or device limitations. This guarantees stable and accurate reporting even if customers disable JavaScript, enable privacy modes, or use ad blockers. At the same time, server-side reporting reduces reliance on browser-based cookies, aligning better with GDPR and other privacy regulations. This ensures compliance while maintaining effective data tracking capabilities.

Log into Google Analytics and go to Admin > Property settings > Data collection and modification > Date streams. Click on your stream.
In the Web stream details pop-up, scroll down to the Events section and click Measurement Protocol API secrets.
Acknowledge the terms if you haven’t. Then click Create and name your API secret.
Copy the generated Secret value.
Return to your SHOPLINE admin panel and go to Google > Data tracking > Google Analytics.
Set Google Analytics 4 (GA4) as your Property Type and paste your stream’s MEASUREMENT ID to the Code ID field and secret value to Google Analytics API Secret. Then, click Confirm to finish the steps.

Key GA4 Steps After Enabling Server-Side Data Collection: If you have enabled server-side reporting, we recommend that you complete the following steps in the GA4 backend:

From your GA4 dashboard, go to the Admin section.
Go to Property settings > Data collection and modification, then click on Data collection.
In the User-ID and user-provided data collection section, locate User-provided data collection and click the Turn on button on the right.
In the pop-up window, disable Collect automatically-detected user-provided data and click Turn on.

If Collect automatically-detected user-provided data is not disabled, it may conflict with server-side reporting, resulting in duplicate or incorrect data. This could impact the accuracy of conversion data and ad performance evaluation.

Setting up Conversion Goals

After completing the above configuration, Google Analytics has been set up to track data on your SHOPLINE store. You can also set up events and conversions in Google Analytics to measure specific effects. For details, refer to How to set up a conversion in Google Analytics 4.