Fun with E-Commerce Analytics Part I: Shopify

Abstract

Tracking ROI is a 50 billion dollar skill, because it’s at the core of Google’s success, and you could even argue that it’s a trillion dollar skill, because of how much revenue Google helps businesses make. This chapter looks at how to set up a Shopify account, which is one of the easiest ways to set up a “real” e-commerce system to learn about tracking ROI with analytics. I think it’s important to see how you can set things up so that when you create an ad, you can track exactly how much money you are making. This is a fundamental concept and opportunity in analytics, where Google Analytics and AdWords can act together. My goal has been to find the easiest, least expensive way to set up the moving pieces, and Shopify is part of the puzzle. Originally, I was going include the entire lifecycle in one chapter, but I decided to split the chapter into two—this first chapter lays the foundation in Shopify, and the next chapter covers connecting things in AdWords.