With 1.75 million merchants and 3.76 million websites on Shopify, sustaining your Shopify store is challenging.
To stay relevant, besides maintaining quality products, businesses need to know the top e-commerce events to track for the Shopify stores.
It enables them to collect and analyze the relevant e-commerce statics, draw analysis, and make data-driven decisions.
Default reports do not always cut.
To help you with the task, we share our top 10 e-commerce events to track in Shopify stores in this blog.
What is an E-commerce Event?
An event is an activity performed on your website by a user. E-commerce events, as the name suggests, refer to the performance of customer activities on an E-commerce website.
For example, when a user clicks on an item on your online store to view its details, add it to their wishlist, or purchase it.
As businesses, you track these events to calculate key performance indicators, assess store performance, and decide future strategies.
Top E-commerce Events to Track for Shopify Stores
1. View Item
It is an important metric that signifies the first stage of the customer journey related to a product on your Shopify store.
If your view item stats rise, it shows visitor interest in your product.
Knowing the products viewed and the frequency of this activity offers insights into the effectiveness of product placement, user preferences, and popular items.
You can use this information to
- Optimize product placement to maximize visibility on your Shopify store.
- Assess your conversion rate in comparison to the most viewed items.
- Use the information to offer custom product suggestions to interested clients.
2. View Item List
Following closely behind is the event titled View Item List.
It shows you all the items viewed by a user and, as you can tell, can be a starting point for retargeted marketing.
Also, it gives a peep into customer behavior in how they explore categories and product listings on your Shopify store.
You can use information from this event to
- Optimize product categorization to enhance customer experience.
- Highlight popular items in your store.
- Assess and improve product arrangement to increase interest and sales.
- Send targeted marketing ads and offers to users.
3. View Promotion
It includes Shopify store visitors who see your specific promotional banners.
A great deal of marketing, including advertisement, goes into acquiring a customer.
Tracking the View Promotion event can help you attribute credit to specific marketing activities.
Another related event, Click Promotion, can help identify the visitors who clicked those ads.
You can use information from tracking this event to
- Identify the effectiveness of the ad campaign.
- Optimize ad content and placement to increase click-through rates.
4. Add to Cart
It is one of the most fundamental events in the conversion funnel on your Shopify store.
Add to cart points to users who are serious about a product and are likely to purchase it if everything goes smoothly.
You can use information from this event to
- Track the user journey and identify if they converted eventually.
- Use this as a baseline to calculate the cart abandonment rate.
- Use this information for targeted remarketing.
5. Remove From Cart
As much as you want to track your successes, you also want to know when a potential customer refuses to proceed with a purchase.
From here on, you can research to identify the probable causes of an item’s removal from the cart.
Some of the common reasons include delivery charges or hidden fees.
You can use data from this event to
- Investigate the causes of removing items from the cart.
- Address the issues and improve customer experience and customer satisfaction to increase purchases.
- Streamline the checkout process to increase conversion rates.
6. Begin Checkout
This event tracks when a user initiates the checkout process.
The number of prospective customers who begin to check out after adding items to their cart may drop if things do not go smoothly.
It is a vital piece of information from the conversion funnel point of view.
Also, as the stats drop closer to the purchase activity, you use this information to identify the stage in the conversion funnel that loses most customers.
You can use the Begin Checkout data to
- Calculate the cart abandonment rate and identify the causes.
- Simplify the procedures and offer multiple payment options and facilities at the checkout to reduce the cart abandonment rate.
- Offer trusted payment badges to build trust and encourage customers to proceed with the checkout.
7. Add Payment Info
It is triggered during the checkout and involves the user entering details on how they will pay.
Use the Add Payment Info event to identify the most popular payment options.
Also, identify if limited payment options drive the cart abandonment at your Shopify store.
You can use the data from the Add Payment Info event to
- Measure the effectiveness of your Shopify store’s payment options.
- Identify if any troubles at this stage are contributing to cart abandonment.
- Diversify the payment options you allow to increase revenue.
8. Purchase
Track the sweet smell of success with the Purchase event.
It monitors all the customers that went ahead with checkout and payment to complete the buying process.
By tracking this event, you measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and the customer experience at offer.
You can use information from the Purchase event to
- Calculate conversion KPIs like Average Order Value and Gross Profit Margin.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of marketing efforts with KPIs like Return on Investment from digital marketing.
- Identify the most significant client segment and offer them special discounts or offers to keep them coming back.
9. Refund
Tracking refunds is vital to remaining on top of your game for calculating net profits for your e-commerce store.
The event is triggered when a customer’s request for a return and refund is approved, and their money is refunded.
It is critical to track refunds and implement these deductions into your analytics to ensure they reflect in your e-commerce reports.
10. Add to Wishlist
The Add to Wishlist event reveals customer interest in a product that has yet to materialize into a conversion.
Tracking this event helps you identify the products in demand, create custom retargeting campaigns, and send reminders to encourage purchases.
Tools to View Shopify E-commerce Events
Tracking and monitoring the e-commerce events in the Shopify Store requires an analytical tool that is up to the job.
Below, we share some options for tracking, monitoring, and reporting on your e-commerce events and key performance indicators.
Shopify Analytics
Before exploring other analytics tools, let us discuss the in-built analytics option called Shopify Analytics.
It allows you to track Events in real-time and find detailed reports on your key performance indicators.
Some events you can track here include order placement, sales, and information about the products sold.
The basic plan is free, but advanced analytics and custom reports are available in a paid plan only.
Analyzify
Benefit from additional analytics capabilities for your Shopify Store with the Analyzify App.
You can power things up by integrating tools like Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, Bing (Microsoft) Ads, Google Ads, and more.
By integrating Analyzify with GTM you can track and monitor our top-listed events and gain valuable insights through advanced analytics capabilities.
Google Analytics 4
One of the most popular analytics tools, GA4 has a wide range of analytics options, including ones for your Shopify Store.
You can collect data and let it flow to Google Analytics 4 by installing tags via Google Tag Manager.
Here, you can track the default and custom events that suit your business, gain insights, and use them to maximize your profits.
You can also integrate the Analyzify App with GA4 to get the most out of your data.
The best part is that GA4 offers capabilities like tracking events, creating custom reports, exploring funnels, and deeper insights into your e-commerce data for free.
Hotjar
Amp up your understanding of the user behavior with hotjar.
With options like heatmaps, you can pinpoint the pages or segments that get the most and least attention.
Hotjar Recordings helps businesses Identify where the prospective customers got stuck, making it easier to identify the causes of bounce rate.
Also, it is a great tool to optimize the store and maximize profits by enabling a better understanding of customer behavior.
To track events in Hotjar, you will have to integrate it with your Google Analytics 4 property.
Alternatively, install a hotjar tracking code on your Shopify Store to achieve the same.
Conclusion
We discussed our list of top 10 e-commerce events for Shopify stores.
An e-commerce event is an activity performed by a user on your Shopify store.
Our favorite events include view item, view item list, view promotion, add to cart, remove from cart, begin checkout, add payment information, purchase, refund, and add to wishlist.
Later, these events allow us to calculate KPIs like impressions, conversion rate, bounce back rate, average order value, and return on investment.
You can track these items via Shopify Analytics, the built-in analytics tool.
Or you can use it with their Analyzify App, Google Analytics 4, or Hotjar to gain more insight and create meaningful, actionable reports.
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