Step 4. Recommended GA4 property settings for Shopify

1. Make sure you have set properly your property time zone and currency.
   It should be the same as your Shopify settings in other way you will loose chance to compare results between these two tools.
   
   
2. Make sure you are using enhanced measurement.
   You have to turn it on to be able to track automatically in addition to Page views also: Scrolls, Outbound clicks, Site search, Video engagement and File downloads.
   To do that go to: GA4 > Admin > Data Streams > Chose your stream and check "Enhanced measurement" section.
   
   
3. Take care of unwanted referral list.
   If you want to be able to analyze traffic sources you have to exclude unwanted referrals like for example payment providers. If you don't do that you will loose original traffic source. For example in your acquisition report you will see paypal as great source of generating income which will not be true because traffic was delivered by other traffic source like google organic or some campaign and paypal was just unwanted referral here.
   To exclude unwanted referrals use this path: GA4 > Amin > Property Column > Data Streams > Chose your stream > More tagging settings > List unwanted referrals.
   
   As Shopify recommends in their: Excluding referrer domains from Google Analytics tracking article you need to add at least 3 unwanted referrals:
   a) The primary domain of your online store (such as sofiahousewares.com)
   b) The checkout domain (checkout.shopify.com)
   c) Any external payment providers that you are using (such as paypal.com).
   d) To find out more referrals that you should exclude you should regularly visit your traffic acquisition report and check if you don't have unwanted referrals.
4. Adjust timer for engaged sessions.
   Default time to classify session as an engaged is 10 sec. If you want to have better picture here good practice is to increase this time to 30 sec.
   To do that go to: GA4 > Amin > Property Column > Data Streams > Chose your stream > More tagging settings > Adjust session timeout.
   
5. Exclude internal traffic from your reports.
   If you don't want to see your or other people from your company, traffic in you reports you can filter it. To do that go to: GA4 > Amin > Property Column > Data Streams > Chose your stream > More tagging settings >Define internal traffic.
   
   
6. Activate Google signals.
   If you want to collect cross-device data, and remarket to users across devices you have to turn on this functionality. To do that go to:
   GA4 > Amin > Property Column > Data settings > Data Collection > Google signals data collection section and click "Get started". In the next screens just click "Continue" and then "Activate".
   
   
7. Adjust User and event data retention.
   You can select the length of time you want to retain event data. Default time is 2 months. If you want to extend it go to: GA4 > Amin > Property Column > Data settings > Data retention and change it to 14 months. You will start to retain user data 12 months longer than default settings. If you wan read more about this topic, visit this article: Data retention
   
8. Set your User Data Collection Acknowledgement.
   Go to Data Settings>Data Collection and to the User Data Collection Acknowledgment snippet and make it acknowledged.
   
   
9. Define your conversions.
   Mark as conversion your most important micro and macro conversions.
   To do that you have to go: GA4 > Configure snippet > Events and mark chosen events as conversions.
   
   
10. Activate “Your insights”.
    To allow GA4 to make some insights based on your data you have to activate it. After it every anomaly in KPIs will be automatically reported in GA4. To active it, go to GA4 > Reports> Reports snapshot> Insights report and click “Create” and then “Create insights”.
    
    
    
    

Next step is to Install Google Tag Manager in Shopify. More about it you will read in the next step of our guide: How to install Google Tag Manager in Shopify.

Information About the Authors

Piotr Ulacha

Piotr Ulacha is a web analyst. He has 15 years of experience in the digital marketing area. He specializes in implementation of analytical and marketing tracking codes, creating dashboards and data privacy topic. He works currently as a Web Analyst at EverStores.com where he implement tracking solutions for eCommerce brands. Previusly he worked at SellerX with eCommerce brands and at Artegence where he analyses the impact of marketing campaigns for Volkswagen Poland.