Ecommerce tracking in WooCommerce and Shopify with GA4

If you run an online shop, knowing your traffic is not enough. You need to know which campaigns, pages and products lead to sales, and how much those sales are worth. That is what GA4 ecommerce tracking does. Here is how it works for WooCommerce and Shopify stores.

What ecommerce tracking records

GA4 uses a set of recommended ecommerce events. The most important ones follow the buying journey:

• view_item: someone views a product page
• add_to_cart: they add a product to the cart
• begin_checkout: they start checkout
• add_payment_info and add_shipping_info: they fill in checkout details
• purchase: they complete an order, with the order value, tax, shipping and products

With these in place, GA4 shows your sales by source, campaign, landing page and product, and where people drop out of the journey.

Shopify

Shopify connects to GA4 through the Google and YouTube app. Once connected, standard ecommerce events, including purchases, are sent automatically. Things to check:

• Only one GA4 connection is active (not the app plus a manual code), or events are counted twice
• The purchase event includes the right currency
• If you also use Google Tag Manager for other tags, it does not duplicate the purchase event

WooCommerce

WooCommerce does not send ecommerce events to GA4 by itself. The usual options:

• A dedicated GA4 integration plugin that adds the events
• Google Tag Manager with a data layer plugin, for more control over events and other tags

Things to check:

• The purchase event fires once per order, on the thank-you page only, and not again if the page is refreshed
• Order values match WooCommerce, including or excluding tax and shipping consistently
• Payment gateways that send customers to an external page still return them to your thank-you page

How to check your data is right

1. Place a test order and watch GA4’s real-time and DebugView reports for each event.

2. Compare a week of GA4 purchase revenue with your shop’s own sales report. A small difference is normal; a big one means something is wrong.

3. Look at the purchase journey report to see where people drop out.

Do not forget Meta and Google Ads

The same events should reach your ad platforms: purchase conversions in Google Ads, and Meta Pixel plus Conversions API events for Facebook and Instagram. That way each platform can optimise for sales, not just clicks. See why you need both the Meta Pixel and Conversions API.

Want it set up?

Our Enhanced Ecommerce Set-up is $149 one-time for one WooCommerce or Shopify store: view, add to cart, checkout and purchase events in GA4 and Meta, purchase values and test orders checked. If your basic GA4 set-up needs work too, start with GA4 Set Up.