Tracking Ecommerce advertisements

I'm running advertisements on facebook and instagram and want to be able to track purchase conversions from these ads on Google Analytics.

Using Big Cartel i'm not able to track conversions using UTM parameters because the checkout process linked out to Pay Pal and their auto redirect isn't reliable

Is there a way to use UTM parameters or another technique that can show me accurate data on purchases coming from clicks on my ads?

I've looked into Shopify but notice the same problem

Since the checkout process leaves my domain and reverts to checkout.shopify the destination url goals would not work.

I read this and was wondering if this is a way to solve the problem.

"Google Analytics tracks visits to your checkout pages by using a function to rename the page view on each of your checkout pages. Google Analytics uses this page view as the URL, which is why you can use relative links in your Goals and Funnels definitions despite https://checkout.shopify.com being different from the domain of your shop."

Is there any way of actually getting purchase data from advertisements on ecommerce platforms, or an ecommerce platform that doesn't link out the checkout process?

Thanks a lot

 

I dont know about shopify but you could measure the conversion rate with a little workaround.
First of all, yes, use utm parameters. (like fbcampaign1)
This will ensure, that you know how much traffic came from your campaign and where they left your site.
As you can see how many of your visitors left the page into your checkout (on shopify) you can now measure a "micro-conversion".
You are able to see how many users, acquired by your fb campaign, are leaving the page to your external checkout.
This gives you enough data to decide whether a campaign was successful or not.

The formula to calculate this conversion rate is:
"campaignusers which went wo shopify checkout" / "acquired campaign visits" = "conversion rate"
(e.g. 10/100=10%)

On the other side you have to analyze the checkout within shopify: where do they jump off, where is some optimization needed?

i hope this helps a bit

 

I recommend using Google URL Builder to attach UTM values to your links. Then you can track how much sales are coming from each channel(facebook, instragram, etc). Hope that helps.

 

This is where sometimes google and other all in one analytics solutions has its setbacks. When you get to a point where you know exactly what you need from your analytics provider but GA does not exactly cover it, start considering how much it is worth to you to find a paid service that you can speak with a rep directly and have them get exactly what you want

 

Although Google Analytics is a great free tool to use when it comes to Analytics but there are a lot of features of Analytics which are not available with free GA, to use advanced analytics you need to try Google 360. But it is too costly. The good news is that there are a lot of Analytics tools available in the market which costs a small fraction of google Analytics and provide better reports than free GA. One such tool is IQLECT. This is the era of Big Data and Machine Learning. If you are not getting actionable insights from your analytics report then you are missing a lot. Modern day analytics should be predictive and available in real-time. There must be model training included in your analytics solution so that you keep getting user behavior and pattern and act on time.