Comparing Fueled’s GA4 Connector with BigCommerce’s Native GTag Implementation

With Google set to sunset Universal Analytics in July 2023, BigCommerce merchants are hustling to find fast, robust ways to implement Google Analytics 4 for their storefronts. Learn more about Fueled’s GA4 integration for BigCommerce.

Context

Google is sunsetting Universal Analytics (UA) in July 2023. From that point forward, UA properties will no longer collect new data. In transitioning to Google’s new analytics product, Google Analytics 4 (GA4), merchants are encouraged to run both UA and GA4 along side of each other through the UA cutoff.

Showing strong foresight, BigCommerce released a native GA4 integration this fall — ahead of Shopify offering a built-in integration.

As an “Open SaaS” product, BigCommerce has also supported its developer community in building out more advanced GA4 integrations.

At this point, four strong solutions exist for integrating your BigCommerce storefront with GA4: BigCommerce’s native solution, two paid offerings (LittleData and Tag Rocket), and Fueled’s GA4 Attribution Suite.

Below, we will compare Fueled’s GA4 Attribution Suite with BigCommerce’s new native implementation.

BigCommerce’s Native Google Analytics 4 Integration

BigCommerce’s native GA4 integration takes just a minute or two to configure. To get started, simply log into your BigCommerce storefront and visit the Data Solutions section in your Storefront Settings.

From there, simply enter a Google Analytics 4 Measurement ID, and you’re off to the races.

That’s it. With this Measurement ID in place, client-side events (i.e., browser-based events) will start flowing from your storefront to Google Analytics 4.

Limitations of BigCommerce’s Native GA4 Integration

BigCommerce has an incredible reputation for innovating on its features and continuing to improve them over time. That said, BigCommerce’s native GA4 integration is quite nascent, and has significant limitations at this time:

BigCommerce Only Supports Three GA4 Event Types

As of this writing, BigCommerce’s native GA4 integration only supports the following three events:

• Page View

• Begin Checkout

• Purchase

While Page Views and Purchase events are generally considered the most important events to track in Google Analytics, the key differentiator between Universal Analytics and GA4 is that GA4 is event-based, supporting a much wider range of event types.

BigCommerce’s GA4 integration is notably missing many critical events for product analytics and customer journey analysis, including: Item View (i.e., product views), Item List View (i.e., category page views), View Cart, Add to Cart, and Remove from Cart.

Without these events, a merchant is quite limited in terms of funnel analysis.

Over-Reliance on Client-Side Javascript BigCommerce’s native GA4 implementation also relies entirely on client-side javascript. All GA4 events depend on javascript being loaded on the page. This can be quite limiting in the case of storefronts that leverage custom checkout.js implementations, or that have highly modified Order Status pages.

More importantly, reliance on client-side javascript means that BigCommerce’s GA4 implementation can be fully blocked by ad blockers and that it doesn’t support tracking of offline events, such as phone orders or recurring subscription orders.

And All the Smaller Details… Finally, there are many little conveniences and details that BigCommerce’s native GA4 misses out on. First, it doesn’t track the full list of eCommerce attributes on purchase events. Second, it doesn’t scope its data layer implementation within a variable (which adds some complexities to Google Tag Manager integrations). Third, its javascript can’t be easily extended, without writing your GTag events entirely on your own.

Enter Fueled’s Google Analytics 4 Attribution Suite

Our team at Fueled pretty much eats, sleeps, and dreams Google’s GA4 event specification. Consequently, our GA4 Attribution Suite presents some key benefits over BigCommerce’s native integration.

Our GA4 Attribution Suite Tracks the Complete GA4 eCommerce Specification

In contrast to BigCommerce’s integration, which only tracks three event types, our integration tracks twelve different event types:

• page_view

• view_item (product pages)

• view_item_list (collections pages)

• add_to_cart

• view_cart

• search

• view_search_results

• remove_from_cart

• begin_checkout

• purchase

• sign_up

• login

With so much more data, merchants get a better picture of their customer journeys and product analytics with Fueled.

Server-Side Event Tracking

Our biggest feature is that our GA4 integration leverages servers-side event tracking to track begin_checkout and purchase events.

What that means is that we listen for checkout and order-related events to happen in BigCommerce’s backend, and then fire off those events to Google.

This allows us to track phone orders, recurring billing orders, and other “offline” order events. It also allows us to get around ad blockers in sending Google Analytics a merchant’s most critical events.

Privacy First & Configurable

Our GA4 integration supports BigCommerce’s Privacy Features and API. By default, we respect shopper’s privacy consent.

Our app also provides significant flexibility in terms of configuration. For example, our app allows a merchant to choose the value they want to send to Google for conversion events. You can send either the subtotal value of an order (i.e., before taxes and shipping) or the total order value (including taxes and shipping). It’s up to you.

Extendable Client Side Events

We also provide an extendable javascript library for tracking custom events, as well as a more robust data layer, that can integrate with Google Tag manager.

Same Easy Setup

Like BigCommerce’s native GA4 integration, our app can also be configured in under 5 minutes. To learn more, checkout our documentation at:

Fueled is a Customer Data Platform for eCommerce. We offer Google Analytics integrations for both BigCommerce and Shopify. Stay in touch as we continue to grow our offerings, including more advanced first-party attribution tracking solutions for eCommerce. .