Shopify by Littledata Source

Littledata’s Shopify to Segment connection uses a combination of client-side (browser) and server-side tracking to ensure 100% accurate data about your Shopify store in Segment. Littledata automatically integrates with Shopify and Shopify Plus sites to capture every customer touchpoint, including sales, marketing, customer and product performance data.

Littledata is available as an independent Shopify App.

Client-side (device mode) tracking

During the installation process, Littledata adds a LittledataLayer.liquid snippet to all pages (included in theme.liquid) on your Shopify store. The benefits of this approach include:

• Segment’s Analytics.js 2.0 library is loaded on all pages, except for the checkout
• Includes a LittledataLayer data layer for all pages
• Loads a minified tracking script, hosted on a content delivery network (CDN)
• Enables sending of device-mode ecommerce events to all Segment destinations
• Segment’s anonymous ID and Google Analytics’ client ID is passed to our servers to ensure consistent user journey tracking

Server-side (cloud mode) tracking

During the Segment connection setup, Littledata also adds a set of webhooks to your Shopify store. When a customer interacts with your store these changes are relayed server-side from Shopify to Littledata to Segment. The advantages to this approach are:

• 100% event capture for adds to cart, checkout steps, sales and refunds/returns
• Customer data (for example, email) securely relayed server-side
• No extra scripts on the sensitive and secure checkout pages
• Accurate marketing attribution, even when customers use ad-blockers or cookie opt-outs
• Supports cloud-mode destinations such as Facebook Conversions API

Here’s an architecture diagram that shows how the Littledata app mediates data flow between Shopify and Segment.

Getting Started

1. Login to your Shopify Store account.
2. Go the Shopify app store listing for Segment.com by Littledata.
3. Click Add app to begin the installation process.
4. Choose a Littledata subscription suitable for your store’s volume of monthly orders.
5. Add the Segment write key for the source that is going to send data in the input field.
6. Choose either an Automatic, a Manual, or a Headless install. Automatic installs work in most instances, but if you choose to do a manual install, just follow this guide.
7. Segment’s Analytics.js library, Littledata tracking script and webhooks will be automatically applied to the store and the installation process will then be complete.

Event schema

This source has a full tracking plan and event schema in Google Sheets, which is ready to upload into Protocols.

Device-mode events

Below is a table of events that Shopify by Littledata sends to Segment through the analytics.js library. These events will show up as tables in your warehouse, and as regular events in your other Destinations supporting device-mode.

You can opt out of device-mode pageviews or events by setting disableClientSideEvents: true or disablePageviews: true in the LittledataLayer settings.

The source also respects GDPR-compliant cookie consent via Shopify’s cookie banner, or popular consent management platforms such as OneTrust and TrustArc.

Cloud-mode events

Below is a table of events that Shopify by Littledata sends to Segment from Littledata’s servers. These events appear as tables in your warehouse, and as regular events in your other Destinations that support cloud-mode. They include the anonymousId that links them to the device-mode events where the event was part of a previous user session, or associated with a userId that was previously linked with an anonymousId. See Littledata’s troubleshooting guide on attribution for more details.

User identity

In the Littledata application you can choose which of the following fields you want to send as the userId for known customers:

• Shopify customer ID (default) - Recommended if you have a simple Shopify setup with minimal integrations.
• Hashed email - The MD5 email hash is useful if you have other marketing platforms sending traffic where you know the email of the visitor (e.g. email marketing like Bronto or Marketo), but not their Shopify customer ID. We use an unsalted MD5 hash (`createHash` method) to match your other sources.
• Email - The email identifier is recommended when other platforms use the email and can’t hash it, and you are comfortable with the privacy implications.
• None (no identifier) - Choose “none” if user identity is already handled by your Segment implementation and you only need the extra events powered by Littledata’s Shopify source.

For Segment Personas we also send shopify_customer_id as an externalID for advanced matching.

Identify calls

For every event where there is an identifiable Shopify customer (from both the device-mode and cloud-mode) Littledata also sends an Identify call. This happens when the customer logs into the storefront, on the last step of the checkout, with the order, and also after purchase with any customer update in Shopify admin.

The following traits are included with an Identify call:

Support for Google Analytics destination

All events (device-mode and cloud-mode) contain the Google Analytics clientId field where known. This allows the Google Analytics destination to be configured in cloud-mode only, so all client side events are relayed via Segment’s servers - reducing the scripts needed on your website.

Support for email marketing destinations

Email marketing platforms such as Klaviyo, Iterable and Hubspot require an email property with any server-side event in order to associate events with a customer (they cannot use an anonymousId). Littledata adds that email property whenever an email address is set in the user traits() object (in device-mode) or from the Shopify customer record (in cloud-mode). Iterable can also receive cookie values with the Order Completed event.

Alias calls

To support seamless customer tracking the Mixpanel, Vero and KISSMetrics destinations, Littledata ensures the pre-checkout anonymousId is added as an alias of the userId (used from checkout step 2 onwards).

Subscription events

All recurring orders in the Shopify checkout, from any subscription app, are tracked as Order Completed events.

Additional subscription lifecycle events via Littledata’s ReCharge connection are available in cloud-mode destinations. See the Track (custom) tab of the event schema.

Event properties

The list below outlines the properties included in most events. See the ‘Track (eCommerce)’ tab of the event schema for exactly which properties are sent with which events.

Product properties

Each item in the products array, or Product Viewed and Product Added events, will have the following properties

Import all orders

With an annual Littledata Plus plan you can import all Shopify orders and refunds from before you started using Segment, to sync with destinations that support timestamped events (for example, a data warehouse). This enables you to build a complete customer history in your chosen destination.

This data import will include all the event properties usually sent with an Order Completed event, including the customer traits.

Advanced settings

You can edit these data pipeline settings within Littledata’s app.

cookiesToTrack

You can send any cookie set on a landing page (for example, a session identifier or marketing campaign name) to Segment with an Identify call. A common use is to set the array as ['iterableEmailCampaignId', 'iterableTemplateId'] to pass Iterable campaignId and templateId through to the Order Completed event.

CDNForAnalyticsJS

If you have a proxy CDN setup to load Segment’s AnalyticsJS library from your own domain, you can specify it here.