I was using Google Tag Manager and custom event tracking to track time on site and was noticing a console error ReferenceError: datalayer is not defined – after investigating I found a good summary on how to use the data layer from Lunametrics. Here is how I changed the Custom HTML tag to resolve the error. window.addEventListener(“beforeunload”, function(e) { window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; datalayer.push ({ ‘event’ : ‘beforeunload’, ‘timeOnPage’ : new Date().getTime() – {{Page Load Start Time}} }); }); I changed the Custom HTML Tag and this resolved the console error. Notice where I instantiate the dataLayer before…
Read MoreThink about the last time you installed an app for your Shopify store. I’m willing to bet you took a glance at the number of 5 star reviews and skimmed the reviews for the best and worst ratings – to try to learn from their mistakes before wasting your time and money. That’s the same hesitation and concern your customer’s have. Let’s use Shopify Product Reviews to minimize their hesitation Use Social Proof The internet has so many stores, products, and options for what to spend your money on. When a customer lands on your product detail page you are…
Read MoreThey say early bird gets the worm and the night owl sees it all happen. Sometimes it can feel like running a store is an around-the-clock type of thing. It doesn’t have to be that way! Let’s talk about your Shopify roadmap for 2017 so you can have a great Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Holiday season. Without the constant worry about conversion rates, shipping deadlines, marketing projects, finances/accounting, nevermind your website! Why? Use these months to be the early bird – by refining your processes, improving how you tell the story of your brand, and crafting a plan for November…
Read MoreHere are 3 Tips For Your Shopify Cart Template that I’ve done in 2017 that has Improved Sales If you’ve been a Shopify store owner for a bit you understand my point when I say that running a Shopify store is all about building and maintaining a great relationship with your audience and customers. Even customers that have reached your checkout funnel have hesitation to “commit” to that relationship. Make sure you use your checkout page to it’s full potential to minimize that fear. Here are 3 Tips for your Shopify cart template that will increase sales and minimize customer…
Read MoreThe most successful Shopify store owners use data to inform their long term decision making process – and validate success or failure. I get it – Google Analytics and eCommerce reporting can be overwhelming. What’s more overwhelming is that If you aren’t diving in to Google Analytics at least once a month – you’re missing out on revenue opportunities. Whenever I look at a client’s analytics account – I want to understand (and share with them): What’s working (Success)? What’s not working (Failure)? What haven’t we done yet (Opportunities)? So take deep breath and use these 5 tips to use…
Read MoreWhen I talk with Shopify store owners about how to continue to grow their business – one of my first suggestions is to get serious about email. Good email marketing is a huge opportunity to increase sales on Shopify. Learn how to be successful collecting more emails and increasing sales on Shopify. That value is more than discounts or promotions. Take a second to think about the e-mails you open. In my case, I read lists that provide information or education that make me better at work or home. I open e-mails about unique or exciting giveaways and I’m always interested in seeing social…
Read MoreYou can learn a lot about your users when you track shopify search terms using Google Analytics. You can better inform your site navigation and segment the searches by device or term to see if you aren’t providing information to users in certain contexts. Your website’s navigation is important and while lots of customers will browse the navigation your site must cater to users that will navigate by using your site search. Why Track Search Terms in Google Analytics? Yes – Shopify offers search stats in your Dashboard. The advantage of tracking search terms in Google Analytics is that you can parse…
Read MoreTrack Average Engagement time using Google Tag Manager to better understand active time a user is on a page or website. These days customers may find your site or product and keep a tab open for hours in between other tasks while spending. This visit is recorded in Google Analytics and the time where the user is inactive may inflate the Google Analytics metric Average Time on Page. Even worse – If your user finds a detailed blog posts and reads it ALL DAY (like I sometimes do) and then close the browser (and not visiting another page) – they are marked as…
Read MoreIf you have a website or page that embeds multiple podcasts or audio files on a single page – you’ll want to Track Audio Using Google Analytics like plays, pauses, and completions. Background: I encountered a request to track the number of audio plays on a website. I’d prefer to track this using Google Tag Manager, but the website was built by a third party with only universal analytics so I needed a Javascript solution since the effort to add the Tag Manager container wasn’t going to meet the go live deadline. Here was some code I found and tweaked to…
Read MoreMailchimp has lots of great features for content creators. One feature I recently used was an RSS feed that passes content for specific categories rom specific categories to Mailchimp AND include the featured image in the RSS feed. I accomplished this by including the featured image in the RSS feed by updating functions.php. Best practice is to always use a child-theme to add any customizations to functions.php. I actually like to use the My Custom Functions Plugin to ensure my updates aren’t overwritten or stripped out if that file is ever updated. Below is the PHP I added to include…
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