Setting Up Your GA4 Property
How to set up your GA4 property for your Shopify store.
Kevin McLaughlin
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62 steps
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4 minutes
Clean Data
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Open the admin settings for your GA4 property
Property Settings
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Click Property Settings
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Ensure that the reporting Timezone and Currency match your Shopify stores.
It's very important that the GA4 currency matches your Shopify's store's currency. If they don't match, GA4's exchange rates will be wrong and the reported revenue will be off.
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Hit Save
Data Stream Settings
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Click Data Streams
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Make sure you only have one data stream.
There is no reason for a Shopify store to have multiple data streams in the same GA4 property if you don't have a mobile app. If you have different stores for different countries/regions, you should still only have one GA4 Data Stream.
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Click on your Data Stream
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Click Configure tag settings
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Click Show all
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Click Define internal traffic
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Click Create, select "IP address equals" and enter your IP Address
Find your IP address by Googling "What's my IP?"
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Add all IP addresses for your company by clicking Add condition
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Name the rule Internal Users and click Create
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Close the Define internal traffic window and select Configure your domains
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Add all root domains for your store. You do not need to add a condition for each sub domain (like blog.mystore.com), just root domains (like [mystore.com](http://mystore.com) and myshop.com). Click Save.
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Click List unwanted referrals
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Add your root domains again. Also add "shop.app", "[paypal.com](http://paypal.com)", and any other payment providers your use. Click Save
Data Settings
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Close the Google tag and webstream detail windows. Click Settings and select Data Filters
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Click the Internal Traffic fitler
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Select the "Active" option and click Save.
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Click Activate filter
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Click Create filter
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Click Developer traffic
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Name the filter "Developer Traffic", select "Active", and hit Create
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Activate the filter
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Close the data filters window and select Data Retention
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Select "14 months" from the drop-down and ensure that "Reset user data on new activity" is enabled. Click Save
Disconnect GA4 and Universal Analytics
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Open your Universal Analytics property in a tab and deselect "Automatically set up a basic Google Analytics 4 property"
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If your Universal Analytics property is already connected to GA4 property, disconnect it.
Customizations - Channel Groupings, Definitions, Conversions, and Audiences
Channel Groupings
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Return to your GA4 property settings and click Channel Groups
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Click the Default Channel Group and examine the new default channel groups in GA4.
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Create new channel groups if you like. Read our post on how to create your custom channel groups.
Custom Definitions
Custom dimensions and metrics must be sent as parameters by your tracking provider (Shopify's built-in integration, SlideRule Analytics, Google Tag Manager, etc). The steps below show how to define the dimensions and metrics so they show in the GA4 reporting interface.
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Click Custom definitions
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Click Create custom dimensions
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Add any custom dimensions you like. For instance, if you have a custom event that tracks Call to Action clicks with parameters for text, you would add an Event-scoped dimension like so to be able to see the text parameter in the GA4 reporting interface.
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If you had send the Customer ID with each purchase, you would add a user-scoped dimension like so.
SlideRule Analytics automatically adds the Customer ID and many other custom dimensions and metrics for you, so you won't need to add this if you already see it here.
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You can also add a item-scoped dimensions like so.
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You can add custom metrics as well.
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Click Create customer metrics
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Add a metric for Subtotal Price like so.
Custom Conversions
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Click Conversions
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Click New conversion event
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Enter in the event name that you want to flag as a conversion and click Save
Events must be tracked by your provider (Shopify's built-in integration, SlideRule Analytics, Google Tag Manager, etc) to be flagged as conversions.
Audiences
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Select Audiences
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Click New audience
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Select the Non-purchasers reference.
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Set the duration to the maximum limit and hit Save
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Create a Purchasers - Max Duration audience like so.
Enhancements and Integrations
Google Signals
Decide whether or not to enable Google Signals. Google Signals is a new feature that theoretically improves cross-device tracking in Google Analytics. However, it has some significant drawbacks. If you don’t plan to use Demographic reports and you don’t plan to use GA4 audiences for remarketing in Google Ads, you should not enable Signals.
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Read our Google Signal documentation here [https://docs.slideruleanalytics.com/enable-google-signals](https://docs.slideruleanalytics.com/enable-google-signals)
User Data Collection Acknowledgment
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Click User Data Collection Ackowledgement
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Click I acknowledge
Link to Google Ads
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Click Google Ads Links
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Click Link and follow the wizard to link your GA4 property to Google Ads
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Close the Google Ads window when done.
Link to Big Query
The Big Query link will send all of your raw data from GA4 to Big Query. Storing the data in Big Query does have some cost, but will let you or your data team do advanced, customized analysis in the future.
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Click BigQuery Links
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Click Link and follow the wizard to link GA4 to Big Query
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Choose your Big Query project or create a new one with the documentation here. [https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9823238?hl=en#step1&zippy=%2Cin-this-article](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9823238?hl=en#step1&zippy=%2Cin-this-article)
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Select your project
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Click Confirm
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Select your region and click Next
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Select both Daily and Streaming Frequency settings. Click Next
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Click Submit
