Tracking Shopify products by SKU and ID

Updated on 2024-02-16

For every product you sell, Shopify creates a unique product ID which you can see in the URL of your store admin. It's a long number, like 8672415878. You might not recognize the number, but it's how Shopify tracks your products from stock room to delivery.

You can also optionally add a product SKU in your own format for each variant of that product.

Littledata's tracking script sends either:

  1. That variant SKU (if you set it) or
  2. The Shopify product ID

to Google Analytics (GA) for all stages of the shopping journey. This is the number you'll see in product performance reports when you set 'Product SKU' as the primary dimension for the table.

If you are using Littledata's Shopify to Segment connection to send data to Google Analytics, Segment will map product ID to Google Analytics, even if SKU is also available.

Use Protocols to remove or remap the product_id field, so Segment sends the sku field instead.

Where can I see products variant names in Google Analytics?

If your store uses variants, we send that name in another field - 'product variant'. To see that, you'll need to add a secondary dimension to the table.

  1. Go to the secondary dimension drop-down above the table

  1. Select 'Product variant' from the list, under ecommerce section

You can also access this field 'product variant' in any custom report.

What about the other tabs for product performance report?

These are all unaffected. You can still track products by name, category and brand if you need to.

And uniquely, Littledata makes this category information available at the checkout and purchase steps as well.