Month: June 2021

If you want a job done well, do it yourself. We tend to forget it nowadays, but that old adage contains a scrap of Shopify’s DNA.

A long time has passed since Snowdevil, the online snowboard store, which was built on the Ruby on Rails framework. That was back in 2004, and since then the project has transformed itself, making Shopify one of the most promising SaaS-based e-commerce platforms.

Initially reserved for small stores and limited uses, Shopify is increasingly being adopted by large organizations and brands motivated by the idea of having a direct sales channel to their consumers. Simplicity and agility win the day with organizations that often suffer from long and complex proprietary projects, where the market forces brands to keep adapting.

Flagged up by our consultants, Shopify’s progress led us, at Commanders Act, to create a Shopify connector so that any of our customers interested in the platform could rapidly deploy their favourite tag management solution TagCommander on it, along with TrustCommander, the now-indispensable consent management solution (since May 2018 and the GRDP). Obviously, if TagCommander can be deployed in a matter of minutes, so can our other solutions, as their tags are directly deployable via our TMS with the native integrations you are familiar with.

How does it work?

The current TagCommander plugin works with Shopify Pro.

In concrete terms, there are just a few simple steps:

• Log in to Shopify, on your Admin account.
• In the Themes section, you will need to add 2 files (Copy/Paste) and edit 3 templates.
• A configuration console opens, allowing you to enter the settings of your Commanders Act account.
• You are ready to go!

If you need more details, no problem: you can find more detailed instructions on GitHub here.

As soon as the plugin has been extended to Shopify Basic, we will update the documentation with the relevant instructions.

Key benefits

The benefits of plug-ins clearly always revolve around the same goals:

• Drastically reducing implementation (and therefore project delivery) times. We’re talking minutes now instead of weeks.
• Easier (“codeless”) integration allowing hybrid profiles to take control without being hard-core developers.
• A standardised datalayer, which is retrieved automatically and no longer requires a specific command addressed to the integrator (on top of all the other jobs they have to deal with).
• And the possibility, since this technology will expand over the coming months and years, of activating digital data collection in “server-2-server” mode, aka “server-side” or “API-based tracking”.

Who is the Shopify connector aimed at?

With the Covid crisis and its impact on distribution networks, many brands have been giving a lot more thought to how best to control their distribution networks. When distributors close, the whole business collapses. When the distribution network is closed, the only way to carry on existing is through the website, via e-commerce. Accelerating online investments so as have at least one channel maintaining business continuity (at least partially) is a strategic option that has gained a lot of credibility during the crisis.

The connector is “live” and is being used by several customers, often teams looking to sell online, especially retailers. Their order tunnel is generally simple (simpler than those found in the credit or insurance sectors, for example). The structure of the sites is also fairly homogeneous; major templates are gradually emerging, allowing the datalayer to standardise as well. Finally, retailers need short time-to-market in an arena that – in general, but even more so as we come out of the Covid-19 crisis – requires agility to survive.

And afterwards… what are the next steps for Commanders Act?

The current plugin works with Shopify Pro but we are getting requests to make it compatible with Shopify Basic. That need will soon be covered.

To this end, we have been using the possibilities offered by “themes” in Shopify.

One way of taking it further would be to go through an “app”, in the Shopify jargon, to functionally enrich the plugin, making it even easier to install.

We are waiting for the go-ahead from our customers to continue in this direction.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our consultant Diego who has really got to grips with this topic and carried it through, to the great satisfaction of our customers.

I hope you will take the opportunity to use the Shopify plugin in TagCommander!

Michael

For those of you who have already deployed Google Analytics 4 through TagCommander, this post won’t teach you anything new since you already know that you don’t need to use GTM to run GA4!

For those who are thinking about migrating to GA4, good news: the GA4 template is already available in the TagCommander library. This template has been validated by Google Analytics experts in order to guarantee you the best deployment comfort. And you can gradually get used to it through the breakdown that has been made.

The relationship between Commanders Act and Google solutions is not new. It is as important for Google as it is for us, as many of Google’s solutions are deployed by our clients through TagCommander. In the same way, users of our data activation platform can share their audiences with Google’s DSP for example.

The challenge for Google is simple: to ensure that its solutions can be deployed quickly and reliably. The challenge for Commanders Act is to enable our clients to access all the solutions on the market without exception.

The launch of GA4 is a milestone in the history of web analytics, marking a long-awaited change for analytics enthusiasts and GA users. Many blogs are already talking about it and you will hear more and more about it in the coming months.

Amongst the new features, we should first note a smaller sample which aims to fill one of the main limitations of GA to date, not necessarily for analytical uses but in the context of uses more oriented towards “customer experience” and “activation”. At the same time, the first uses of Machine Learning in the world of web analytics are joining the value proposition of GA4, as it will be the case in many solutions in the future. In the end, we are not very far from the philosophy of Google Consent Mode.

Another important element, a small revolution in the world of web analytics, is that the page is no longer the basic unit! The event has made its appearance for a more precise reading of the interaction with a page with the possibility of defining any event as a conversion.

Finally, as you have seen, the digital data collection market is in turmoil. Consent is now part of the marketing landscape, the cookie battle is raging, and there is an opportunity to converge web collection methods with those of the mobile app world. Customer interaction channels are becoming a long continuum of visitor reception and therefore require homogeneous collection methods.

Finally, for those who fell into the pot at a very young age, the link with Big Query is amplified, underlining Google’s objective to structure and explore your data.

These are just four small highlights, but they point to a few things that need to be done. Some of these changes are not for certain web analytics solutions on the market but GA4 offers these possibilities to the greatest number, which is the reason for its success.

To conclude, we would like to remind our customers :

• …that many of you use TagCommander and Google solutions together.
• …that GA4 is fully compatible with TagCommander for both your web and mobile App properties.
• …that you don’t need to change your TagCommander tagging plan to take advantage of GA4’s advances
• …that our support is there to help you in this implementation and to answer your questions.

Enjoy!

The Commanders Act team