Background
Our client is a fast-growing Shopify brand with a loyal customer base and a booming subscription business. But when it came to analytics? Things were messy.
Their GA4 property was showing double the number of purchases, some coming from mysterious sources. Revenue data didn’t match Shopify. Subscription orders were nowhere to be found. And the team couldn’t rely on the reports they were seeing.
They brought us in to fix it.
The Challenge
Like many growing ecommerce brands, our client had gone through several waves of marketing and dev support. Over time, that led to a pileup of:
- Old Universal Analytics tags (even though UA is sunset)
- Multiple GA4 properties and tracking IDs
- A GTM setup firing duplicate events
- And no clear visibility into subscription orders via Bold Subscriptions
Their team had connected Littledata to try and solve the issue — but the problem wasn’t Littledata. It was the leftover junk.
Our Approach
With the help and guidance of the Littledata team, we jumped in with a live audit, screen share, and some heavy debugging tools.
Here’s what we cleaned up:
✅ Paused all legacy UA + GA4 tags firing from GTM
✅ Removed the old GA3-to-GA4 “Connected Site Tag” that was still generating noise
✅ Verified the correct GA4 property and Measurement ID
✅ Made sure Littledata was the only active data source
✅ Filtered out old duplicate purchases in GA4 reporting using affiliation, app_name, and transaction_id
✅ Synced time zones between GA4 and Shopify to match order timestamps
We also helped them validate tracking in real-time, so they could confidently monitor new data as it came in.
Results
- No more duplicate purchases in GA4
- Accurate attribution for one-time vs. subscription purchases
- Data alignment between GA4 and Shopify — down to the order ID
- Server-side tracking via Littledata for higher reliability and compliance
- Ready for Klaviyo and Google Ads integrations using clean, structured data
Lessons & Takeaways
If your GA4 property is showing ghost revenue, duplicate purchases, or missing subscription data, chances are your tracking stack needs a tune-up. And if you’ve stacked GTM on top of Shopify on top of third-party apps — you’re not alone.
This isn’t just a technical fix. It’s about getting back to decision-grade data — the kind that lets you invest confidently in marketing, improve customer journeys, and finally trust what you’re seeing.
Want Help Cleaning Up Your Tracking?
If your GA4 is a mess and your Shopify numbers don’t match, we can help. Whether it’s a one-time cleanup or a full integration with tools like Littledata, Klaviyo, and Google Ads — we’ll make sure your data works for you, not against you.