Sep 17 Updates / Pinterest & Analytics

Last couple of days, I dove into Pinterest and analytics. I uploaded about 100 product images on Pinterest for all my 10 products.

Also tried to understand Pinterest analytics, which gave me a definite headache.

Then, I took a nosedive into Google Analytics (GA) and Google Tag Manager, which I feel I got decently set up now. Could surely be better, but I think I'll let it be like this and move on to different stuff.

I reconnected GA with Shopify (which I disconnected in my previous blog post) because then all the e-commerce events are automatically sent and tracked (as opposed to having to set them up manually).

So, I paused the GA4 tag in Google Tag Manager.

But I did set up a couple of click tags in Google Tag Manager to inform me whether people are clicking social links or internal domain links. I wonder if it's going to be helpful, but hey, it does help me understand how Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager work, which I am happy about because it's a serious rabbit hole actually. It's like when you go for a nice walk in the forest and decide to take a sudden left, and suddenly you're stuck in all sorts of bushes you don't know where you are or where you can walk. That's what it feels like setting up Google Tag Manager. It's pretty technical, and a lot of questions I have I am not even getting answers when I Google them because the questions themselves are too specific for Google to handle.

Anyhow, that may be over, for now. It's not that important to track the 5 active users I have now anyways 😆. It'll be more important in the future.

Then, I started adding the Facebook & Instagram app into Shopify. ANOTHER two sales channels to set up. It really seems like there are so many sales channels.

One simple online store has all the online sales mediums:

• Google Merchant (Google Shop listings)
• Google Search (organic)
• Instagram (normal posts)
• Instagram Shop
• Facebook (normal page)
• Facebook Shop
• Pinterest
• X
• Shop
• And uhh, the actual website.
• And on all of these I can advertise! Where do I go?

So many channels! So little sales!

Speaking of which, Google Merchant Center was so kind as to inform me ONCE AGAIN (for the third time?) that my products have been made limited in their visibility. The issue is that there’s no shipping policy. Thing is, they just deleted my fucking shipping policy! I set it up correctly, it approves it, and a couple days later it’s like: “Nevermind! We deleted your policy and removed your products and we are not gonna tell you why!” Like uhhh hello? At least tell me WHY you delete my precious policies. Add to that, if I’m understanding the situation correctly, it defaulted to its own shipping policies for a specific set of countries that don’t even align with my shipping policies. So now people are gonna see they have to pay €15 for shipping when it is in fact free?

Okay, well, apparently Shopify is to blame, as it is set up to automatically import Shopify’s settings but cannot for the life of it seem to do so correctly.

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Update couple days later: told Google I'd set the shipping settings manually, I did so, and now we're good.

Image is AI generated. Source.