Good news! We’ve now (fingers crossed) got GA4 tags working for Folksy.
For those that don’t know, although we provide you with some basic stats on the site, sellers also have the option of using Google Analytics on their Folksy shop to get some more detailed stats.
Although we’ve had this available for years, Google Analytics have recently made changes to how things work and changed the codes they use (what you use to link your shop to the Google Analytics site).
They’ll be turning off the old codes next month, which means anyone that previously set up Google Analytics for their shop will need to switch to a new GA4 code, and anyone who wants to set it up will need to create a GA4 code.
We know Google Analytics can be a bit daunting (even for us) so I’ve tried to put together a step by step guide of what you need to do if you want to use this.
If you already have the old UA code on your shop
Log in to Google Analytics and you’ll likely see a big warning like this:
Click “Go to Setup Assistant”.
You should then get this page, where you need to click “Get Started”.
Next you will get some pages where you need to make a few choices (apologies, I took the screenshots a few weeks ago and missed this bit out, so I can’t remember what they were but hopefully that means it was straightforward).
When you get to this page, click “Go to your GA4 property”.
On the next page, click here to manage data streams.
You then need to select the stream to open it.
Click the copy button next to “Measurement ID”.
Go to your Folksy dashboard > shop settings > under “Google Analytics code” paste your new code > click “update settings”.
You should then be set up.
If you go back to the main Google Analytics page (by clicking the home icon on the left hand side) you should see your analytics page.
It might take a day or two for any information to show on the main graph, but it won’t take as long for the real time data to show. It’s probably best to give it a couple of hours to make sure everything is connected, but if you then visit your shop page, you should see a view show on the real time graph.
After you’ve done this, it may say the set up is not complete along the top.
To make this go away, click “complete setup” and it’ll go back to the page where the data collection option was, and all the options lower down the page will likely say “not started”.
If you know what you’re doing with Google Analytics, you may want to set them properly, but if not you can just click on the arrow next to each one and select “mark as complete”.
To create a new code if you haven’t used Google Analytics yet
The first step is to make sure you have a Google account and to sign in.
Then go to the Google Analytics page.
If you’ve not used Google Analytics at all before, you may need to set up an account.
After set up (I can’t be sure what this screen is like) if it doesn’t immediately give you the option to create a property > click the cogwheel icon in the bottom left to go to the admin page > click “Create Property”.
You’ll get a page where you need to select a few details and put in a Property name. This just needs to be something to help you identify what it’s for, like “Folksy Shop”, and then click “next”.
It will then bring up a page with a lot of code, you can just close this as it’s for if you’re adding the code to your own website.
You should then see this page instead, where you need to click the copy icon next to the “Measurement ID”.
Then go to your Folksy dashboard > shop settings > under “Google Analytics code” paste your new code > click “update settings”.
You should then be set up.
If you go back to the main Google Analytics page (by clicking the home icon on the left hand side) you should see your analytics page.
It might take a day or two for any information to show on the main graph, but it won’t take as long for the real time data to show. It’s probably best to give it a couple of hours to make sure everything is connected, but if you then visit your shop page, you should see a view show on the real time graph.
The instructions are very helpful.
