Shopify analytics: free storefront tracking without cookies

Shopify includes built-in analytics on every plan for sales, orders and checkout, while Clicktag adds fast, cookieless analytics for your storefront pages. You drop one async latest.js tag (about 4 KB compressed) into theme.liquid and get live visitor counts, entry pages, UTM campaign breakdowns, AI referral sources and, with a tt_event call, Add to cart events in one place, for free.

What Shopify's built-in analytics covers and what Clicktag adds

Shopify's own reports handle the money side of your store, such as orders, revenue and product sales.

Clicktag is not an ecommerce ledger and has no revenue tracking. Keep using Shopify's reports for sales and order totals. Where Clicktag fits is the top and middle of your storefront funnel: how people find your pages, which campaigns bring them in, and, with custom events, what they click before they reach checkout.

On your storefront pages, Clicktag tracks:

• Visitors (counted with a daily salted SHA-256 hash, with no cookies, no local storage and no stored IP addresses) and total pageviews.
• Entry pages, top pages and median time on page (for pageview durations of 5 seconds or more).
• Referrers and campaign parameters: utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, plus the source or ref query parameter when utm_source is missing.
• AI traffic sources separated clearly: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Copilot show up as their own sources, and links carrying utm_source=chatgpt.com are attributed to chatgpt.com.
• Up to 50 goals and funnels per site, plus weekly returning-browser retention cohorts measured through the browser's HTTP cache without cookies.
• Google Search Console queries, clicks, impressions, CTR and position backfilled up to 16 months, right next to your traffic reports.

You can explore the reports right now in the live demo (its numbers are synthetic sample data).

Clicktag vs Shopify Analytics

Prices and limits checked on October 29, 2026, on each vendor's official pricing or help pages.

How to add Clicktag to your Shopify theme

Clicktag has no Shopify App Store app, and you don't need one. You paste one script tag into your theme layout so it loads across your home page, collections, product pages, blogs and standard pages.

1. Copy your site tag in Clicktag

Sign in at clicktag.app with your Google account, add your store's domain, and open Site settings > Installation, step 1. Copy the script tag that contains both data-hostname and data-verify.

2. Open theme.liquid in Shopify

In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store, open the ... menu next to your theme, and click Edit code. See Shopify's guide on editing theme code if you have not opened the code editor before.

3. Paste the script in the head

Open layout/theme.liquid and paste your tag inside <head> before the closing </head> tag. Replace example.com with the hostname you registered in Clicktag and YOUR_SITE_VERIFY_TOKEN with your site's verify_token:

<script
  async
  src="https://clicktag.io/latest.js"
  data-hostname="example.com"
  data-verify="YOUR_SITE_VERIFY_TOKEN"
></script>

Save the file. Because theme.liquid is rendered into the HTML that Shopify serves, Clicktag can read the data-verify attribute on your homepage and verify ownership automatically on the first visit. You can also verify with a DNS TXT record on your domain. See the installation docs for optional settings like data-ignore-pages.

Why checkout and thank-you pages work differently on Shopify

A script added to theme.liquid runs on your storefront theme pages, not during checkout.

On Shopify, custom pixels collect customer events on checkout and post-purchase pages without editing theme code, and they run in a Lax sandbox.

The legacy checkout.liquid layout is available only to Shopify Plus merchants and is unsupported for the Information, Shipping and Payment steps.

Shopify sunset checkout.liquid and additional scripts for Thank you and Order status pages on August 28, 2025, and script tags on those pages were sunset on August 28, 2025 for Plus stores and August 26, 2026 for non-Plus stores. As of August 28, 2025, the additional scripts section in Checkout settings is view-only.

Use Clicktag to measure how visitors reach and move through your storefront, and rely on Shopify's native reports for completed checkouts and revenue.

Tracking Add to cart clicks with custom events

Clicktag's latest.js script does not record button clicks or form submissions on its own. To track when shoppers click your Add to cart button, call window.tt_event(name, metadata) in JavaScript.

Event metadata is stored (up to 4,096 characters), but it can't be grouped or filtered in reports or the API. Put what you want to compare right into the event name (names are cut at 256 characters, and runs of characters other than letters and digits become underscores). You can read more in the custom events docs.

First, add the event queue snippet above latest.js in theme.liquid so early clicks before the script finishes loading are still captured:

window.tt_event =
  window.tt_event ||
  function () {
    window.tt_event.q.push(Array.from(arguments));
  };
window.tt_event.q = window.tt_event.q || [];

Then call window.tt_event when the Add to cart button is clicked. This example matches a button with name="add"; adjust the selector for your theme:

document.addEventListener("click", function (event) {
  var button = event.target.closest("[name='add']");
  if (button && typeof window.tt_event === "function") {
    window.tt_event("add_to_cart_clicked", { path: window.location.pathname });
  }
});

Once add_to_cart_clicked hits arrive, open your Clicktag dashboard and create a goal for that event. Because goals are computed from data you already collect, a new goal immediately includes your past event data and breaks conversions down by referrer, entry page and country. You can also build a 2-to-6-step funnel - for example, from a landing page view to a product page view to add_to_cart_clicked on the same UTC day - to see median and p90 time to convert.

FAQ

Does Clicktag track Shopify revenue and order values?

No. Clicktag has no revenue or ecommerce order tracking, and event metadata can't be grouped or filtered in reports. Use Clicktag for storefront traffic, sources, campaigns and cart click goals, and use Shopify's built-in analytics for sales and order revenue.

Can I run Clicktag on Shopify checkout and thank-you pages?

No, not with a standard theme snippet. Shopify's theme.liquid file only covers storefront pages, while checkout and thank-you tracking runs through sandboxed custom pixels; checkout.liquid is restricted to Shopify Plus (and sunset on Thank you and Order status pages as of August 28, 2025), and the old additional scripts box is view-only.

Will Clicktag slow down my Shopify storefront?

Clicktag's latest.js script is about 4 KB compressed and loads asynchronously with the async attribute. It sets no cookies, writes nothing to local storage, and sends lightweight beacon requests.

How much does Clicktag cost for a Shopify store?

Clicktag is free with every feature included and no credit card required. One Google account can track up to 50 websites, with up to 50 goals per site and scheduled email reports for up to 25 recipients per site.

Can I see AI crawlers like GPTBot and ClaudeBot hitting my Shopify store?

JavaScript tags never see AI crawlers because bots like GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot and ClaudeBot fetch raw HTML without executing scripts. If your store's domain is proxied through Cloudflare (on any Cloudflare plan, including Free) and verified in Clicktag, you can connect a read-only Cloudflare token in Clicktag's Crawlers tab to import 30 days of crawler hits and sync every 15 minutes.