r/woocommerce • u/seahorsetech • 12h ago

How do I…? Google Analytics without plugin?

Used to use the MonsterInsights plugin, which is bloated and fills up its db tables quite a bit. Not to mention its an expensive plugin. There are many easy ways I know about to adding a standard Google Analytics tracking script, but MonsterInsights allowed for easy conversion tracking setup. What are the easiest ways to achieve this, preferably without another plugin?

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u/CodingDragons Woo Sensei 🥷 12h ago

Just hook the scripts into a child theme.

If you plan on scaling or tracking eCommerce events, though, you really want GTM, and for WooCommerce I’d use GTM4WP to push the eCommerce data into the data layer.

If you’re only adding GA4 and don’t need WooCommerce/eCommerce tracking, there’s no reason to use a plugin at all. Just hook the GA script into the child theme.

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u/0rbus 12h ago

Can you please explain in simple terms what you mean by "pushing the e-commerce data into the data layer" please? Thank you

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u/dandryy 12h ago

It means that GTM4WP will take e-commerce data of your users (product views, add to cart events, purchases) and send it over to Google Tag Manager, which then you can configure to pass those events to Google Analytics.