Overview
Adding Shopify-powered Buy Buttons to your non-Shopify website is one of three ways you can integrate Flaviar Checkout into your website experience
It’s a common way to add a streamlined e-commerce experience directly to your existing website without the need to fully switch to Shopify.
However, this integration comes with certain marketing and analytics limitations due to the nature of how tracking data is handled across your website, Google Analytics, and Shopify.
This article outlines the limitations that can be avoided with one of our other integration types if tracking comprehensive conversion data is your top priority.
Limited Cross-Domain Tracking
The Shopify Buy Button operates between two domains:
The your main website (where the button is placed), and
The Shopify-hosted checkout experience at a subdomain of your website (where the purchase occurs).
Since these two domains are separate, Google Analytics (GA4) does not automatically track a customer journey across both. This creates a disconnect in understanding how users interact with the full conversion funnel.
Customization within your Google Analytics account is required to ensure cross-domain tracking.
Partial Visibility Depending on Tracking Path
There are two potential data views, each with gaps:
From the brand website’s perspective: You can track site traffic and user behavior up to the click of the Buy Button, but without Buy Button customization, you lose visibility on what happens next (add to cart, checkout initiation, purchase).
From Shopify’s perspective: You can see completed purchases and basic order data, but lack information on how the customer arrived at the checkout—such as referral source (e.g., email, ad, or social), and pre-checkout browsing behavior.
Attribution Challenges
Since there’s no native link between GA4 and Shopify’s checkout in this model, accurately attributing sales to marketing campaigns is difficult.
This impacts your ability to evaluate the effectiveness of channels like paid ads, SEO, and email marketing.
Tracking Customization Work in Progress
Some tracking gaps (such as “add to cart” and “initiate checkout” events) can be partially addressed through custom development. Flaviar is actively working on improving our custom Shopify Buy Buttons to include more tracking events.
However, full end-to-end tracking - including accurate conversion attribution - remains complex and may require custom GA4 configurations, as well as access to your Google Analytics properties.
Even with these customizations, tracking gaps may still persist due to limitations and inconsistencies with GA4 - partially impacted by platform and privacy updates in the digital media landscape made in recent years.
Ideally, consumer site engagement and traffic referral data is pushed into the Shopify environment to best tie into user-specific order data.
How a Full Shopify Store Resolves These Issues
Unified Tracking Environment
When all customer interactions - from browsing to checkout - occur on a single Shopify domain, Google Analytics can track user sessions end-to-end without needing complex cross-domain setups. This leads to:
Better continuity in user sessions (fewer drop-offs in attribution)
More complete event tracking (e.g., product views, add to cart, checkout, purchase)
In contrast, Buy Buttons split the user journey across two separate domains, which often breaks the session connection in GA4.
Improved Attribution Accuracy
With a full Shopify store:
You can directly integrate GA4, Meta Pixel, and other marketing tags into the theme
Shopify’s native integrations can push clean, structured data to GA4
Attribution paths are better preserved, meaning you can more reliably see which traffic sources led to conversions
Remaining GA4 Limitations Still Apply
Even with a full Shopify setup and enhanced tracking, GA4 has known limitations in data accuracy due to:
Ad blockers: Users who block tracking scripts won't show up in GA data
iOS 14+ privacy changes: Impacts user-level data collection, particularly on Safari and in-app browsers
Anonymized sessions: GA4 relies on event-based data that may not consistently tie actions to specific users
So while the Shopify-hosted experience minimizes technical integration issues, it doesn’t overcome privacy-driven visibility gaps that are part of the broader digital analytics landscape.
Alternative Options
Our Buy Button integration is so common because it is the easiest way to install a seamless Shopify-powered e-commerce experience into clients’ existing non-Shopify websites.
It can often be the more cost-efficient path in the short term. However, if long-term growth via comprehensive and actionable conversion data is a priority for you, then you should consider leveraging one of our two other integration types:
Direct integration with your own Shopify store
Built-and-managed Shopify websites hosted at a subdomain of your website.
A direct integration with your own Shopify store (i.e. the entire website and e-commerce experience lives in a single domain) is most optimal for marketing and conversion tracking. However, this path is not always feasible in the short term due to the upfront investment required to switch website platforms.
For clients in this position, we can build and manage a Shopify store - hosted at a subdomain of your website (e.g. checkout.yourbrand.com) - for you.
The built-and-managed integration offers a middle-ground between a full Shopify-hosted site and the Buy Button integration. It resolves the Buy Button issues outlined above in the following ways:
The entire shopping experience - from product browsing to checkout - takes place within one unified environment, ensuring complete visibility into the customer journey.
All key events like product views, add to cart, checkout initiation, and purchase can be accurately tracked and attributed with much less customization complexity.
Marketing source data (such as ads, email, or organic search) is preserved throughout the funnel, enabling reliable campaign attribution. (Cross-domain tracking between your primary website will still require customizations in your Google Analytics.)
Shopify’s built-in analytics tools can now access and report on pre-checkout activity, offering deeper insights into customer behavior and product performance.
With consistent tracking infrastructure across the storefront, your data is cleaner, more actionable, and better aligned with your marketing strategy.
Need Marketing Support?
Flaviar has in-house marketing services available to handle the strategy, setup, and management of your digital marketing - helping to ensure that you are set up for cost-efficient e-commerce growth.
We can manage and configure all of the analytics and tracking tags for your store to help you avoid the common pitfalls outlined in this article.
Find more information about our marketing services here. Reach out to your account manager if you would like to learn more.