Setup Guide

Before you start

You will need:

The app installed on your Shopify store (Your Store Wizards will have sent you the install link).
Access to your Google Ads account with permission to create conversion actions (Admin or Standard access).
A Google Merchant Center account that is already linked to that Google Ads account, with your product feed in it.

How it works, in one paragraph

The app installs two small pieces on your store. A web pixel (installed automatically) watches the cart and checkout and reports add-to-cart and purchase events. A theme embed (you switch it on in step 3) watches product, collection, and search pages and reports what shoppers looked at. Both send their events straight to Google Ads under your conversion action, using the product ID format you choose — so the IDs in your ad reports line up with the IDs in your Merchant Center feed.

Find out which product ID format your feed uses

This is the one thing worth checking before you touch any settings. In Merchant Center, open Products, click any product, and look at its ID. It will look like one of these:

ONKSCT — a SKU. Feeds built by Your Store Wizards use SKUs.
shopify_ZZ_10051238494457_48376494358777 — the Google & YouTube app's format. Older feeds may use a country code instead of ZZ, for example shopify_US_….
48376494358777 — a bare Shopify variant ID.
10051238494457 — a bare Shopify product ID.

Remember which one you saw; you will pick the matching option in step 2.

If the Google & YouTube app is already reporting conversions

Two tools reporting the same purchase means every order is counted twice. In the Google & YouTube app's settings, disconnect its Google Ads conversion tracking before you continue. You can leave its Google Analytics connection and its product sync alone — only the Ads reporting overlaps with this app.

Step 1 — Get your Google Ads conversion ID and label

The app needs two values from Google Ads: a conversion ID (it starts with AW-, like AW-123456789) and a conversion label (a string of letters and numbers, like AbCdEfGhIj-kLmNoPqRsT). Together they point at the specific Purchase conversion action that will receive your orders. Choose the path that fits your account.

Path A — Create a new Purchase conversion action

Use this if you are setting up Google Ads conversion tracking for the first time, or if your current purchase tracking comes from another app you are replacing.

In Google Ads, open Goals → Conversions → Summary and click + New conversion action, then choose Website.
Enter your store's web address and let Google scan it.
Google now shows a list of ways to create the action. You want the one that says Add a conversion action manually. If you only see Google Analytics events and no manual option, the wizard is limited to the data sources connected to your account. Click Edit data sources (or the link to add a data source), scan your website again, and select the Google tag data source. The manual option then appears.
Fill in the action: goal category Purchase, name it Purchase, value Use different values for each conversion (the app sends the real order total), count Every. Leave the attribution model at Google's default (data-driven). Save.
On the tag setup screen that follows, choose the option to see the tag yourself (Install the tag yourself or Use Google Tag Manager — either shows the values). You are not going to install anything; you only need to copy two values:
- the Conversion ID — AW- followed by numbers;
- the Conversion label — the string after the slash in the send_to value, e.g. in AW-123456789/AbCdEfGhIj-kLmNoPqRsT the label is AbCdEfGhIj-kLmNoPqRsT.
Mark this action as the Primary action for the Purchase goal if Google asks. Its status will read Unverified or Inactive until the first order comes through — that is normal.

Path B — Use an existing Purchase conversion action

Use this if you already have a website-based Purchase action with history you want to keep.

In Google Ads, open Goals → Conversions → Summary and click the name of your existing Purchase action.
Scroll to the Tag setup section and expand Use Google Tag Manager (or Install the tag yourself). The Conversion ID and Conversion label are shown there; copy both.
Check two things on that action: it is a Website action with its own tag (not an action imported from Google Analytics, and not one that another app or agency tag is still firing), and its count setting is Every. If another tool still fires the same action, either turn that tool off or go back to Path A and create a fresh action.

Keep the ID and label handy — the next step is a copy-and-paste.

Step 2 — Enter your settings in the app

In your Shopify admin, open Apps → Feed Wizards Tracking. The settings page has a handful of fields:

Google Ads conversion ID: Paste the AW-… value from step 1.
Purchase conversion label: Paste the label from step 1. Tracking switches on automatically once both of these are saved — there is no separate on/off toggle.
Product ID strategy: Pick the option that matches the ID format you saw in Merchant Center:

Variant SKU — feed IDs are SKUs. Uses each variant's SKU, falling back to the variant ID if a SKU is blank. This is the right choice for feeds built by Your Store Wizards.

Google channel format — feed IDs look like shopify_ZZ_…_…. A Merchant Center ID prefix field appears; copy the prefix exactly from a real product ID in your feed, including the trailing underscore. Most stores today use shopify_ZZ_; some older feeds use a country code such as shopify_US_. The prefix is case sensitive — shopify_ZZ_ and shopify_zz_ are different IDs to Google.

Shopify variant ID — feed IDs are bare variant numbers.

Shopify product ID — feed IDs are bare product numbers. Variants of the same product are merged into one line.
GA4 measurement ID (optional): Leave this empty unless Your Store Wizards told you otherwise. If the Google & YouTube app still owns your Google Analytics connection, filling this in would double-count events in Analytics.
Debug logging: Turn it on for now; it prints the product IDs being reported into the browser console so you can check them in step 4. Turn it off afterwards.

Click Save and publish. The banner at the top of the page changes to Tracking is live, and the app installs its web pixel on your store.

Nothing takes effect until you click Save and publish. While the form has edits that have not been published, an Unsaved changes notice sits above the button — if you can still see it, you have not saved yet. The banner at the top always shows what is actually live.

Step 3 — Turn on the theme embed

The web pixel is installed for you, but Shopify requires the merchant to switch on theme embeds by hand. Below the settings, click Open theme editor. The theme editor opens with the YSW Tracking app embed already selected in the sidebar.

Turn the embed's toggle on.
Click Save in the theme editor (top right).

The embed is a setting of the theme you are editing — your current live theme. If you later publish a different theme, open the theme editor again and switch the embed on in that theme too.

Step 4 — Check that it is working

Right away: the product IDs

Open your storefront in a new tab and open the browser's developer console (in Chrome: right-click the page → Inspect → Console tab).
Open any product page. With debug logging on, a line appears in the console showing the product ID the app resolved for that product.
Compare it with that product's ID in Merchant Center. They should be identical, character for character. If they are not, go back to step 2 and adjust the strategy (or the prefix).

Within a day: the conversion action

Google marks a new action as verified only after it receives real traffic. After the first order following setup, expect the action's status in Goals → Conversions → Summary to move from Unverified / Inactive to Recording conversions (or No recent conversions, which also means the tag was seen) within 3–24 hours. The Diagnostics tab can lag well behind the real status — trust the Summary page.

Once you have seen a conversion land, go back to the app and turn Debug logging off, then Save and publish again.

Reading your conversion reports

Conversions appear as fractions. With data-driven attribution (Google's default), one order can show up as, say, 0.47 on a Performance Max campaign and 0.53 on a Shopping campaign — Google splits the credit for a single purchase across the ads the shopper clicked. The fractions add up to whole orders in the account total. This is Google's reporting, not a tracking error.
Conversions are delayed. An order usually shows in Google Ads 3–24 hours after it is placed, attributed back to the day of the click.
Only consented shoppers are counted if your store uses a cookie-consent banner; the app honors the shopper's choice.
Value and currency come from the order itself, so reports show real revenue, not a fixed per-conversion amount.

Troubleshooting

The banner says "Tracking is not live" or "Tracking is OFF": Both the conversion ID and the label must be filled in, and you must click Save and publish. If the page reports a publish problem, read the message — it names the field or Shopify step that failed.
No conversions after a day with orders: Check, in order: the conversion ID and label match the action exactly (a single wrong character silently sends conversions nowhere); the action is a Website action, not one imported from Analytics; the theme embed is on for the live theme; and the test orders were not placed by you in a browser with an ad blocker or without accepting the cookie banner.
Product IDs in Google Ads don't match my feed: The strategy or prefix in step 2 doesn't match the feed. Compare a real Merchant Center product ID with the console output from step 4. Prefix problems are almost always capitalisation (ZZ vs zz) or a missing trailing underscore.
Every order is counted twice: Another tool is firing the same purchase action — usually the Google & YouTube app, a theme-level gtag snippet, or a Tag Manager container. Turn off that tool's Google Ads conversion reporting (see Before you start).
Google Ads says "Changes failed to save" or keeps asking for a passkey: Google now requires a passkey for sensitive changes in Google Ads. If you are prompted, complete the challenge; if you had to create a new passkey, it can take a day or two before Google Ads fully trusts it, and until then some saves silently fail. Do the whole edit in one sitting and avoid reloading the page mid-way — drafts can revert to their last server-side state on reload.
The settings page shows a session notice: Your Shopify admin session went quiet for a while and the app refreshed it. Your edits are still on the page — just click Save and publish again.

Optional: add-to-cart and page-view conversions

Purchase is the only action the app needs. If you also want add-to-cart and product-page views visible as conversions (useful for building audiences and for seeing the funnel), Google Ads can create them from page URLs without any extra setup in the app:

Goals → Conversions → Summary → + New conversion action → Website, scan your store, and this time choose the option to create actions from URL rules (page loads).
Add one with category Add to cart matching URLs containing /cart, and one with category Page view matching URLs containing /products/.
Set both as Secondary actions so they are observed but do not count as conversions in bidding. Purchase stays the only Primary action.