Why TikTok Advertisers Need Better Analytics

Analytics and data are extremely important to merchants in the world of eCommerce because they help you decide what decisions to make, what strategies to implement, what works for your business, and what does not. It's arguably one of the most important pieces of information you'll need to make big decisions since it shows how to scale your eCommerce business.

Analytics for Shopify merchants is designed to assist them in forecasting future patterns based on a variety of factors such as transaction size, season, product category, and so on. This type of analysis is beneficial for forecasting future sales and assisting merchants in determining which products to stock.

Brands and businesses can now engage in social commerce by selling goods and services through their social media platforms, thanks to the development of social commerce and the integration of social media with e-commerce. Due to the personalization of the buying experience that customers can now have, this has grown increasingly popular over time. It drives interaction and bridges the gap between the merchant and the buyer, breaking the ice.

Shopify announced new in-app experiences on TikTok in August 2021 because they understood the brevity of what was possible for your business with the app. Installing the new TikTok channel app from the Shopify App Store allows merchants to create, run, and optimize TikTok marketing campaigns directly from the Shopify dashboard. This is a game-changing move for social commerce since it allows eCommerce brands to use even more technologies to enhance their stores and reach a wider audience.

Merchants will be able to use the TikTok For Business Ads Manager's primary functions to create original, shareable content that turns their products into TikTok In-Feed video commercials. Merchants will be able to target their customers based on their preferences, as well as track the campaign's progress over time.

The app currently organizes analytics in three major categories:

Overview - under this category you can see the account's follower growth, video views, profile views, likes, comments, and shares over the last 7, 28, or 60 days, or a custom date range up to 60 days.

Content - This category has total views, total likes, comments, shares, average watch time, watched the full video (percentage of viewers who watched the entire video), traffic source type (where viewers found your videos, including your profile, the For You feed, and so on), and audience territories.  

Followers - This includes information such as your audience's location, the times of day or week when they are most active on TikTok, and the change in follower growth over the previous period.

It contrasts with Shopify's analytics and reports, which enable merchants to evaluate recent activities, gain insight into their visitors, analyze the performance of their online store, and monitor store transactions. Shopify's analytics provide merchants with much more detailed information that allows them to gain valuable insight into client activity on their sites.

TikTok Ads Manager gives you powerful tools for launching campaigns, handling ad resources, analyzing data, and enhancing your advertising, however, there are also shortcomings of the analytics provided. Changes in privacy policies have had a huge impact on analytics in terms of attribution.

Changes in privacy policies have had a huge impact on analytics in terms of attribution, "One of the biggest issues with TikTok analytics right now is probably lack of attribution! Tiktok has been hit (just like other platforms, but in some cases worse) by privacy protection policies." - Logan Grasby

The right attribution model has a significant impact on how well your advertisements are received. In terms of attribution, a significant amount of data is currently not captured to provide business users with the information they require so that e-commerce brands can see where they are falling short and how they can adjust their funnel to optimize their sales.

Also, the app is "Not always easy to set up the pixel compared to Facebook and Snap. Events you can set up on the pixel are limited too. Wish we could also do custom events." - Duane Brown at Take Some Risk

Currently, TikTok only records attribution for users in real-time, which means that a user must watch an ad, swipe up, and buy the product immediately.  

"In September Shopify stores saw up to a 60% drop in attribution for all events from Tiktok due to privacy policy changes, and this has not been completely resolved".- Logan Grasby, eCommerce Growth Lead at Inspired Go

It does not monitor users who exit the app and buy a product after, which has an impact on the efficacy of the data needed to evaluate whether your ads are reaching your target market. For many merchants, this is aggravating.

Nevertheless, the partnership between TikTok and Shopify has paved the way for a new era of social commerce that will enable e-commerce brands to cross barriers from just trying conventional methods of advertising and reaching customers to incorporating creativity, relatability, and immediate access to their products. This is great for store owners as it gives you a chance to introduce your brand as well as your products in a creative, refreshing, and relatable way.