Why Tracking Customer Actions in Shopify or Magento Matters

Most customers don’t just wake up and decide to buy, subscribe, or sign up, unless it’s one of those rare impulse splurges. There’s always a journey behind it. From the moment they first come across your brand to the point where they finally hit “buy” (or decide to walk away), they’re leaving little clues along the way. For brands, tracking those clues is essential.

Every click, scroll, add‑to‑cart, or even quick page exit has something to say. Miss those signals, and you risk missing sales. According to research, over 2.77 billion people are shopping online in 2025. Moreover, retaining an existing customer costs about five to 25 times less than finding a new one. That’s why knowing exactly where your potential customer is in their journey and what could win them over or turn them off matters so much.

In this blog, we’ll talk about why tracking customer actions can make all the difference for your business, the common mistakes to watch out for, and how to use those hidden signals to drive more sales. Stick around—you might just start looking at your data in a whole new way.

Every visitor leaves a trail of digital actions, from the first product they view to the moment they complete checkout (or leave their cart behind). In eCommerce, these touchpoints are called ‘customer actions’ and they reveal what your shoppers want, what stops them, and how close they are to buying.

For example, when a visitor views a product, adds it to their cart, or leaves a review, they’re sending signals about what they like and how close they are to making a purchase. Tracking these actions helps you understand the customer journey better and make data-driven decisions to improve their experience and boost sales. These actions can be tracked effectively on popular platforms like Shopify and Magento, which offer different capabilities tailored to diverse business needs.

With that understanding, here are the common customer actions tracked on Shopify and Magento stores:

• Product Viewed: See which products attract attention
• Add to Cart: Track purchase intent
• Checkout Initiated: Identify where drop-offs occur
• Purchase Completed: Measure successful conversions
• Search Performed: Understand what customers are looking for
• Review Submitted: Capture user feedback for trust-building

While these actions provide raw data on customer behavior, understanding how that data is captured is key to unlocking deeper insights. To understand this, it’s essential to recognize the difference between “event tracking” and “page views” as crucial for effective data collection.

Event tracking records specific user actions, such as clicks, form submissions, or adding a product to the cart, providing detailed, actionable insights into how shoppers interact with your store. On the other hand, Page views, by contrast, simply log when a page is loaded. Most analytics tools automatically track them and are suitable for measuring overall traffic, but they don’t reveal the deeper “why” behind customer actions.

Among these, tracking events is more important for eCommerce stores because it reveals the specific behaviors that lead to conversions or drop-offs, helping you pinpoint what works and what needs improvement.

In eCommerce, behavior tracking is less about watching what happened and more about understanding why it happened. It’s the difference between reacting to falling sales after the fact and spotting early signals before they become problems. With the right tracking in place, you’re mapping the decision-making process of your buyers, uncovering hidden frictions, and finding opportunities to make their journey smoother and more engaging.

Here’s why it matters so much:

• See the Journey: Discover the real journeys customers take, from browsing patterns to the steps leading to checkout.
• Spot Drop‑Offs Early: Identify exactly where shoppers leave so you can fix bottlenecks before they cost you sales.
• Interest vs. Conversions: See which items get the most views versus which ones sell, highlighting optimization opportunities.
• Uncover Sales Gaps: Pinpoint product-specific issues, seasonal shifts, or UX problems that affect sales.
• Power Marketing & Testing: Use behavior data to create personalized shopping experiences, smarter remarketing campaigns, and test changes with precision.

To truly turn customer behavior into a growth driver, you first need to track every meaningful interaction. And if we talk about where most eCommerce businesses start, two major platforms dominate the landscape for setting up and managing this kind of tracking: Shopify and Magento. While both allow you to capture rich customer behavior data, understanding the differences between them is essential before you decide how to track, analyze, and act on your data.

When comparing Shopify and Magento for tracking customer behavior, it’s essential to understand the strengths and limitations of each platform’s tracking features. The table below provides a detailed, side-by-side comparison to help you see how each platform supports event tracking.

To make tracking customer behavior even easier and more powerful, both Shopify and Magento support a variety of apps and plugins designed to enhance event tracking and analytics. Popular tools like Elevar and Google Tag Manager (GTM) fill gaps in native tracking and help ensure you’re collecting accurate, actionable data.

But capturing this data is only half the job — knowing where to apply it and how to act on it is just as important. From personalizing marketing campaigns to improving product pages and fixing drop-off points, the real value comes when you turn those insights into actions that drive growth.

When you understand what shoppers are doing in your store and why, you can transform these insights into strategic actions that improve user experience, marketing efficiency, and revenue. Every interaction is a piece of a bigger picture, and knowing how to connect those pieces gives you a competitive edge.

Here’s how you can turn that data into meaningful results:

When you apply behavior data this way, you move beyond guesswork to precision. Studies show that eCommerce businesses using behavior-driven personalization can boost conversion rates by up to 20%, with 40% of customers confirming that personalized experiences influenced their purchases. These data-driven insights enable you to identify exactly where shoppers drop off, what products truly engage them, and how to tailor your marketing and site experience for maximum impact, turning raw data into ongoing growth and profitability.

Capturing customer actions accurately is only possible when you have the right tracking tools in place. The proper setup ensures every click, scroll, and purchase is recorded correctly, allowing you to turn that information into meaningful improvements for your store. Below are some of the most essential tools and solutions that can help you track events effectively and make the most out of your customer behavior data:

When you combine these tools, you create a well-rounded tracking setup that captures the full story of customer behavior. Server-side tracking is furthermore essential for accurate, reliable, and privacy-compliant data collection. It gives you more control over what data is shared, helping you meet regulations like GDPR and CCPA while maintaining customer trust, making it a smart move for any store aiming for both precision and compliance.

However, while having these tools and tracking methods in place is crucial, it’s equally important to be aware of common tracking mistakes and how to avoid them.

When setting up customer behavior tracking, it’s easy to run into mistakes along the way that can lead to incomplete or inaccurate data. These errors can cause you to miss essential insights or make wrong decisions based on faulty information. Recognizing common pitfalls early and knowing how to fix them is key to maintaining a reliable tracking system that genuinely reflects your customers’ actions.

Here are some frequent tracking mistakes and simple ways to avoid them:

• Not Using Google Tag Manager (GTM) for Custom Events: Relying solely on native platform tracking limits your insights. GTM provides flexibility to track specific actions without modifying site code repeatedly. Fix this by setting up GTM properly to manage and deploy custom event tags.
• Misconfigured GA4 Setup (Missing Key Ecommerce Events): Without correctly configuring GA4’s enhanced eCommerce events, critical behaviors like add-to-cart or checkout steps might go untracked. Regularly audit your GA4 setup and follow best practice guides to ensure all critical events are captured.
• Only Tracking Completed Purchases: Focusing just on sales ignores valuable signals like product views, cart adds, or checkout drop-offs. Expand your tracking to cover these micro-moments to understand the customer journey and identify improvement areas.
• Relying Solely on Shopify or Magento Native Reports: Built-in reports provide useful overviews but lack depth and customization. Combine native reports with GTM, GA4, or third-party apps to get richer, event-level data and better analytics.
• Forgetting Mobile-Specific Behavior: Mobile shoppers behave differently, and missing mobile tracking nuances can skew data. Ensure your tracking setup accounts for mobile devices, browsers, and app-specific behaviors, testing regularly across platforms.

By being aware of these common mistakes and proactively fixing them, you can maintain accurate, actionable data that truly guides your decisions and boosts your store’s performance.

That said, having expert data analysts by your side can make a huge difference, not just in spotting and preventing these mistakes, but also in fixing them quickly and cleanly if they do occur, without disrupting your existing tracking ecosystem. And if you’re still skeptical about when the right time is to bring in data experts, here’s an easy first step: Get a quick reporting audit from us in just a few minutes. You’ll see precisely where your tracking stands today and know what needs to be improved for better, more reliable insights.

Even with the right tools and a solid tracking setup, there comes a point when you might sense that something’s off, or simply that your business has reached a new stage where your current tracking can’t keep up. Recognizing these signs early can save you from making decisions on incomplete or misleading data and ensure your analytics evolve alongside your store’s growth.

Here are a few clear signs you may be missing essential insights or outgrowing your current setup:

If you notice one or more of these signs, consider bringing in analytics specialists to diagnose and streamline your setup.. The right help can transform your tracking from “good enough” to a true competitive advantage.