Mission Thrift Store, one of the largest non-profit thrift organizations in Canada, operates 50+ stores nationwide, each offering a wide range of second-hand goods such as furniture, clothing, books, and more.

Their website is a key touchpoint for donations, volunteer recruitment, and helping visitors access store information across regions. However, the team lacked a clear framework to track how users engaged with these goals online.

Without centralized data collection, insights into visitor behavior were fragmented across platforms, making it difficult to measure website performance or understand the effectiveness of donation and volunteer initiatives. 

To overcome this, Mission Thrift Store sought a unified analytics and reporting solution that consolidates traffic and engagement metrics into a single, easy-to-use dashboard, providing stakeholders with a clear view of impact at a glance.

Business challenge

Mission Thrift Store faced challenges in leveraging their website to support key goals such as donations, volunteer recruitment, and store engagement. While these actions were vital to their mission, the existing Google Analytics 4 (GA4) setup was not fully optimized, leaving gaps in tracking and reporting accuracy.

A GA4 audit conducted with Ayudante’s GA4 Auditor tool uncovered several issues, including inconsistent event naming, missing or untriggered custom events, unconfigured site search and video tracking, and limited integration with other tools. These gaps made it difficult for the team to capture reliable data, measure user journeys, and apply insights to decision-making.

The business faced three key challenges. 

1. Data Collection and Accuracy: Fixing GA4 setup issues and ensuring all important events (donations, volunteer sign-ups, store interactions) were tracked consistently.
2. Insights Visualization: Developing a central dashboard to bring together performance metrics and mission-related goals.
3. Team Enablement: Providing clear recommendations and best practices so the team could understand their data and use it effectively.

Strategic Solutions

Solution 1: GA4 Audit and Improvement Plan

Ayudante began the project by auditing Mission Thrift Store’s existing Google Analytics 4 (GA4) setup using our GA4 Auditor tool. The audit reviewed areas such as property configuration, event settings, marketing attribution, and data collection practices.

This process uncovered gaps including inconsistent event naming, missing or untriggered custom events, and unconfigured features like site search and video engagement. Based on these findings, Ayudante delivered a clear set of recommendations to improve accuracy, enhance event tracking, and strengthen the overall analytics foundation.

Solution 2: Improved Measurement Across Key User Journeys

Building on the audit findings, Ayudante enhanced Mission Thrift Store’s tracking framework using Google Tag Manager (GTM). Key improvements included standardizing event naming, fixing untriggered events, and adding new tracking points for critical user journeys such as donations, volunteer applications, and store locator interactions.

These updates provided more complete and accurate data, giving the team reliable visibility into how visitors contribute to their mission online and where drop-offs occur in each funnel.

Solution 3: Dashboard Visualization

With accurate data in place, Ayudante built a Looker Studio dashboard to bring all key metrics together in one view. The dashboard includes funnels for donations and volunteer recruitment, standard website traffic metrics, and store locator activity across all locations.

This centralized view makes it easy for the Mission Thrift Store team to quickly monitor performance, compare regions, and act on insights without switching between multiple reports.

Results

The new tracking and reporting framework gave Mission Thrift Store a much clearer view of how their website supports key goals. By moving from a limited setup of just 5 basic events to more than 20 well-structured, high-granularity events, the organization gained valuable visibility into areas of user behavior that were previously unmeasured.

Expanded Event Coverage with Higher Data Granularity

New events now capture detailed steps within key user journeys, such as donation funnels (page view → form start → completion), volunteer applications (page visit → form start → submission), and store locator usage (calls, directions, and more info clicks for 50+ stores). This greater granularity provides the team with deeper insights into how users interact at each stage.

Improved Data Quality

Standardized event naming and fixed misfiring events ensured consistent, reliable reporting across GA4. This unified approach eliminates redundant events and enables more efficient tracking and analysis.

Actionable Insights

The data revealed where potential donors and volunteers were dropping off, helping the team identify opportunities to improve conversion rates.

Streamlined Reporting

A single Looker Studio dashboard now consolidates traffic, donation, volunteer, and store interaction metrics, saving time and making performance trends easy to spot.

Customer Testimonials

Eric Ames, National Marketing Director at Mission Thrift Store

“We met the Ayudante team just as we were taking steps to refresh our national website and be more data-driven in our marketing efforts. We had GA4 and other analytic tools set up but weren’t using them effectively and didn’t have a clear picture of our data trends. Plus, we needed expertise in making sure our website was properly set up for data tracking and compliance.

Their comprehensive report showed us where we had gaps, as well as where and how our website could be better optimized. They then worked with us to get all our GTM and GA4 properties set up and working properly. The Looker Studio dashboard they created for us has already helped us better understand user behaviour and traffic trends on our website, and helped us prove positive ROI on our latest marketing campaign with clear data, giving our stores more confidence in their local marketing.”

Staff Supporting Mission Thrift Store

Comments from the Supporting Staff

“I am truly thankful for the opportunity to support Mission Thrift Store on this project. This was an experimental initiative where we applied our well-developed GA4 Auditor tool to the North American market. The process not only highlighted key areas for improvement but also demonstrated how the tool can drive efficiency and provide a clear roadmap for enhancing measurement.

With the trust of the client and the guidance from the audit findings, we were able to quickly implement meaningful improvements that strengthened their analytics foundation.

I deeply appreciate the collaboration and look forward to seeing how these insights continue to support their mission.

If your organization is facing similar challenges in data collection or visualization, feel free to reach out to us.”

Jasper Poon, Solution Consultant