The Sleep Factory, a leading online mattress retailer in Ontario, faced challenges with data accuracy and detail across key platforms like Google Analytics, Facebook, and TikTok due to limitations in its eCommerce platform’s data connectors. These limitations hindered a clear view of marketing channel performance, campaign effectiveness, and user interactions on the site.
To address these issues, The Sleep Factory collaborated with Blitzen Media and Ayudante Canada to improve data collection, usage, and visualization. Ayudante introduced a hybrid solution that integrated elements of the platform’s native connector with the flexible capabilities of Google Tag Manager, enhancing data quality with minimal website development investment. This solution lays a strong foundation for future marketing efforts.
Business challenge
The Sleep Factory faced significant obstacles due to the limitations of its eCommerce platform’s built-in data connectors.
These challenges restricted their ability to effectively track user behavior, and evaluate campaign performance across tools like Google Analytics, Facebook, and TikTok.
The business faced three key challenges.
- Data Collection and Enhancement:
- Ensuring accurate event transmission across Google Analytics, Meta, and TikTok for reliable tracking and insights.
- Insights Visualization:
- Developing a KPI dashboard to streamline performance tracking and enable
- Knowledge Transfer:
- Empowering the team with foundational knowledge to understand and make the most of data collection and analysis tools.
Strategic Solutions
Solution 1: Use Google Tag Manager (GTM) to Unify Universal Datalayer for Multiple Media Platforms
Ayudante implemented GTM as the new centralized tag management system for all event tracking. Using GTM alongside the native connector’s data layer, data collection became customizable, more accurate, and easier to debug.
While in many cases a custom data layer is also part of the solution, keeping the CMS’s native connector’s data layer became an acceptable compromise to increase results while minimizing development efforts.
Moving away from native connectors also improved data collection by preventing excessive or incorrect events that were not customizable.
Note: A native connector is a pre-configured tool from an eCommerce platform, automating data sharing with media and analytics platforms like GA4 and Meta.
Solution 2: Leverage Google Analytics Advanced Features for Better Actionability
A key requirement for The Sleep Factory team to better understand campaign performance and site usage was to differentiate members and non-members on the site. To achieve this, Ayudante implemented Google Analytics User ID feature, allowing to track logged-in users within the Google Analytics 4 (GA4) reports, enabling better analysis and audience segmentation.
As the Sleep Factory team also uses the Google Suite of products to advertise and analyze – i.e. Google Ads, Google Merchant Centre, etc. – the integration allows them to build targeted ad segments directly within GA4, enabling more personalized and effective ad campaigns.
The new implementation also featured custom dimensions, also helping with analysis and segmentation.
Solution 3: Looker Studio Dashboard for Comprehensive Metrics at a Glance
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can be complex to navigate, with an extensive range of reporting features that make locating key KPIs time-consuming. To streamline this process, we developed a user-friendly dashboard for the Sleep Factory team using Looker Studio.
This customized dashboard consolidates essential metrics for the online business team, providing quick, clear insights without the need to sift through multiple GA4 reports. By simplifying access to performance data, the dashboard helps the team spot trends sooner and act more quickly on insights, reducing time to respond across their tools.
Results
Ayudante’s solutions greatly improved the Sleep Factory’s data accuracy and marketing effectiveness.
Accurate Data Across Platforms
Meta event tracking accuracy was improved significantly, with 90% of previously misfiring or inaccurate events corrected through Google Tag Manager (GTM), resulting in streamlined and reliable data.
This ensured that only relevant actions were captured with the aligned event name, providing reliable insights.
Streamlined Tracking System
Centralized tracking with Google Tag Manager (GTM) now manages 30+ events across Google Analytics, Meta, and TikTok. By transitioning from the eCommerce platform’s native connector to GTM, we aligned the event trigger points across different media platforms, resolved identified tracking errors, ensuring more reliable data transmission.
This unified approach eliminates redundant events and enables more efficient tracking and analysis.
Enhanced Targeting Capabilities
User ID tracking in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) helped the Sleep Factory identify a large share of purchasers as signed-in users.
This provided clearer insights into customer behavior, making it easier to create more targeted and effective ad campaigns.
Improved Data Visualization
Leveraging Looker Studio to create custom visualizations allowed teams to quickly understand trends, reducing time to action.
Customer Testimonials
“Working with Ayudante has been a great experience. Jasper, Jose and their team are professional, dedicated, and committed to providing us with insightful data through their ability to configure our GA4 analytics. Ayudante has enabled us to view trends through our marketing data and recognize opportunities in the marketplace. They are a trusted partner who has helped us streamline all our digital data into one easy to view dashboard.
We highly recommend Ayudante Inc. to anyone seeking reliable, top-tier service and web analytics solutions from a team of people who care about the success of your business.”
Carmelita Barbieri, Executive Marketing Manager at the Sleep Factory
Staff Supporting the Sleep Factory
Comments from the Supporting Staff
“I want to extend my sincere thanks to the client for their trust and collaboration on this project. Despite the constraints that prevented us from implementing a custom data layer, we leveraged the available setup to deliver effective solutions.
In Canada, the use of eCommerce platforms is common and undeniably convenient, but errors can be challenging to address within these frameworks.
In today’s data-driven marketing landscape, targeted advertising is more important than ever. By enhancing data quality and implementing precise tracking with GTM, we enable the client to build targeted, data-driven campaigns that resonate with their audience.
I am truly honoured to contribute to the Sleep Factory’s optimisation efforts.”
Jasper Poon, Solution Consultant