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Getting Started

Before any data flows, you need to add your website to Whimful, install the tracking tag, and verify the domain. This takes about 5 minutes.

Step 1 — Add your site

After signing in, you'll land on the account overview. If you haven't added a site yet:

  1. Click Add Site from the account overview page.
  2. Enter your website domain (e.g. mystore.com).
  3. Confirm. Whimful will create a site record and generate your unique site tag.

You can manage multiple sites under a single account — each site tracks independently.

Step 2 — Install the tag

The Whimful tag is a lightweight JavaScript snippet (< 15 KB) that fires ~270ms faster than Google Analytics. It collects pageviews, clicks, conversions, and custom events.

Shopify stores

Shopify installation is fully automated when you connect a Shopify connector.

  1. Go to Connectors in the sidebar.
  2. Click Add Connector and choose Shopify.
  3. Authorize the Whimful app in your Shopify admin.
  4. The tag is automatically embedded into your storefront theme — no code edits needed.
If prompted in the Shopify Theme Editor, ensure the Whimful App Embed is toggled on.
All other websites

For non-Shopify sites, you install the tag manually.

  1. Go to Admin › Site Settings in the sidebar.
  2. Copy the tag snippet shown on the Overview page.
  3. Paste the snippet into the <head> section of every page on your site — as high up as possible for fastest loading.
  4. Publish your changes.
Place the tag before other scripts. This ensures Whimful fires before third-party scripts that may slow down page loading.

Step 3 — Verify your site

After installing the tag, Whimful needs to confirm it can detect it on your live site before data collection begins.

  1. Go to Admin › Site Settings.
  2. You'll see a Verify button if your site is unverified.
  3. Click Verify. Whimful sends a request to your domain to detect the tag.
  4. Once verified, the status updates to Verified and data collection starts immediately.

Site settings

Once verified, you can configure a few site-level options under Admin › Site Settings.

Webview breakout

When a mobile app opens your website inside a webview (e.g. an Instagram in-app browser), cookies and identity persistence are often lost — breaking attribution.

Enabling Webview breakout attempts to redirect the user to their device's default browser, where cookie persistence works properly.

This setting may display a confirmation prompt to the user before leaving the webview. Test it on your site before enabling in production.
Event tracking

The Events sub-tab under Site Settings shows all custom events being captured from your site. Events are configured through the tag and include:

  • Pageviews (automatic)
  • Add-to-cart (automatic on Shopify)
  • Purchase / conversion (automatic on Shopify)
  • Custom events (defined by you)

Troubleshooting

Tag not detected
  • Make sure the snippet is in the <head> — not in the <body>.
  • If you use a CDN or caching layer (e.g. Cloudflare, WP Super Cache), purge the cache and try verifying again.
  • Check that the domain you entered matches the domain the tag is installed on exactly (including subdomains).
No data appearing
  • Visit your website yourself after verifying — this generates the first pageview events.
  • Data typically appears within a few minutes of your first visit.
  • Check that you haven't enabled an ad blocker in your own browser during testing.