Tracking (UTM & GA)

There are two ways to see widget traffic and behavior in your own analytics tools (GA4, GTM, and others).

	What it tells you	Where to set it
UTM tags	Where visits to your product pages came from	Widget Studio → preset detail → Tracking (UTM)
Analytics event bridge	What visitors do inside the widget (open, watch, product clicks)	The Analytics event bridge toggle in the same section

Both are configured per preset in the Widget Studio, so each widget can be tracked differently.

UTM tags

When a visitor taps a product tag in the widget and moves to the product page, UTM parameters are appended to that link. This is how GA attributes the visit to the shorts widget.

Choose one of three modes.

Account default (default)

With no configuration, the default UTM is appended:

utm_source=shortsworks&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=shortsworks_product_clicked&utm_content=<short-id>

Custom for this widget

Enter UTM values used only by this preset — useful when you run separate widgets per campaign or placement.

• Source (utm_source) and medium (utm_medium) are both required. If either is empty, the default UTM is used instead.
• Leave content (utm_content) empty to automatically fill in the ID of the clicked short, so you can tell which short drove the visit.

Do not append

No UTM parameters are appended to this widget's product links.

When to turn it off

When GA sees a link with UTM parameters, it rewrites the visit's traffic source. For example, a visitor who arrived from an ad and then taps a product in the widget may have later conversions attributed to shortsworks / social instead of the ad. If you manage ad attribution strictly, use this mode and measure widget behavior with the analytics event bridge below.

Analytics event bridge

UTM only covers the moment a visitor leaves the widget for a product page. To see whether they opened the widget and how much they watched, turn on the bridge.

Enable Analytics event bridge in the preset's Tracking (UTM) section, and pages with that widget will emit the events below to your site:

• With GTM — events starting with shortsworks_ are pushed to dataLayer.
• Other tools — browser CustomEvents starting with shortsworks: are dispatched.

Events

Event	When it fires
widget_opened	A visitor taps the widget and the player opens
content_view_started	A short starts playing
content_skipped	A short is skipped before the end
contents_viewed	A short is watched to the end
product_clicked	A product tag is tapped and the visitor moves to the product page
feed_like_pressed	A like is pressed

Events carry the short ID (storyId/feedId), widget shape (widget_shape), product ID (product_id, on product clicks), destination URL (destination_url), and similar fields. No visitor-identifying values are included.

If your site has no GTM

The bridge only uses a dataLayer that already exists on your site — it never creates one. Without GTM, receive events with the CustomEvent approach below.

Connecting GTM → GA4

1. In GTM, create a Trigger → Custom Event, set the event name to shortsworks_.*, and enable Use regex matching. (For a single event, enter the exact name such as shortsworks_product_clicked.)
2. Create Data Layer Variables for the fields you want, e.g. storyId, product_id, destination_url.
3. Create a Tag → Google Analytics: GA4 Event using the trigger above. Use as the event name to keep the shortsworks_... names in GA4, and attach the variables from step 2 as parameters.
4. Open your store in GTM Preview mode and interact with the widget — you'll see the events arrive immediately.

Receiving CustomEvents directly

You can also listen without GTM:

<script>
  window.addEventListener("shortsworks:product_clicked", function (event) {
    // event.detail contains storyId, product_id, destination_url, ...
    console.log("Shorts product click:", event.detail);
  });
</script>

Event names are shortsworks: plus the names in the table above. You can forward them to Meta Pixel or any other tool inside the listener.

Measuring purchases

With GA4, purchases in sessions that carry the UTM parameters appear in the traffic acquisition reports under your utm_source / utm_medium values.