Server-side tagging for a manufacturer's Shopware websites
Two B2B portals and two online stores were moved to dedicated tagging servers. In the stores, the new setup replaced an external tracking service.
- Context
- Manufacturer, B2B and ecommerce
- Focus
- Analysis, migration, rollout, support
- Period
- 2025–2026
- Stack
- Server-side tagging
- Shopware
- GTM web & server
- GA4
- Google Ads
- consentmanager
Background
The manufacturer runs two B2B portals and two online stores for consumers, all on Shopware. Tracking was to run through dedicated tagging servers and respect consent throughout.
In the stores, an external tracking service had been collecting the events. It hooked into the data layer and forwarded the data to the target systems through its own domain. The GTM containers had no Google tag for GA4 or Google Ads. The two stores are linked through the language selector and were to keep sharing one GA4 property and one Google Ads account.
Implementation
B2B portals. The two portals came first. On one of them, Tag Manager did not load despite consent, and the CMP set the default consent several times. Today both portals send data through first-party endpoints to a shared server container.
Store analysis. The web containers of the two stores were built differently. One contained extensive conversion tracking for affiliate, Meta, Google Ads, and Pinterest; the other only basic page views. Some affiliate and Pinterest tags fired without consent and were fixed before the migration. Before every consent update, the CMP pushed its developer ID and a default consent to the data layer again. A test with an integration through GTM showed the same behavior. This turned out to be a quirk of the CMP rather than an integration error.
New setup. A tagging server with one first-party domain per store and a shared server container serve both web containers. GA4 and all ecommerce events run through the dedicated server. In the server container, a lookup table maps the GA4 events to the conversion labels in Google Ads. The Conversion Linker accepts the linker parameters when visitors move between the stores. The server-side conversions for purchase and add to cart initially ran as secondary conversions alongside the existing ones.
After thorough testing, the server and web containers went live, and the external service was switched off.
Result
Both B2B portals and both stores send their data through dedicated tagging servers. The external tracking service has been replaced, GA4 and the Google Ads conversions are served directly from the server container, and all tags respect consent. The stores still share one GA4 property and one Google Ads account.