Google Analytics is a FREE service that helps retailers like you to understand your customers and optimize your website. It’s also a great tool that can help you make better business decisions as a retailer. Google Analytics is a powerful tool for analysing the success of your e-commerce store and developing new strategies to help you continue to drive revenue.
It helps business owners understand their customers, stay on top of their competition, and plan for future growth.
The most common way for e-commerce businesses like you to use Google Analytics is to gain insights into how you can improve their website. After setting up an account, you can view data such as what products interested visitors, which countries those visitors came from, and how long those visitors spent on the site.
You can also use Google Analytics to measure the success of advertising campaigns or new product lines, but its most common use is to track conversion rates.
You can easily track “purchase funnel” data like revenue per visitor (RPU) and average order value (AOV).
Before you can start using the reports to your advantage, you will need to install Tracking for Google Analytics on your website which will give you access to basic reports to help with your online store. If you are looking for advanced features, you will also need to install the Enhanced Ecommerce tracking code. Doing this is relatively straightforward and you can work with your website developer (or if you are comfortable and confident doing it yourself) to get this set up and running in no time.
Basics of Setting up an E-Commerce Tracking Code on Your Website
Step 1 – Set Up a Google Analytics Account
The first step is to set up a Google Analytics account if you don’t already have one. You can sign into any Google account or create a new one. It is free to use.
Here is the detailed process to do this.
Step 2 – Enable Enhanced Ecommerce Reports
Once you have set up the account and required views in Google Analytics, go ahead and follow the process mentioned in this link to enable enhanced eCommerce reporting for your site.
Enhanced Ecommerce Reports Overview
Here is an overview of enhanced eCommerce reports that you can access once you have set up the tracking correctly:
So how can you use all this wealth of data and boost your eCommerce sales?
Here are 7 ways to do this.
Step 1 – Understand Your Customer Journey
Behaviour Flow Report – Reports > Behaviour > Behaviour Flow
The Behaviour Flow report gives you a visual picture of the paths visitors take upon entering your eCommerce website. It can show you which sections of your website keep the visitors the most engaged and which sections need improvement based on where visitors are dropping off from.
Some of the key questions that this report can help understand:
- Was the buying journey smooth? Did users follow the path from visit to checkout without dropping off at any stage? Were there too many drop-offs? If so, what were the drop off pages and how can these be improved to minimise distractions and drop-offs?
- Were visitors stuck in a loop? Was there a repetitive pattern of such loops? What were the pages in the loop and is there a way to help improve the navigation to simplify the process?
- Are visitors taking the paths you intended to complete the desired actions on the website? Are there new paths evolving? Is this what you intended them to do? If not, how can you realign the journey to your intended goals?
The report allows you to analyse paths based on landing pages, campaigns, traffic sources, etc. So, you can choose any of these options from the first drop down and analyse user flow accordingly based on your requirements.
Step 2 – Profile Your Target Audience
Use Google Analytics data to get a clear picture of who your potential customers really are.
You can leverage Google Analytics to discover the following about your website visitors:
Gender
Compare data to see if your traffic is mainly made up of male or female visitors. This report can guide you to see if you’re attracting the right gender(s) to your store or how you can use it to tailor your content. You can find this report under Audience > Demographics > Gender.
Age Range
Take a glimpse at your audience age range so you can understand which age ranges are most likely to visit your site. You can find this report under Audience > Demographics > Age.
Devices
See what devices (even the OS and browsers) your visitors are using the most to visit your store. Now more than ever online shoppers are turning to mobile devices compared to desktops. This means having a mobile-friendly store is an essential part of the buyer’s journey and capturing sales.
You can find this report under Audience > Mobile > Devices
Geo – Location
Use the geolocation reports to understand where your audience is located geographically. This information can help you find newer geographies to target and can also help you understand if it is viable for you to go international if you have large chunks of the audience coming in from overseas. Audience > Geo> Location.
Interest
Interest Reports in Google Analytics will tell you your users’ interests in other parts of the internet. This will help you identify a more specific target audience, cross or upselling opportunities, better blog content ideas.
You can find this report under Audience > Interest > Overview.
Step 3 – Analyse Traffic Sources That Matter to Your Business
When it comes to measuring website traffic for e-commerce stores, Google Analytics gives detailed information on how many people have visited your online store, what pages they’ve been on, demographic details of users and various traffic sources.
You can use your Google Analytics reports to learn about your website traffic sources.
These can be accessed here Acquisitions > Overview > All traffic > Channels.
Google Analytics shows you detailed reports on:
- Organic Traffic
- Referral Traffic
- Social Traffic
- Direct Traffic
- Email Traffic
Use this information to understand what channels are bringing in the most engaged visitors and which channels are the most profitable for the business. Understand the user journey of these visitors. Use this information to help with improving engagement and conversions from the channels that are not doing well for your business.
Step 4 – Understand User Shopping Behaviour and Cart Abandonment
You can learn more about your customers by looking at their shopping behaviour. Learn about the type of products they view, click on, and add to cart all while tracking checkouts and transactions.
To find this report go to Conversions > E-commerce> Shopping Behaviour.
Use the “Shopping Behaviour” report and the Behaviour tab in Google Analytics to understand your buyer’s journey for both new and returning customers on your site.
Shopping cart abandonment is a problem for all e-commerce sites. Having better checkout systems can help reduce friction and help convert sales easily.
Using Google Analytics to track your online store’s shopping cart abandonment can help you analyse issues and work on the problematic pages and steps.
To track your shopping cart abandonment with Google Analytics, first, you’d need to create a Google Analytics Goal, where a visitor needs to complete an order/purchase.
After that, you can view reports like “Goals” and “Funnel Visualization” in the “Conversion” tabs to track which pages customers fall off short.
Step 5 – Analysing Product Performance
Then Product Performance report looks like this:
This report can give you insights on which products are bestsellers, which ones are most popular, which aren’t doing well and so on. You can also get information on product revenue.
This data can also help you figure out which paid campaigns, emails or other promotions are doing well based on the sales.
Step 6 – Using Your Visitor Search Data for Keyword Research
The Google Analytics “Site Search” report gives an overview of the terms, keywords and pages customers are searching for the most on your website.
You can get insight from visitors coming to your page. You can use this data to optimise site content to rank better. And, to update website design to improve usability and make the buyer journey easy.
To find this report go to Behaviour > Site Search.
Step 7 – Marketing Planning and Budgeting
The Google Analytics Ecommerce Reports provide valuable information about many different aspects of the business and can help to plan and budget for marketing campaigns and understand the return on investment.
The Google Analytics Ecommerce Reports provide insights regarding:
Visitors: Visitors acquired, visitors lost, visitors from browsers, visitor conversion rates by device type, session duration by browser type
Products: Product list views per page, product list views per session, product conversion rates, product losses percentage of revenue
Orders: Orders per page views, orders per session, order conversion rate comparison by browser type
This data can be used to create buyer personas optimise marketing campaigns and make more informed decisions about future budgets.
Conclusion
Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can help you take your business to greater heights. It might seem daunting to set it up initially but once done correctly, can save you loads of time and help with useful insights for your eCommerce store.
If you are convinced about how Google Analytics can help you boost your sales, get in touch with our wonderful team of experts who can help you set this up and get you on the path to increased eCommerce sales for your business based on actionable insights tailored for your eCommerce store.
