Set up e-commerce in Google Analytics



    Google Analytics provides ample opportunity to collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to the site. In this article we will talk about the most useful system features for online stores. By connecting an e-commerce module, you can track the effectiveness of a product, sales, transactions, time to purchase, and much more. And now about everything in more detail.

    Ecommerce Reports


    What information can be extracted by setting up Ecommerce in Google Analytics. To do this, consider the possible types of reports.

    Product performance


    (Conversions - E-commerce - Product Efficiency)

    The E-commerce module allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of the products of the online store:
    • Amount of goods purchased and income received
    • Product Popularity
    • The number of purchases for a certain period of time



    For example, by including an additional parameter such as “Traffic Source” or “Referral Paths” in the E-Commerce report, you can see the source of the target audience for a particular product or group of products.



    The data of such a report will help evaluate current marketing activities and plan future ones. Determine which products sell better, which are worse and why, which products are effectively supported by advertising, and which require additional promotion channels.

    Transactions


    (Conversions - Ecommerce - Transactions)

    This report allows you to see the list of transactions for a certain period of time.



    When you click on a transaction, you can see its composition - a detailed list of purchased goods, as well as income, taxes and shipping costs.



    Thus, it is easy to estimate the income from each transaction, as well as the amount of purchased goods in one order. If these figures are lower than planned, you can enter additional motivators for customers, for example, discounts on the purchase of more goods or free delivery of a purchase for a certain amount, etc.

    Time to purchase


    (Conversions - E-commerce - Time before purchase)

    This indicator will tell you how quickly visitors to an online store make a purchase decision, and how many times they visit the site until they decide to make an order.



    This report will allow you to estimate the expected amount of income, of course, if the purchase cycle is stable.

    Such information may also be useful in terms of usability. If customers visit the online store many times before making a purchase, it probably makes sense to simplify the checkout process.

    By linking the order with the advertising company, you can calculate the conversion of the sales channel (Traffic Sources - Sources - Campaigns - Ecommerce link) :



    By setting up the e-commerce module, you can receive data on which regions are most often booked (Audience - Demography - Location) :



    By analyzing this information, you can improve the delivery conditions to these regions.

    You can also evaluate the loyalty of the audience, that is, who most often makes the order - new or returning customers - (Audience - Behavior - New and returning) :



    If it is clear that returning users make orders more often, then they can be offered any discount programs, discounts as regular customers.

    After setting up the e-commerce tracking module, you can see from which devices users make purchases (Audience - Mobile devices - Overview) :



    If there are few orders from mobile devices, the reason for this may be incorrect work of the order form or website on mobile devices. Perhaps users need to be additionally motivated to complete an order from mobile devices by conducting an additional marketing campaign.

    Analyzing these reports, it becomes clear what problems exist with the usability of the site, miscalculations in the marketing campaign, etc. By eliminating them, you can significantly increase the turnover of the online store.

    How to set up e-commerce


    1. You need to go to the "Admin" panel in the upper right corner of Google Analytics.



    2. In the "Profile" column, click on "Profile Settings", where it is necessary to select "I sell online. Enable sales tracking ”and specify the currency:



    3. Next, you need to set the e-commerce code on the site, so Google Analytics will be able to collect data about orders from the website of the online store. To do this, on the order confirmation page (most often this message is “Your order has been accepted. Thank you for your purchase!”) You need to add a code that will describe what exactly was ordered:



    Inaccuracies in Google Analytics


    The generated order on the site and recorded in Google Analytics in fact can be changed if:

    • The buyer adjusts the order in person with the store manager. The reasons can be very different. For example, due to the poor interface, the buyer could not figure out how to remove the goods from the baskets. Or the phone manager persuaded him to purchase related products. Also fake or false orders are not excluded.
    • The buyer for some reason returned the goods back to the store.

    In order to remove this data from Google Analytics, you can make a negative transaction - i.e. the store manager makes a similar order, but with negative amounts.



    This method is effective for adjusting orders and quickly canceling fake orders. The main condition is that a negative transaction must be made on the same day, otherwise there will be even more confusion. For the same reason, a negative transaction is not applicable in the case of a return of goods, because quite a lot of time has passed.

    Do not forget that a negative transaction will be reflected in the total number of transactions in the report.



    Finally


    Combining the data of the E-Commerce module with standard reports and setting goals in Google Analytics, you can get a lot of useful information about the orders made in the online store and the income from them. And it’s better to understand your customers, the difficulties that they have to face when completing an order, to evaluate the effectiveness of the marketing policy in general and specific advertising campaigns. The comprehensive use of Google Analytics tools will reduce the advertising budget by eliminating inefficient sites and improve the usability of the site.

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