Google Analytics for eCommerce: What You Should Be Monitoring
Thursday, April 28, 2016Lauren Macdonald
If you have an eCommerce website, there are a number of ways you can use Google Analytics to monitor your website and determine the areas where it is performing well, as well as the areas where there might be room for improvement.
When it comes to monitoring your eCommerce website, here are the top 5 areas to pay attention to:
Demographics
One of the most important indicators of a strong eCommerce website is its ability to drive the right traffic for your business. If your website is not attracting the target audience relevant to your business, you are missing out on the opportunity to reach potential customers online that are most likely to purchase your products or services.
The good news is, when it comes to demographics, Google Analytics allows you to track the age, gender, and location of the users visiting your website. In order to view these metrics you will have to
enable demographic statistics. Once these statistics are enabled, you will find you have a helpful starting point in determining whether your website is attracting your target market.
Acquisition
Acquisition reports allow you to determine where the users visiting your website are coming from. An important metric to look for here is your Organic Search traffic. This refers to the users who are finding your website through a search engine, such as Google. If your Organic Search traffic is high, that means your website is likely performing well on search engines when users are searching for topics relevant to your business. If your Organic Search traffic is low, you may want to determine ways to improve your website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so that potential customers will notice you during their searches.
Acquisition reports also allow you to determine the users visiting your website directly through your URL, paid search ads (e.g. Google AdWords, Bing), or social media.
Conversions
A conversion takes place when a user on your website takes an action that you consider to be important. This could be filling out a form, completing a purchase, clicking a specific button or link, etc. For an eCommerce website, tracking the number of users that complete a purchase on your website is an example of a conversion that you will want to be keeping track of. This allows you to determine if your website is succeeding in converting visitors to paying customers!
Exit Pages
The last page on a website that a user visits before they leave the site completely is considered to be their exit page. Tracking exit pages can be extremely helpful for eCommerce businesses because it helps you determine where users are landing before exiting your website. For example, a merchant would want to know if a large percentage of users are exiting the site from their shopping cart or checkout page. If so, it would indicate that something is holding the visitor back from completing a purchase.
eCommerce Specific Tracking
Meaningful analytics for your ecommerce website are different from other websites because eCommerce websites should be tracking metrics relevant to actual sales. Luckily, Google Analytics provides extensive metrics for eCommerce websites that can be set up by
including an eCommerce tracking code on your website.
Once your website is set up for eCommerce tracking, you can monitor metrics valuable to your business, such as:
- Transactions
- Revenue
- Average order value
- Unique purchases
- Product checkouts
- Product refunds
- Quantity of products sold
- Repeat purchase rate
- Etc.
What are some of your important metrics you are monitoring in Google Analytics? Let us know in the comments section below!