Ultimate Guide to Google Analytics for eCommerce
Updated on February 13, 2023 in Ecommerce by Nishant Shrimali
When it comes to an ultimate guide to google analytics for eCommerce, there are three very precise things to remember
- Goal
- Audience
- Performance
All these are core pillars that can share your true performance and can show your strong and weak spots within a few clicks. Do mind that Google is the biggest hub of information, and with its Google Analytics it is sharing the required information without actually compromising privacy.
In this Guide to Google Analytics for eCommerce, we are going to see
- Most essential features of Google Analytics
- Understanding the data from the Analytics
- How to set-up Goals and keep track of them
But before jumping right into the technicalities, here is a simple guide for you to get your own Google Analytics Account. If you already have one, you can skip to the next part.
How to Create Google Analytics Account for eCommerce
Step 1: Get yourself a Google Account
To start with you will need a Google Account. Hence create a new one dedicated to your eCommerce.
Step 2: Starting your Google Analytics
Now that you have your Google Account ready, go to Google Analytics.com. In it, you will need to click on the Start For Free button in order to create an analytics new account.
Step 3: Fill in the Information
Google will ask you to fill in the information about your website (or app) that you need a fill-in. After filling in all the information, click on Create.
Step 4: Tracking Id
In the following step, you would get a tracking Id and code that is needed to be placed on your website.
- Now if you are running a developer website, add the google-analytics tag near your head of your website before any script.
- If you are running a WordPress website, you can add plugins such as Yoast SEO or Rankmath and add the code by google to their webmaster settings.
- Lastly, if you wish to track the performance of your eCommerce on Shopify or others, go into the online store > preferences and paste the code in the Google Analytics box.
Step 5: Verify
Head back to the Google Analytics tab and hit the Confirm, so that google can check if the website/eCommerce is truly yours.
With this first section from this Ultimate guide to Google Analytics for eCommerce, you would be easily able to access the performance of your eCommerce and website. The next very important step for your eCommerce would be Setting Up Goals.
What are Google Analytics Goals?
In google analytics, you can create goals to track the actions of the customer on your eCommerce. This helps you to actually see whether or not your efforts of marketing are converting or not.
You can understand the set goal to see the number of conversions happening. For example, if you wish to track the order placement, you set a goal for that.
Now, if you wish to make people stay on your eCommerce or website, you can set a goal for that. If you wish to make people fill in a lead form, you can set up your goals for that. And lastly, if you wish to track the number of people who clicked on your ads, you can set your goals for that.
Simply put, you can set up a goal for anything to track the performance of the customers and users on your eCommerce.
How to Set up Goals google Analytics?
In the following section of the Guide to google analytics for eCommerce, you will learn to set up goals in Google Analytics. But just before that, here are the 4 most important types of goals that you must know about.
Types of Goals in Google Analytics
1. Destination Type- This tracks the specific number of users who landed on a particular page. Can be used to track the conversion. For example, if someone landed on the “Thank you” page or the “Order Received” page of your eCommerce, then he or she must have bought something.
2. Duration Type- This tracks the specific amount of time a customer shall spend on your site. This will help you to track the engagement of your audience
3. Pages Per Session Type- This would track the specific number of pages your customer viewed. Saying so, it is another great way to check the engagement, cross-selling, and conversion on your eCommerce.
4. Event-Based Type- As the name suggests, it tracks the specific number of customers who took part in an event on your site. This event could be, clicking on a button, filling up the leads, playing a video and or anything that you would like.
As you shall see, Using Google Analytics for eCommerce is a great way to track your goals as with this feature you can set up your very own goals to measure your performance.
Also Read: Best E-commerce Marketing Agencies in the USA.
Setting up Goals in Google Analytics
Without wasting any more time, here is the step-by-step guide to set up your goals in Google Analytics.
Step 1:
Open your Google Analytics account and in the bottom left corner of your screen, you would see the Admin option. Click on it to see all the settings.
Step 2:
Now in the following window, there are three sections. Under the View section, you would find Goals.
Step 3:
When you click on the goals, you would find an option to create New Goals. Click on it and choose from the options and types of goals that you would like to set. Once you are done, you will find all the running goals in a particular space. You can on and off any of your goals whenever you wish to.
In the following section of the Guide to Google Analytics for eCommerce, you have seen how to track your audience and customers more simply and easily. In total, you can set up to 20 goals.
As you would start hitting your goals, you would also be able to see them in your Analytics dashboard.
Now that you already know how to set up the goals to track your audience, it’s time to learn about your audience and know more about them.
In addition to setting up goals, there is also a very important setting that you should learn from this Guide to Google Analytics for eCommerce. That is, to set up your eCommerce conversion settings.
Steps to Set up eCommerce Conversion Settings
These settings will help you track the funnel of your eCommerce and share your insight about the conversion process.
Step 1: Go to the admin section in your Google Analytics and under the View, section click on the eCommerce settings.
Step 2: Enable the Ecommerce and enable the Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting.
Step 3: Now add in different stages of the funnel according to your eCommerce. To get the enhanced analytics of your eCommerce.
Understanding your Audience in Google Analytics
The core UPS of this ultimate guide to Google Analytics for eCommerce is to help you understand your audience and act on it. In doing so, google analytics is a very important tool for you.
It shows the interaction of your audience and your eCommerce. Moreover, this data is broadly divided into two parts.
- Real Time Audience
- Audience
You can find these two tabs in the left sidebar of your google analytics home page.
Real Time Audience
The Realtime tab would show you the data of your audience that is present on your eCommerce site at that exact moment.
- It will show the number of audience/user activity on your site
- Number of pages viewed by the user
- Particular page on which they are active
- Amount of time they are spending on your site
- Location of the audience/user
- Goals they have completed
- Source of traffic
In order to access the following information, you shall click on the Realtime tab which would further drop down options.
– Overview
It is the overview window that will show you basic analytics such as, where your number of people are active on your site, there, and location.
– Locations
Shows you the location of the active users on your site.
– Traffic Sources
The following tab shows you the source of traffic, i.e., knowing how the user came to your site. Organic means the user came through the google search results. Direct means the user searched for your specific site and entered directly. Referral means the user came through a link that was used on someone else’s website.
– Content
The content tells you the page of your site that the user is on.
– Events and Conversion
As you know, these two are the goals. Hence this tab shows you events or conversions that the user happened to complete in real-time.
Audience
This is the most important part of this guide to google analytics for eCommerce as it shows you some of the very important information about your audience. As you shall see, when you click on the Audience tab, a list of sub-tabs will appear.
As you can see some of the tabs are self-explanatory, but still are in order to make it easy for you, here are the top important tabs and their function to help you learn more about your users.
– Overview
The overview shows give you a brief about your overall audience. You can vary the information according to the time period. Moreover, you can compare the data of past and present in order to check your performance over time.
– Demographics
If you are running an eCommerce with a product range exclusive to a certain gender or age group, this would help you learn about the majority of your audience visiting your site. This way you can create content targeting them for better conversion.
– Interests
Again, this gives you insight into your audience’s likes, dislikes, and more.
The Affinity Categories show you the general interest of your audience, whereas the In-market Segments show you the interest of your audience based on their previous conversions. Lastly the other categories tab deal with additional interest, or the life events of your audiences.
– Geo
The Geo tab shares information about the location and the language of your audience. This you can create the content and run ads specific to a particular location and the language-speaking people.
With the following tabs and their information, you would be able to understand your audience in a more insightful manner. But the guide to google analytics for eCommerce doesn’t end here.
Acquisition and Behaviour of your Audience
Above in this ultimate guide to google analytics for eCommerce, you have learned about your audience. Now it’s time to see how your eCommerce is acquiring those audiences and what all actions your audience is taking once they enter your site.
Acquisition
The following tab shares the information about how you acquired your audience or how a user came to your site.
All traffic
This section of Google Analytics for eCommerce shows you the source of the traffic through which you get your audience.
Here in Channels, the people are approaching your site. Is organic, direct, social, or referral.
The Source/Medium gives you a detailed about the channels through which you acquire your audience.
Lastly, the referrals show you the sites through which you are getting the referral links as well as you are acquiring audiences on your site.
Google Ads, Search Console & Social
All of these tabs are used to share information about you acquiring the audience through the following mediums. It shows the source of traffic or the search query through which the user came to know about you.
Behaviour
This particular tab helps you to know the interaction of your audience and your site.
Firstly, through the Behaviour flow, you can see different sessions of a user. Moreover, if you switch the setting from the landing page to the source/medium, you would be able to classify the track of the audience moment from the source of their acquisition till the drop-off.
Site content, Speed & Search
Again, these tabs would give a really helpful insight into your site and the audience. The page that the user landed on and took off, the search query, the average speed of your site when a user landed on it, and the amount of time it took for a particular page to load.
Conclusion
In the above Guide to Google Analytics for eCommerce, you have learned aspects of what google analytics is and how you can use them.
Moreover, as you have seen above, the guide deals with every aspect of an analytics account to make sure that it becomes easy for you to understand how your audience is reacting to your efforts.
Now your job here would be to understand what your audience needs and then deliver it to them in the most beneficial manner. Create content based on the majority of your customers and run ads based on data you have in analytics.
This way you will be targeting the right audience and also making the most conversion in your efforts. We highly recommended reading this article How to Beat the eCommerce Competition.
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