2020 guide: how to use Google Analytics for ecommerce

Have you ever considered how you can use Google Analytics for the benefit of your e-commerce business? If you have, that’s great, we hope you’ll make great use of the tips we have to offer in the following article. If you haven’t, now is the time to start thinking about the manifold advantages of using Google Analytics to gain access to detailed information about your e-store’s traffic and sales.

Regardless of what sort of business you’re running or what products you’re selling, using Google Analytics as part of your marketing strategy will let you keep an eye on your conversion rate and monitor your business’s growth. It can be difficult to work out which reports and metrics are relevant to e-commerce and which are not. This article will give you some great tips to help you figure out which is which and get you started.

Let’s find out more. 

Track your marketing campaigns

You can use Google Analytics to track any of your e-store marketing campaigns. Monitor which landing pages people most often interact with to buy from you. By looking at a detailed data overview, you can see which channels are most effective, as well as which funnels are not leading to conversions. You can then trial new campaigns where needed in an effort to boost your conversion rate. You will, of course, need to make sure your landing pages are correctly optimised for your marketing campaigns in order for them to work well.

If you have included videos in your campaigns you can use Google Analytics to find out how many people have viewed the video and how many have been persuaded to make a purchase because of it. Should you need further help integrating Google Analytics with your e-commerce website, Wishpond provides you with everything you need to optimise your landing pages and make effective use of this tool.

Google Analytics can also help to know where to redirect customers so that you can recover sales which may otherwise have been lost.

Google Analytics can help you track sales and revenue

It is vital that any business owner has the ability to track their sales and revenue. You will obviously need to know whether you are achieving your financial goals or not. How do you do this, then? First, you need to answer some questions. Which landing pages are yielding the most conversions? How many people land on these pages? Which products do you customers value most highly? How do you monitor the revenue you make online? If you answer this set of question you’ll be able to stop yourself getting lost in never-ending reports and metrics. Set up Goggle Analytics based on your answers. Your goal can be to track transactions which have been completed. This lets you keep an eye on the landing pages which customers arrive on and the products people buy. Then you can set-up e-commerce tracking with Google Analytics, which will allow you to accurately track your sales. You’ll then be able to view your transactions reports as well as reports detailing your goals and sales performance.

Keep tabs on your website traffic

Google Analytics is fabulous at measuring traffic which comes to your e-commerce website. It provides you with thorough information on the number of people who have visited your e-store, what pages they looked at and provides you with some particular visitor demographics. It can also tell you the source of much of your website traffic. You can learn more about multiple sources of traffic using this tool, including the following:

  • Referral Traffic
  • Organic Traffic
  • Direct Traffic
  • Email Traffic
  • Social Traffic

You can compare website traffic from different sources across time periods to see if your overall traffic levels are improving. This can aid you in tracking how well your site is performing, which landing pages people arrive at and how this may be impacting sales. If you are trying to improve your link-building profile, you can see which links are yielding traffic and whether any are broken or not working correctly. This also lets you identify any problems that need fixing more easily. Moreover, you can use this data to devise a better sales or marketing channel for your e-store.

Website traffic reports help you identify if people are having problems accessing your site from other platforms so that you can take the action needed to fix them if necessary. You can also better understand where your customers are coming from, and where potential customers might be found.

Understand your Target Audience

One clear advantage of using Google Analytics is that it helps you to better understand your target audience and get a good idea of who your potential customers are. You can use it to find out some different characteristics of visitors to your website, including the following:

  • Age range – Take note of the age range of your audience, so that you can work out ways to better appeal to that demographic.
  • Gender – From this report, you can find out if the majority of your website traffic consists of male or female visitors so that you can tell if you are attracting those of the right gender to your e-store. You can use this information to create content tailored to a particular gender.
  • Devices – You can glance at a report which shows you what devices people are using to view and visit your site. You can use this report to help you ensure your online shop is optimised for mobile and tablet users.
  • Interest – These reports will pinpoint what visitors to your site have shown interest in on other areas of the web. This will allow you to better take advantage of cross-selling and upselling opportunities which may arise and provide you with content ideas for your blog.

Google Analytics can help you learn about customers’ shopping behaviour

If basic demographics prove insufficient, you can learn more about your customers by exploring their shopping behaviour. You can discover what products people click on, view and add to their shopping carts, whilst simultaneously monitoring transactions and checkouts. In this way, you can come to more fully understand your customers’ purchasing journey from viewing a product through to the transaction. You will only be able to see these reports if you have enabled e-commerce for Google Analytics, so don’t forget to do so.

Use Google Analytics for specialized SEO & keyword search

The Site Search report in Google Analytics provides an overview of the keywords, pages and terms your customers are looking for on your website. You can gain insight from people visiting your pages. You can then use those insights to help optimise your site so that you can rank more highly for products, topics and features that people are searching for. Using Site Search in combination with the report on your customers’ interests to find the right keywords to rank for in order to optimise your e-commerce site for SEO. This will have the effect of increasing your sales and conversion rate over time.

Track shopping cart abandonment

Shopping cart abandonment is a major obstacle for all e-commerce businesses, whether it is big or small. Research shows that almost 70% of online transactions and purchases are not completed. So you need to address the issue.

You can use Google Analytics to track your e-store’s shopping cart abandonment rate and it can help you identify a problem before it worsens. To do this you’ll have to set up a goal in Google Analytics, so you can see where visitors are required to finish making an order or purchase. After setting up that goal you’ll be able to view reports which highlight the pages on which people fail to complete the checkout process and actually buy something.  

Use Google Analytics with Google AdWords & AdSense for better ads

We have provided you with 8 compelling reasons to use Google Analytics to help you manage, run and optimise your e-commerce website. Google Analytics can help you track everything from your traffic levels, your marketing campaigns and sales rates. In addition to this, it can help you better understand your customers and keep tabs on their shopping habits. As we all know, using tools like Google Analytics is only half the battle. You need to know what to do with the data. We hope that the above tips have given you some ideas about how you can use the data gathered by Google Analytics to streamline your e-commerce business and boost your sales and conversion rates.

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