Google Analytics is a wonderful engine for understanding what visitors do on your website, and it is a key tool for website owners to analyse customer and potential customer behaviour.
How to set up Ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics
If your website is an e-commerce website you will need to view the Ecommerce and Revenue reports. In Google Analytics e-commerce tracking must first be set up.
This is really easy to do – just go to Admin>View Settings and make sure the Ecommerce tracking switch is marked as on.
Where to find Conversion reports
In “Reporting”, at the left-hand side, there is a section called “Conversions” – this is where all the key stats are stored.
Goals shows all goals that a website may have such as newsletter sign-up and contact form submission. This can also include purchase goals. Revenue is not pulled in here – instead goal value is estimated.
Ecommerce shows data about purchases that have been made through the e-commerce section of the website. This is able to pull in revenue data.
Where are potential customers dropping off the path to purchase?
If you go to Conversions>Goals> Funnel Visualisation, you can easily see where your website’s checkout process is losing customers.
From this you can see friction areas for potential customers. Why are so many customers not progressing to buy after the basket page? Why are nearly 10% of customers not going further than the Delivery Summary?
This highlights problems areas, and you are able to see which steps need to be changed to maximise customer retention.
Which products perform the best?
If you look at Conversions>Ecommerce>Product Performance you can see a summary of how often certain products are purchased, as well as how much revenue they bring in.
Is there a product you are looking to push that is not getting a lot of sales? Consider bundling it in an offer with a popular product, to generate interest.
Similarly, looking at “Average Quantity” – look at products with an average quantity that is just lower than the next full number.
This means that many users are inclined to buy more of this item, but not enough make the jump to the next value. Is this a product that could be included in a “3 for 2” offer?
Do I need to optimise for mobile conversions?
Conversions can be accessed through any of the other reports. For example, if you wanted to see how mobile and tablet users are performing, you could look at the Mobile Report (Audience>Mobile>Overview).
Google Analytics recently made Conversion data more visible in standard reports by adding it to the right hand side.
From this it is easy to compare different dimensions and see how well they perform conversion wise. In the above it is easy to see that mobile does not convert very well compared to desktop and tablet viewers. This lets you know that it could be worth investing in mobile optimisation. Although the conversion rate may never match that of a desktop, even increasing from <1% to 2-3% would be a massive improvement.
Compare customers to non-buyers
Because customers behave differently to non buyers, it is useful to be able to identify the differences in behaviours.
To do this, you can use Advanced segments. To access Advanced segments, click the down arrow that appears in the top right hand side of a report.
An advanced segment allows you to see data about a certain group of visitors to your website. You can compare more than one advanced segment at once to better understand different groups.
You will have to create two advanced segments: Customers and Non-Buyers. To do this, click +Create New Segment.
Buyers Advanced Segment
- Name advanced your segment “Buyers”
- Click ”Advanced> Conditions”
- The filter should be “Transactions per sessions > 0”
- Save the Advanced Segment
Non-Buyers Advanced Segment
- Name your advanced segment “Non-Buyers”
- Click “Advanced>Conditions”
- The filter should be “Transaction per session = 0”
- Save the Advanced Segment
Apply both advanced segments by clicking them.
Now you can compare any metrics. For example, new visitors are less likely to buy than people who have visited before, and buyers spend 20 more minutes on the website than non buyers. Any metrics can be compared in this manner.
Key Takeaways
- If you have an e-commerce website, enable this feature on Google Analytics
- Use Funnel Visualisation to easily identify problem areas
- The Ecommerce report to identify products that perform well or poorly
- In standard reporting, use the Ecommerce section of the report to compare how well channels convert
- Use Advanced Segments to compare different kinds of users.