A Comprehensive Study of Ecommerce Analytics 

The digital world is highly measurable. You can track the efficacy of each of your efforts – from running a website to marketing a campaign.

As the name suggests, ecommerce analytics helps you to track everything on your e-store. These days, it’s not enough to invest in eCommerce website development. Instead, you should pay attention to how much value the website is bringing to your business. Today, we will walk you through various aspects of ecommerce analytic tracking. Stay tuned!

Ecommerce Analytics Tracking: What to Measure

Below is the list of insights you can gain by tracking eCommerce analytics:

• How many people are visiting the store
• Which categories/products drive the most sale
• What is the average buyer journey
• Which channels are driving the most traffic
• What is the average bounce rate
• How many people are abandoning cart
• Whether your paid marketing efforts are successful

…and more!

Important Ecommerce Metrics

Now, let us explore some of the most important eCommerce metrics:

Audience – You can analyze the customers’ age, gender, geographic location, and even their product preference.

Behaviour – From this data, you can gain insights into customers’ behaviour – the CTAs they click, the products that interest them, how long they spend on your site, what do they add to the wishlist and shopping cart, etc.

Acquisition – This data informs how the visitors found the e-store and from which channel they are directed to it.

Conversion – You can trace the journey of a visitor from a lead to a customer. You can also track the overall conversion rate of the store and which products are driving the most conversion.

Paid Marketing Efforts – You can track the efficacy of your marketing efforts on various platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.

Depending on these insights, you can optimize your website and marketing efforts. You can engage professional digital marketing services to create campaigns on the bestselling products and feature them on the platforms that are driving the most traffic. You should also optimize your site if you find that most of the users are bouncing before checking out. It may indicate confusing user journey or glitches on your site.

Ecommerce Analytics: A Quick Checklist

Below, we will outline how to configure Google Analytics for eCommerce and which Analytics metrics to measure.

Configuring Google Analytics for Ecommerce

Google Analytics is a go-to tool when it comes to measuring any digital effort. Here is a guide to configuring Google Analytics to measure what’s going on in your e-store.

• Set Up Google Analytics in GTM

You can use GTM or Google Tag Manager tool for free. Here, you have to create a new tag, enter your Google Analytics tracking code and type. Now set the trigger for “all pages”. It will help the tool to track every page visit.

• Register Your Site in Google Search Console

Having a Google Search Console will help you to track the site’s status from an SEO perspective. You can also monitor the crawlability of the site. For that, all you need is to register your store’s domain and verify it through Google Tag Manager or Search Console. Finally, upload an XML sitemap so that Google can index the site faster.
Based on the insight, consider engaging SEO services to optimize your site.

• Checkout Tracking

Losing customers just before checking out is an extremely phenomenon, so we want you to pay more attention to it. The insights of checkout tracking will help you to understand when the users abandon their cart. Here are a few pages you want to track:

• Checkout/cart detail page
• Delivery and shipping page
• Payment page
• Confirmation page

[ We are assuming that you have 4 separate pages for each of the activities. ]

• Site Search

If you want to find the right keywords for your store, knowing exactly what people are looking for is the best thing to do. In your Analytics account, enable site search tracking. Here is the procedure: Admin > View Settings > Site Search Settings.

It will help you to find out what people are typing in the search bar while looking for a product.

• Source Tracking

Google Analytics offers a segmented view of the incoming traffic from different sources. Here are some of the potential channels from where people may land at your site:

• Organic search – Traffic coming to your store from organic search engine results as they search for a product.
• Direct – Here, people are typing your web address in the browser.
• Paid search – People landing at your store from paid search ads.
• Social – People coming to your site from social media.
• Display – Traffic coming from a display, content, or banner ad.
• Referral – Customers accessing the site via a referral source.
• Affiliate – People visiting your site from affiliate campaigns.

You can also use URL Query String Tags in Google Analytics to get insights into the traffic coming from redirections, PDFs, dark social sharing, and so on.

Essential Google Analytics Metrics

Earlier, we pointed at some of the essential metrics to track on your eCommerce website. Here, we will outline some more Google Analytics metrics that you should pay attention to:

• Conversion rate
• Transaction
• Revenue
• Average order value
• Overall performance
• Shopping behaviour report
• Product performance report
• Site speed report

Wrapping Up 
With more and more brands coming to the forefront, the competition is quite fierce these days. If you want to make the most of your investment and optimize your efforts from time to time, it’s important to gain adequate insights. We hope that our blog helped you to get started. Try these and track your business growth.