Hey there and welcome back.
Google Analytics is a great tool for any website. It can open up a world of information that you can use to figure out how people are using your website and what changes you need to make to your website. If you don’t already have it installed, go right now, install it on your website and then come back to this video. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.
But did you also know that it can open up a treasure trove of information about your online store? From showing how much money you’ve made from online sales to showing which products are the most popular to showing you basic funnels and where people leave the checkout process, Google Analytics can really help you understand how well your online store is doing.
So let’s discuss why you should hook up your online store to the enhanced ecommerce section of your Google Analytics account. And we’ll discuss how you can do this.
Now let’s get started.
Why you should hook your online store to Google Analytics
Data is everything. Knowing how people are using your website can help you make changes to make your website more effective. And ultimately that helps your business.
But the enhanced ecommerce feature of Google Analytics can help you take a deeper dive into your store’s ecommerce statistics. As you’ll see, there is a treasure trove of information that you can find out here.
You can see how many people are abandoning their carts on your site, how much time they spend shopping on your site, and their paths to buying a product.
And then from there you can make the necessary changes based on how people are using your online store.
Simply put, this helps you make decisions that are going to make your website more efficient and grow your business.
What data can you get?
Really, you can gather a ton of data from Google Analytics ecommerce tracking about your website. Obviously you have your basics: how many products you sold, what products are selling the best, how much revenue you made in a certain period of time, etc. Really that’s a lot of things that you can probably already see from whatever vendor or plugin you’re using.
But Google Analytics goes deeper than that. The biggest KPI or key performance indicator that you gain with this tracking is the conversion rate. I’m sure some vendors have this somewhere, but Google puts it front and center. You can see the percentage of people that come to your website and become a paying customer. And that can help you figure out if you need to look into making changes to your website to help that.
You can also see how long it takes someone to complete a purchase, which could help you figure out if people might be enthusiastic about purchasing a product (like coming from an advertisement) or even if they might be having trouble or searching around to find the right product.
And finally you can see how each individual product is doing compared to your other products to see what might need to be changed or what could be better.
What you can do with this information
Like everything to do with regular analytics tracking, using ecommerce tracking is all about figuring out what’s working and what’s not working.
You can figure out what part of the process needs the most work. Are people just not coming to your website and you need to fix your SEO and advertising? Or are people getting to your website and not liking what they are seeing and leaving? And that goes for the website as a whole and for individual products.
You can also learn if your website is helping or hindering your efforts. If you have a high average purchase time and/or a really low conversion rate, then you might want to see if your website is having issues. Is it hard to navigate around the website and checkout? Or are people just not liking what they are seeing with your products?
And overall, you can figure out if your website is helping your business or not. If you’re not getting the sales you want and the metrics you see aren’t looking too good, it might be time to take a hard look at your website and make some big changes.
But take the time to look over the Google Analytics ecommerce section. There’s a lot going on here and there are metrics that will matter to you and no one else and vice versa. So go through and find the metrics that matter to you, start tracking them and then use that data to make decisions about your site.
How to hook connect your store with Google Analytics
How to connect your store with Google Analytics really depends on what you’re using to power your store. I’ve left more detailed guides for each major CMS down in the description below to help you out.
But here are the basics. First, your checkout page should have this code on it, probably near the bottom. You would have to use PHP or other code to fill in the items that would change.
Then you will need to activate that feature from your Google Analytics account. You’ll want to check back later after you’ve made a few sales to check to make sure that it’s connected and working.
If you’re using WordPress, I know that both WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads have add ons that can do this for you. The basic add on for WooCommerce is free, plus there’s a more advanced premium add on you could buy. However, the Easy Digital Downloads add on will cost you. But at least you don’t have to touch any code.
Up Next
So today’s question is what questions do you have about Google Analytics and connecting it to your online store? Have you tried it before? What was your experience like? Be sure to leave your answers and questions down in the comments section below.
Next time on Wednesday we’ll be discussing Easy Digital Downloads and what it does and how it can help you, just in case you might want to look at it for selling digital products on your WordPress website. And on Friday we’ll discuss web funnels that you might want to create for your website.
To see those videos and other videos on Ecommerce, WordPress, Digital Marketing and other website related topics, be sure to hit the subscribe button and to ring the bell for notifications.
But until next time, I wish you and your business the best of luck.
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