Jan
4
Written by:
Whereoware Staff
Wednesday, January 04, 2012 10:13 AM
|
By now, you know that Google Analytics can be used for many types of analyses, from pinpointing referral sources to uncovering which keywords your customers are looking for. But if you’re an ecommerce site, you may be missing out on one of the most important features – Google Analytics’ ability to take stock of revenue stats using ecommerce tracking.
Sounds great, but how?
First, you’ll need to let Google Analytics know that your site is ecommerce-focused.
|
- Sign into Google Analytics and select your profile.
- Click on the orange gear icon on the right of the horizontal orange nav bar.
- Click on the “Profile Settings” sub-tab under the “Profile” tab.
- Choose “Yes, an E-Commerce Site” from the drop-down menu found next to ‘E-Commerce tracking’.
|
 |
The nitty-gritty
The more labor intensive part is adding ecommerce code to your website’s receipt page. As this is a more technical and in-depth process, Google provides a handy step-by-step guide for completing this process. We recommend following their instructions carefully. If you are not comfortable with coding you may need to ask a developer for help. Once the code has been placed, however, you can sit back and wait for data to be collected, and then begin your analysis.
What’s the point?
Using ecommerce tracking will allow you to take stock of conversions that come from different traffic sources, countries and other attributes.
|
 |
| Once the code is installed, you can click on “Conversions” and then “Ecommerce” to see an overview of product and sales performance, transactions, time to purchase, and other data. More useful yet, you can simply select “ecommerce” in applicable areas, like “Traffic Sources,” to view data on revenue, average value, ecommerce conversion rate, per visit value and more. |
 |
| If you select traffic source as your area of focus you will be able to see a breakdown of revenue by direct, referring, search or campaign traffic. Since the majority of marketing is focused on driving sales, being able to take stock of cold, hard numbers can be very helpful when trying to visualize the efficacy or inefficacy of your marketing efforts. After all – if you’re going to put effort into establishing and tracking Google Analytics accounts in the first place, why not make full use of the benefits? |