Google Analytics (Analytics) is an invaluable tool for business owners and marketers as it enables insight into website user behavior, providing you with the data you need to make informed decisions and optimize your communications strategy. Analytics is useful for all businesses in Huntsville, but the platform has several tools designed specifically to benefit e-commerce businesses by tracking conversions from start to finish. Below, we’ve outlined several tips to enhance your conversion rates, and note that these are specific to Google’s Universal Analytics version (instead of G4, Google’s most recent Analytics update).
Setting Up Conversions
Before you get started, set yourself up for success by identifying and recording which actions you consider a goal or conversion. These triggers tell Analytics when to record specific actions users are taking on your website. Conversions work as a collaboration between Google Analytics and Google Ads (Ads). To set up conversions, you need to establish conversion actions, install your conversion tracking tag and then set goals.
- Conversion action
- A conversion action is a specific activity that a user does which adds value to your business. It is important to set up conversion actions in Analytics so you can closely track what actions users are performing on your website. This enables you to accurately understand what products or services your users interact with most often. Conversion actions have to be set up through your Ads account. Not sure if your Analytics and Ads accounts are connected? Check out this resource from Google to get you started.
- Conversion tracking tag
- A conversion tracking tag is a piece of code that you’ll plug into your website. This code tells Analytics to track when someone clicks on an ad that leads to your website. Once on your site, Analytics will record when the user completes an action you have previously defined (a conversion action).
- Goals
- Goals, similar to a conversion action, are configured at the view level in Analytics. They can be applied to specific pages that your users are visiting and actions they are performing on your website. When a user performs an action defined as a goal, Analytics records the action as a conversion.
You can learn a bit more about how to set up each piece of the conversion process here.
Tracking Conversions
Once you have your conversion actions set up and tracking tag installed, you can begin monitoring your conversions. Start by looking at your home screen, then click on the Conversions tab and select Goals.
After drilling down into the goals section, select Overview. This gives you a view of all your established goals with their number of completions and their goal completion percentages. The Overview report gives you a clear view of which actions users are taking on your website. This lets you see what actions are most popular and least popular on your website. This information is extremely useful when making important decisions relating to product management. If you’re spending money to produce a product that your users are not buying or even interacting with on your website, it might be time to rethink your strategy.
From the Goals section, you can also access the Goal Flow report. This report gives you a visualization of how users are moving on your website, starting from their initial interaction on your website and following through their sales cycle.
Under the Conversions tab, you will find the Ecommerce section which is home to several key reports. If the following reports are not appearing in your Ecommerce section, visit this resource from Google to ensure your tracking and reporting is turned on properly.
- Shopping Behavior Report
- This report provides you with a look at all user sessions that led to no shopping activity, sessions with product views that led to no cart addition, sessions with add to cart that led to cart abandonment, sessions with check-out that led to check-out abandonment, and finally, sessions with transactions.
- Checkout Behavior Report
- This report gives you a visualization of sessions that entered the check-out portion of the sales cycle, drilling down to billing and shipping that led to billing and shipping dropoff, payment that led to payment dropoff, review that led to review dropoff, and finally sessions with transactions. This information is important to consider because it could uncover hidden issues with the user experience of your website. For example, you may be seeing a huge dropoff in users during the check-out portion of your sales cycle. In turn, you may discover that your check-out process is not user-friendly, or there is a broken link. Once you address the issue, you can check back in on your Analytics data to see if your conversion rate has improved.
- Product Performance Report
- This report shows you how your various products are performing. You can sort the information in this report from highest performing to lowest performing and vice versa. It also shows you when you have spikes and dips in your products’ performance.
- Sales Performance Report
- Similar to the Product Performance Report, this report shows you dips and spikes for individual transactions. You can sort by highest and lowest dollar transactions. You can also click into each transaction to see what products were purchased.
- Product Performance Report
- This report provides you with a look at how all products on your site are performing. By default, this report is sorted in alphabetical order by product. However, you can change the filter of this report to display the information based on the highest or lowest number of product list clicks. This is very insightful when you are determining what products your users are most interested in purchasing.
Adjusting Your Strategy
Setting up and tracking conversions may seem a bit overwhelming, but the benefits to gaining the insights the platform provides far outweigh the time it takes to complete the setup process. This data is extremely useful in determining how to adjust your business strategy effectively and purposefully.
Analytics can play a huge role in defining issues and improving the success of your online store – as long as you invest in setting things up the right way from the start, you’ll be laying the foundation for success long-term. You got this!