Google Analytics offers a broad spectrum of metrics for ecommerce sites. However, it calls for a proper configuration and knowing what to monitor after. Being an ecommerce site, it is important to use Google Analytics because you cannot physically see your customer. You are not able to see their habits or physically interact with them, causing you to be blind to information about your customers that you would normally get to observe.
After configuring Google Analytics for ecommerce, there are a few sections you should monitor and familiarize yourself with:
Acquisition
Acquisition data contains information on how a customer found your site thus arriving to it. It is significant in showing which channels are driving traffic and sales. Taking such information will help guide you to the more effective channels you should focus on. The sites that are bringing in a high volume of traffic are where opportunity may exist the most.
Conversions
In ecommerce, the ultimate conversion is when a visitor makes a purchase. With the conversion section of Google Analytics, you can see how many customers are coming to your site and how many reach the conversion point. It will also record the quantity in which they buy and the revenue made from those products. The revenue of a transaction and the quantity sold may assist in developing coupons and other promotions.
Audience
In the Audience section, you will find exact information on the visitor such as demographics of age and gender, geographic location and language, and the technology they are accessing the site with. With detailed geographic information on the visitors, you can make better decisions on shipping logistics, ensuring you are doing what’s best for shipping time and cost. Details of technology should be used to better optimize for the larger population of your visitors.
Behavior
The behavior section tells you how and why users of your Ecommerce site are behaving how they do. Whether reacting to the speed or the load time, this gives you a better idea to how people react when viewing content on your site. Behavior analytics can assist in modifying the design of your site by helping to better understand the needed areas of improvement. Take the information to create a better experience for your customers, therefore escalating conversions.
Real-Time
This is your website traffic as it’s happening. It includes information about exactly who’s visiting the site at that time, how they got there, their location, and the exact pages they are browsing. If a visitor navigates to a particular page in your sales funnel, but exits before converting, you should inspect the content of that page.
A great time to use real-time Google Analytics would be during updates to your social media post, email or campaign, to examine its performance by tracking the immediate impact of traffic to your site. Favorites, likes, and retweet don’t tell you an valid number of how many actually clicked into the site, but Google Analytics will let you see that.
By using Google analytics, you will learn how well your marketing is working and how effective your ecommerce store is in generating conversions. Put the metrics to use and you will to guide your online store to success.
Resource: http://www.shopify.com/blog/14681601-google-analytics-for-ecommerce-a-beginners-guide
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