7 data points to track in Google Analytics for e-commerce business
Every e-commerce business owner has heard of Google Analytics and that this tool can help them understand their website better. However, once you open the Analytics, it might feel intimidating and confusing to know which metrics you need to look at and how you can use them to grow your business. Let’s clear the confusion, and learn more about Google Analytics!
Why use Google Analytics
When you have a physical store it is easy to notice how many people visit the store, what are the busiest hours, which items draw their attention first, how they move through the store – what is the first thing they see and what’s the last. You can also talk to the customers and find out more about how they found your shop, how they like your products, and what they find inconvenient.
But when you own an e-commerce store, you don’t see your customers right away, you don’t know how they move through the webpage and you don’t know what items or pages draw their attention first. And that is where Google Analytics comes in. Google Analytics helps you “see” your customers and gives you valuable information about how they move around the webpage, what they see first, where they come from, what pages they find the most interesting, what products they check out but don’t buy, and so on.
- Traffic and traffic sources
To know how many people are visiting your website, you should look at traffic metrics. It will show you how many people have visited your website in a certain period of time (you can set yourself what the period is). People often view traffic in terms of a day, a week, a month, and a year.
Why track traffic and traffic sources?
Knowing how many people visit your webpage can be useful for a few reasons:
- You will know how many people visit your e-commerce store and generally the more people visit, the more sales you will make.
- It is a good way how to track different marketing campaign success, either paid ads campaigns or, for example, SEO (search engine optimization) progress.
Information about traffic
In the Traffic Acquisition tab in Google Analytics 4, you will see the data about where the traffic came from and more information about the users and their actions.
User column. If you look at the users column, you will see how many people have been on your site.
Session column. The session column shows how many times your page has been opened in total (one user can open the page several times, that’s why usually the session number is higher than users).
Engaged sessions. Engaged sessions are those where a page has been opened for at least 10 seconds, there has been a conversion moment (for example, a click on a “buy” button) or the user clicked to visit another page on your website.
Average engagement. Average engagement per session shows how long on average people engage with your website.
Traffic sources
People get to your website via different routes and on the Traffic Acquisition page you can see from where people came from when they landed on your website.
Direct traffic. Direct traffic shows all the people who have visited your site by typing in your website in the address bar.
Organic search traffic. These are all the people who have found you on Google and clicked on your website on the Google Search page.
Unassigned traffic. Unassigned traffic is one for which Google cannot find a source. Those can be different websites that block specific cookies, as well sometimes some social media traffic gets mixed in there, and other sources.
Cross-network traffic. Cross-network traffic is all the people who came to your website from ads in the Google system, for example, search ads and display ads.
Social media traffic. Social media traffic shows people who came to your website from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, etc. To view information about social media traffic in Google Analytics 4, you need to build a custom report.
2. Landing pages
A landing page is the first page a visitor interacts with, aka, lands on it. It is not a specific page, it can be any page on your website and it can be different for every user. Knowing on which page visitors mostly land on, gives you helpful information about your marketing campaigns and UX (user experience) possibilities.
What information can you gain from knowing your landing pages
- On what keywords you are ranking in Google
- How your social media campaigns are working (when you provide a specific link to click on)
- Which landing page is the best entry point to your e-commerce store (which page as a starting point leads to more sales and more engagement)
How you can use information about landing pages to gain profit
If you know on which pages people mostly land you can optimize the page to gain the most profit, for example:
- Adding purchase buttons or sliders with products
- Showing the best deals and promotions you know people enjoy
- Pageviews
Pageviews show which pages people mostly visit when they get to your website. It doesn’t matter on which page they landed, it shows which pages are the ones people find the most on your website and on which pages they spend the most time on.
What information can you gain from knowing your most viewed pages:
- You can learn which pages are the easiest to find for your website users
- You can use these pages to showcase products you want to sell more or add links to other pages that might be useful for marketing or sales
4. Engagement
Engagement shows how much time people spend interacting with the content on your website. Ideally, you want people to browse your webpage for a long time and you want their session to end with a purchase. Also, keep in mind that one of the metrics Google Algorithm takes into account is how much time people spend on your page. The more they engage with your content, the better results you will get on Google.
What information can you gain from knowing your page visitors’ engagement time:
- The quality of your content. If you have written a blog post and people on average spend about 2+ minutes on this page, it means they are reading the article and enjoying it. Maybe they even click to the next one and read that one too.
- Whether people find what they are looking for. If people spend just a few seconds on any page, you can determine that they didn’t find what they are looking for. They scanned the page and realized the information they need, is not there.
- Whether people are interested in your products. If people spend a significant amount of time on a product page, it means they are reading the descriptions and checking the pictures. If people are spending lots of time on your product pages, but don’t make purchases, you can determine you might need to give a boost to your product pages. Maybe you need to improve your descriptions, maybe the price feels too high for them, or something else is confusing. That is something you can investigate!
- What kind of content do people gravitate more towards. You can see on which pages people spend most of their time – that is the content they like the most on your page. Based on that you can create similar content and build even bigger engagement.
- New and returning visitors
As an e-commerce store owner, you want to have returning as well as new visitors. Returning visitors indicate that people loved your product and want more. However new visitors show that you are growing and attracting more and more people to your e-commerce store.
If you have lots of returning visitors, but almost no new ones, you need to think about creating a marketing campaign to attract more customers. Or, if you have campaigns running, evaluate your existing campaigns and improve them.
If you have lots of new visitors, but almost no returning ones, it means your marketing campaigns are running great and bringing in lots of people. But you might need to work more on product quality, customer service, shipping, etc.
When evaluating new and returning visitors, definitely take into account the type of business you have. For example, an online grocery store will have weekly returning visitors, while a clothing store will have monthly or even quarterly returning visitors.
- Audience location
It is important to know your audience's location, so you know you are targeting the right group of people with your webpage. For example, if you are shipping just in the U.S., you need mostly U.S. traffic. Traffic from Europe or even Canada will do you no good. However, if you do get a lot of traffic from a certain place in the World, that you don’t ship to, you can consider starting shipping there.
- Demographics
Demographics metrics in Google Analytics show what age are your site visitors, what gender they represent and you can even get some idea about their interests. By knowing the demographic information of your audience, you can conclude what kind of people are attracted to your content and your product range. According to that information you can tweak your campaign styles, etc.
Conclusion
Learning more about your audience is a fun and exciting task. You get to know what they like, how they spend time on your website, where they come from, and what content they enjoy the best. It gives you valuable information that can help you grow your business to unseen heights. Be sure to visit Google Analytics at least once a month, analyze the information you can get from there, and use it to achieve your business goals!
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