E-Commerce Tracking

Previously I have discussed the enormous benefits that come from using Google Analytics to monitor statistics on your website, and in particular why tracking your goal conversions is vital.  In this article I am going to look a little more in depth at how you can track not only goal conversions but goal values allowing you to analyse in detail exactly how much revenue traffic sources,  your online advertising campaigns and keyphrases are bringing to your business.

If you have been following this blog I’m sure you will already have set up Google Analytics and added goal conversion tracking.  But if not that will be your first step to implementing a full e-commerce tracking solution.  Once your analytics account is fully set up you will need to ensure that Google is aware that your website is an e-commerce retailer.  To do this choose to “Edit Profile Information” in the analytics settings and ensure that the “Yes, an E-Commerce Site” radio button is highlighted.

You will also need to add a few simple lines of code to the receipt page on your website.  Google provide this code in their online help centre (located here) and it can be copied from there directly into your receipt page.

This code will inject some additional information into the data that is transferred to Google Analytics.  This includes information on both the transaction (for example the transaction ID, total sale value, shipping costs, and the city, state and country that the transaction was generated in).  In addition to the transaction data the e-commerce tracking code also send data specific to each item that was purchased in the transaction.  This includes the transaction ID (in order to track which transaction the item is related to), the product name, the category, the quantity ordered and the price of each unit.

As you can imagine this extra data provides huge scope for further reporting and analysis within Google Analytics.  While knowing which keyphrases are driving the most traffic and which are converting the most often is undoubtedly vital information it is even more important to know how much revenue they generate;  20 conversions on a product with very low profit margins for example may prove less useful to your business than one transaction on a product that is hugely profitable.

For most business owners profit margins form the bottom line, and the only way to accurately know how much profit is being generated from online marketing is to employ an e-commerce tracking system.

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In the last post I explained how to set up Google Analytics and use it to monitor a variety of useful statistics on your website and its visitors.  Today I am going to take a more in depth look at one of the most important, and useful, tools that Google Analytics provides its users:  goal conversion tracking.
Goal conversion tracking is a powerful resource for webmasters to have at their disposal as it allows them to track visitors’ progress through the site and identify both areas that appear to present visitors with problems and those that are working smoothly.  This information can be used to improve the problem areas; hopefully meaning that more visitors will successfully complete the goal.
A goal can be a variety of different things depending on the type of website and what they want to get out of their visitors.  For e-commerce websites the most common goal will be creating a sale, but sometimes it might also be desirable to track other things, such as when visitors sign up to a newsletter or fill out a contact form.

Setting Up Goal Conversions

Setting up goal conversion tracking in Google Analytics is actually a fairly straightforward process and the first step is to decide what the goal funnel is for each goal that you want to track.  The goal funnel is the route that a visitor must follow in order to successfully complete the goal.  In some instances there will simply be one step but the majority will require the visitor passing through a series of steps before the goal is complete; this series of steps is the goal funnel.  If, for example, the goal you are creating is to track sales that are made the funnel will likely involve adding a product to the basket, entering shipping information, entering payment details then confirming the purchase.
After spending time using your website to decide what the goal funnel you wish to track is you will need to configure the goal settings in Google Analytics.  To do this select to edit your profile and then click edit in the Conversion Goals and Funnel section.  Here you will need to set the goal to active and enter the final URL that, when displayed, will indicate the goal has been completed.
Finally you will need to define the goal funnel, to do this navigate to the Define Funnel section and enter the series of steps that you decided each user will need to progress through to complete the goal.

Analysing Goal Performance

After setting up a new goal conversion you will need to wait for a while (how long will depend on how much traffic your site generates) to allow data to accrue.  Once the data has built up log into Google Analytics and select to view the Funnel Visualisation Report in the Goals section.
This report will give you a visual representation of the funnel and explain how many people progress to each step and how many leave without progressing to the next.  Using this data will allow you to discover which points in the process you visitors are leaving, therefore highlighting which pages you need to work on in order to retain the visitors’ interests. For example if  85% of people who start the process progress to the payment page but only 20% complete the purchase there is a clear problem with the payment gateway page.  Perhaps you will need to consider adding more payment options or ensuring that visitors are aware your site is secure and their details are protected in order to try and decrease the number of people that desert their purchase at this point..

Tracking goal conversions should be a vital part of every website; in particular e-commerce websites where tracking sales is necessary in analysing how traffic flows through the site and how to generate a greater number of sales.

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