E-commerce has helped several industries and businesses survive during the COVID-19 pandemic. It opened many boundaries created for traditional trade by the lockdown and enabled business owners to continue selling their goods and services.
However, many of these businesses do not know whether the website has the desired effect on their target audience. Therefore, they must use tools like Google Analytics to improve their business functions.
Owners like you can use it to acquire detailed information about the website traffic and sales. It can also become an essential component for your marketing strategy, enabling you to monitor and increase conversions. You may find Google Analytics a bit confusing, especially how to set it up and which metrics or reports to use.
We recommend that you look for useful guides for beginners that explain how to set it up. You will find articles that explain the steps of adding Google Analytics to WordPress and other e-commerce websites. We will talk about six awesome ways to use Google analytics for your e-commerce website in 2021 in this post.
Track Revenues
Obviously, any e-commerce website must track its sales and revenue data. That way, you can understand the areas that are meeting the financial goals and the ones that are falling short. Google analytics can answer some of the essential questions that you may have, such as:
- Which landing pages are getting the most conversions?
- How are people arriving on these landing pages?
- Which of your products are preferred by your target audience?
Instead of pondering over endless metrics and reports, you can set up the goals in Google analytics as per your requirements. That way, you can tailor your tracking methods for efficient landing pages and favored products. Once you have set up the e-commerce tracking on Google Analytics, you can use the conversions tab to monitor various sales and transaction reports.
Track Website Traffic
Google Analytics can give you detailed information about your e-commerce website traffic. You can get data for the number of visitors, pages visited, and customer demographic details.
You can generate detailed reports on traffic for your e-commerce website from organic, referral, social media, direct, and email sources. Since you can track the website traffic from various sources for different periods, you can monitor any increase or decrease.
Track Digital Marketing Campaigns
You can use Google Analytics to track the performance of your digital marketing campaigns for your e-commerce business. You can also track the performance of landing pages or sources used in the campaign that attracts maximum interaction from your target audience.
You will also learn which campaign pages that people use to complete a transaction. That way, you will know which ones are performing the best, so you can conduct your A/B testing accordingly. If you have added a video or a media link to your digital campaign, Google analytics will show you the number of purchases completed through them.
You will know which channels to re-target so that you can bring back the lost customers who did not complete the transactions. You can also get real-time updates for any ad campaigns that you are running on the website.
Understand Your Target Audience
Google Analytics can be used to get demographic details about your target audience, such as gender or age range. You can learn the type of devices used by your visitors and what their interests are.
Google Analytics can also provide details of your target customer shopping behavior so that you can understand their journey on your website. That way, you can adjust your campaigns and content for both new and returning customers.
Research Keywords
E-commerce website owners use Google analytics to get details of terms and keywords that their target customers are using before and while they are on your website. Therefore, instead of relying on generic keyword research, you can use Google Analytics for your SEO.
You can find keywords to rank higher for topics or products your target audience is looking for on search engines. You can also create buyer personas on Google analytics to understand what your target audience might need from your brand.
Track Abandoned Shopping Carts
Business analysts have reasons to believe that a large part of online purchases gets abandoned midway. So if you do not track shopping cart abandonment on your e-commerce website, you could be losing a lot of money.
The data from Google analytics enables you to understand and rectify any problems that may be stopping your customers from completing their purchase. You will have access to reports which show you the pages where your customers are abandoning their shopping cart.
Google Analytics is one of the most powerful tools for business owners. You can also link it to your Google AdWords accounts to get the required information for creating PPC campaigns.
However, knowing what you can do with Google analytics for your e-commerce business is half the battle. You have to take that information and formulate actionable steps to optimize a visitor’s experience and encourage conversions.