Beginners Guide to Understanding Google Analytics for eCommerce Stores

Paul Wynter
July 31, 2020

Every single day, eCommerce stores wage on a war against themselves for the consumer dollar. ECommerce websites face several challenges on a daily basis, which need addressing on the fly so that their numbers remain favorable. While they engage a lot of resources in overcoming these day-to-day hurdles, the task remains an uphill one. One precious ally in their daily battle comes in the form of Google Analytics.

What exactly is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is, without a doubt, the most powerful tool available to eCommerce companies. It provides vital insights that enlighten upon your website, its visitors, and where all they are coming from. Even when used in its most basic form with user-friendly functions, it can offer details such as the amount of traffic coming to your website and how it interacts with the site. This information then becomes valuable when it is used to find newer customers and enhance conversion rates. It helps you keep track of your website's problem areas and all the issues that cause visitors to leave your website and hinder conversion.

This is almost all that any essential website requires to benefit from data reports. But when we consider eCommerce websites, we need to go in deeper than just user interaction methods. It needs more information, such as how the actions specifically affect the sales figures on each of their products. Google Analytics provides the perfect functionality for eCommerce websites to capitalize on every opportunity and rectify the shortcomings daily.

How does Google Analytics help eCommerce websites?

Entrepreneurs in the world of eCommerce might get confused with all the technical aspects of Google Analytics and end up lost in navigating all the reports and functionalities. We shall try to provide a comprehensive post, including the basic understanding of Google Analytics and how to set it up for your eCommerce website properly.

1. Using On-site search to optimize content

Content optimization is one key element in eCommerce businesses. It is what differentiates successful eCommerce websites from unsuccessful ones. Successful companies always ensure that they provide customer value. But to do that, you must know what exactly your customer wants. Here is where Google Analytics comes into play. It has an in-built search report which offers us a comprehensive view of what the visitors are searching for on your website. This relieves sites from long conversations and surveys. The On-site search lets us pop in and get all the words, products, and content that the visitors have been looking for inside your website.

2. Get familiarized with the journey of the buyer

The buyer goes through an inner journey step-by-step before making a final decision to buy or not buying your products. Every business is associated with buyers whose journeys appear different from the others. Google Analytics can help companies to figure out which of your leads turn into sales and how. Most buyer's journey follows a distinctive path. They develop pain points at specific parts of the journey, and they come across queries, which change over time and need addressing instantly. A structured guide to these buyer journeys will help you track them properly and solve the pain points quickly.

3. Understanding customer's interest

eCommerce platforms get an overall view of the specific reasons why every customer visits their website through the Google Analytics Affinity Categories report. It also distinguishes the report based on demographics. It gives the eCommerce platforms an upper hand when they already know what interests their visitors beforehand. It enables them to make a sale and convert visitors into customers. The data provided by Google Analytics through the Affinity report eases the brand's alignment with the audience's requirements.

4. Manage SEO better through annotation

Running an eCommerce website can prove to be a pretty handful. You will be required to make decisions that may or might not provide dividends in the long run. But if you properly keep track of what worked and what didn't, it could turn out to be pretty helpful to your future decision making. Google Analytics provides a feature called annotations that allow you to stay informed and organized. You can keep a nice track of every occurrence of events that have a positive or negative effect on your business. Any action that redefines your business, such as a marketing campaign or redesigning the website is tracked meticulously. The process is also very easy.

Conclusion

Starting an eCommerce business and getting it to run successfully requires a lot of smart work and resources. One such handy resource is the effective use of Google Analytics for getting valuable business insights and working on them efficiently. It is easy to use and can prove to be business refining for eCommerce platforms.