As we have said several times, you must rely on solid numerical data to increase conversions. So the first thing to do is to monitor all the activities that users perform on your e-commerce, from adding products to the cart to sending contact forms to clicking on product sheets.
Until recently, to be able to monitor Events (such as clicks) with Google Analytics, it was necessary to intervene on the code of every single page manually. Luckily, things have become much easier thanks to the new and potent Analytics module, Enhanced Ecommerce.
In practice, it is a decisive evolution compared to traditional e-commerce monitoring to have full control over what is happening on your website: from the addition-removal of products to the cart, to the impressions on the products in the catalog cards, to the views of additional details, clicks on internal promotions.
In summary, activating Advanced E-commerce will allow you to:
- carry out “end to end” analysis of purchasing behavior
- understand checkout behavior through a specific and customizable funnel
- improve the strategic management of products
- improve the effectiveness of merchandising
- set up more detailed lists for remarketing
Table of Contents
Installing the Enhanced Ecommerce report
Depending on your CMS, different plugins can install the advanced e-commerce report.
If your Ecommerce is built with Magento, download this extension, which is very simple to install and is also free.
But pay attention to 2 important details:
1) if you have modified the code, the plugin will not be able to recognize the events associated with user behavior correctly.
You will have to contact a developer to enter the correct Data Layers that will allow you to keep track of different actions, such as adding/removing products to the cart.
2) The extension adds its own personal Google Tag Manager configuration to your e-commerce. This, on the one hand, allows you to save time in creating the pre-configured Tags.
On the other hand, it keeps you tied to an external Google Tag Manager installation that will not allow you to make changes.
If you have a developer on your team, leave this extension alone and ask him to set up the Google Enhanced Analytics tracking code as he does best (either manually or with Tag Manager, depending on his tastes/skills). This will give you more flexibility when making structural changes to your site.
You can find the analytics.js tracking code implementation guide here
If, on the other hand, you use Google Tag Manager, this is the guide for creating tags and the respective activation rules.
Once the Plugin is installed, you must go from your Magento dashboard to the System => Configuration item. Enter the Universal Analytics code and the URL of the Checkout and Success Page pages.
Then enter Google Analytics and, under Administration => E-commerce Settings, activate the advanced e-commerce reports.
Compared to the traditional e-commerce report, Advanced Ecommerce offers new metrics and reports to analyze your conversion flows. Let’s see some of the additional features:
Buying behavior analysis
This analysis is divided into two reports, which will be your most valuable allies in understanding how your users move along the conversion funnel.
Purchasing behavior
It shows all the stages that go from the user landing on your site to making a purchase. The channeling shown follows the following steps:
All Sessions => sessions with viewing products => sessions with adding to cart => sessions with payment procedure => sessions with transactions.
For each step of the purchase funnel, you’ll be able to see where users exit and take action to improve those pages. Very interesting is the analysis of impressions, i.e., all the times a product is displayed in a product list.
Checkout behavior
Shows the user funnel through the steps that form the checkout. Normally the flow is of this type: Cart => Purchase data => Summary => Sessions with Transactions.
In this way, you will be able to see to what extent your users pass the checkout procedure and intervene where necessary. For example, do you notice that many users leave the site on the purchase data entry page?
Try to understand if it is appropriate to simplify the page by minimizing the data required to make the procedure faster. Or, try to work on eliminating distractions or insert safeguards and social proofs to reduce any uncertainty factors.
These two conversion funnels detail user behavior on your site and bring 2 main benefits.
- You no longer have to create sales targets by specifying the different funnels for the different purchase stages.
- With a simple click on a phase of the funnel or on a red arrow of abandonment, creating a specific segment with surprising convenience is possible.
In the example below, I’ve created a segment for users who went through the first step of the cart but logged out before filling in their details:
Once you have given a name to the segment, you will find it among my advanced segments. You can use it to create customized reports or set up a remarketing campaign and re-intercept that particular audience inclined to buy.
New metrics and dimensions for monitoring your e-commerce
After installing the Enhanced E-commerce report, go to the “Product Performance” report. You will find numerous additional metrics and dimensions to evaluate your products’ impact on your audience.
Under “Purchase behavior,” you will find, for example:
- Product List Views – the number of times the product has appeared in a product list
- Product details view – number of times users viewed product details
- Product added/removed from the cart – number of times a product was added/removed from the cart
- Cart/detail report – product additions: the display of product details
- Purchase/detail report – unique purchases: view product details
You will be able to consult data based on different dimensions (“Product,” “Product SKU,” “Product Category,” “Product Brand”) in order to analyze the performance of your products based on the criteria by which your company organizes them.
The “Product Listing Performance” report shows you the performance of the categories in which product listings appear. For each category (Featured Products, Promotions, New Arrivals, etc.), you will see how often users have clicked on specific products, added them to their cart, or completed a transaction.
In this way, you will be able to understand which products are better to highlight within the different product lists and which ones, on the contrary, should be left more on the sidelines. Putting a product that is never clicked on top wouldn’t make sense.
In addition to product performance, measuring the internal and external marketing efforts you use to promote those products is important. Under “Marketing,” you will find four reports relating to the performance of your internal promotions (banners that link to another section of the site) and your coupons.
Finally, you can use the new Enhanced Ecommerce metrics and dimensions to segment your users based on their purchasing behavior:
In this way, as mentioned before, you will be able to create special segments to evaluate the effectiveness of the different brands and product categories, optimize their placement within the categories, and create unique lists for remarketing.
Conclusions
Advanced Ecommerce allows for a much deeper insight into user actions and behavior on your site.
By activating it and setting it up correctly, you will have the entire communication flow under control, from landing on the site to making a purchase, and identify the critical points where action needs to be taken.
So what are you waiting for? Run to activate your Advanced Ecommerce!
Also Read : Guide To Creating A/B Testing With Optimizely
