When you have a business, you spend your days with numbers. To name a few ; product costs, inventory, delivery time, followers, and so on. When you run an online store, you keep track of the numbers, e-Commerce KPIs, with the Google Analytics Dashboard. However, something about numbers makes us avoid or neglect them.
Please follow along if you feel intimidated or overwhelmed by the Google Analytics dashboard.
This guide aims to help you navigate the data maze and explain how to use eCommerce KPIs to derive actionable insights. Overall, it will walk you through the process of tracking the most important eCommerce metrics using the Google Analytics dashboard.
To track eCommerce KPIs with Google Analytics (GA), start with building a daily routine of checking the KPIs in this guide. This helps you to become acquainted with numbers and feel less intimidated. By tracking the eCommerce KPIs every day, you know what these performance indicators mean, and how your store is performing.
In terms of eCommerce, the key performance indicators, or as I like to call them, key pieces of information are the following. Tracking these numbers can help you validate your offer and instantly tell you about your store’s health.
The main eCommerce KPIs to track are:
· Number of Sessions
· Revenue
· Conversion Rate
The number of sessions is the traffic that your store receives. It is different from Users.
When tracking the main eCommerce KPIs, you need context to know what these numbers mean. In general, you aim to improve your store’s performance week on week. To add context, compare for example the values of today with the day before (today vs yesterday) and track the values of the last seven days with the week before that. The context functions as a comparison tool, comparing your store’s performance at different points in time. To observe trends, analyze the data over a longer period. For example, by studying the data of the last thirty days or the last ninety days you will see a certain pattern develop. This is called a trend. As a rule of thumb, the more data you have, the more accurate the trend is.
In the Google Analytics dashboard, you can find the values of the main eCommerce KPIs at the top of your page under Google Analytics Home. While studying the data, focus on what stands out and ask yourself:
The user metrics trend of today compared to the one of yesterday gives you a sense of user behavior. You see in the graph of Image 1 that the number of users peaks in afternoons, followed by another peak in the evening. It is safe to say that this user trend will repeat itself every day except when you launch a campaign or start a promotion. To check the user behavior of your store in Google Analytics, go to Audience/Overview, set your screen to last thirty days, and click on hourly. Google Analytics will now plot the user trend by hour over the last thirty days. Knowing the user trend is a practical insight to align customer service hours or to help you determine when to launch new products or start a promotion.
Another important variable to study is the ratio between returning and new visitors. When studying this ratio, keep in mind to check how big each group is, how much revenue they generated and what the conversion rate is. By doing so, you will learn that your returning visitors are a lot more valuable than your new visitors. This is because customers will become more familiar with your brand and interested in your offer and convert easier than new visitors (GA Audience/Behavior). Therefore, it is important to study this group when you look for opportunities to grow your sales. If you have just launched your online store, the share of new visitors will be 99%, but you can achieve a more balanced ratio by starting a newsletter for example or using text messages to keep your customers informed about new products launches or promotions.
You may wonder, how do people find my store? which channel is working best for me?
To answer this question, study the ratios of traffic sources (GA Acquisition/ Overview). This helps you understand how customers arrive at your store and how much they buy.
Your analytics dashboard shows the ratios between direct, organic, referral, and social traffic. With this data, you can check for example, if your SEO and marketing efforts are paying off or not.
Ultimately, you want to achieve a healthy (read profitable) balance between free traffic (direct/organic traffic) and paid traffic (referral, social media ads).
Traffic Sources GA Dashboard
Following is a short explanation of what these traffic channels are:
- Direct traffic lands on your site when a user writes your website’s address (websitename.com) in a web browser. The browser will bring the user directly to your site.
- Organic traffic comes from users who type search keywords in a search engine, click on one of the results that matches the best, and land on your website. The performance of this channel is linked to your SEO efforts and paid keywords search.
- Referral traffic consists of users who click on a link and land on your page. The users flow from one site to your site.
- Social traffic is the traffic that comes from your social media channels like Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube.
In your eCommerce analytics dashboard, study the number of users of each channel, the revenue generated, and the conversion rate. To see if your SEO efforts are paying off, check how the number of users of organic search has developed since you started with SEO and compare it to the previous period. As mentioned before, the more data you use in your comparison, the more accurate your insights are.
Marketing costs can be a big part of your expenses if you want to grow your customer base. To cut back on marketing expenses and optimize your advertisements, dive into the demographics of your users (age, gender, country/city)(GA_Audience). This can help you build a user profile of your current users. While studying the numbers, look for example where most of your customers are located and what the conversion rate is by city. Keep in mind to look for trends and focus on what stands out. You can also check if a particular age group stands out when you study the conversion rate by age. If so, check the users’ and revenue share (%) of this age group. If the users share is relatively low but conversion is significantly higher, you can test if increasing the number of users of these high converting users will improve your sales.
Other useful e-Commerce metrics to understand your audience concerning your store are
1. GA Audience/Overview
2. Pageviews/session: How do users interact with your website? do they like what they see? if users are only visiting one page, which page is this? is it enough to place an order and pay?
3. Avg visit duration: Are users spending enough time on your site to find your product and go to check out? They probably need at least two minutes to add something to the basket and pay. Lastly, what is the preferred device for browsing your site? Study the current ratio between mobile and desktop users, and you will learn what the most preferred device is for your users to visit your shop.