Everyone who owns an online shop should carefully follow the statistics on customer behaviour, promotional campaigns and sales. In this way, we can find out which communication channels are the most effective, which assortment is the most popular and whether we are not burning our advertising budget for ineffective promotional campaigns. We will also take the opportunity to explore the sources of traffic in our shop and find out why customers abandon shopping carts. What analytical tools should be used to get to know the exact condition of our e-commerce?
Google Analytics in an online shop
Google Analytics (GA) is a top-rated tool for monitoring website traffic. With its help, it is possible to track user behaviour in real time, analyse the effectiveness of keywords selected for promotion, generate various types of reports or create user segments. This tool also supports data analysis in e-commerce. It is enough to add a unique tracking code to your website, and Google Analytics will aggregate the data and process it according to strictly defined rules.
What is important, GA also has a module dedicated to online shops. Thanks to it, e-commerce owners can analyse practically every activity performed by website users at every stage of the purchasing process. GA also allows you to estimate the average value of the shopping cart, determine shopping trends, analyse the conversion rate, research the time users spend on the website or even collect information about what visitors are looking for in a given online shop.
Where else can you get information about an online shop from?
Enhanced E-commerce
Although Google Analytics offers many options for analysing e-commerce data, it is not the only tool that e-shop owners should use. Equally interesting data is provided by the Enhanced E-commerce functionality of GA. Thanks to this plug-in, it is possible to analyse and measure users’ interactions with products in online shops, as well as study their behaviour or shopping path. Enhanced E-commerce also provides information on the number of displays of particular products, the number and frequency of clicks, products added to the shopping cart, payment status or returns.
A/B tests
A/B tests are one of the simplest and at the same time most effective ways to optimise the conversion rate. During their execution, two versions of one variable are compared. They may concern different aspects of your online shop’s functioning, for example, the colour of the CTA button or the title of the headline in the advertisement. We can perform them using Google Optimize, Optimizely or AB Tasty.
User tracking
Heat maps, screens and recordings are other valuable sources of information in e-commerce. With the help of tools such as CrazyEgg or HotJar, it is possible to better understand the shopping path of customers by tracking their behaviour on the site.
Qualitative research
Equally important in assessing the condition of an online shop are qualitative data. They provide us with simple optimisation tips. What tools are worth using? Qualaroo or Survicate will help you create simple surveys. By combining the quantitative data available in GA with those obtained from simple enquiries sent to users of our service, we get not only the answer to the question of what users visiting our e-commerce site do, but also why they do it. Just ask the right question, at the right time.
Data from social media
Popular social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn also provide their own analytical systems. Thanks to the data collected there, we get to know people visiting our company profiles better. We gain information about their age, interests and gender. We also know at what times they are most willing to interact with our brand and what type of posts they are most involved in.
All in one – Ecometrixo
There are many analytical tools available on the market, that effectively support the e-commerce industry. However, if we want to be able to analyse data in one place, it is worth getting to know Ecometrixo better. Thanks to this solution, e-commerce owners gain the ability to analyse key KPIs, expenses and revenues in real time. This is because one dashboard aggregates data from all channels that a given company uses in its daily work.
However, regardless of whether we are fully satisfied with the basic functions of Google Analytics, or whether we want to use the data available in other analytical tools, we should, first of all, take into account the adopted strategy of action during their analysis. Then we have a measurable point of reference that allows us to efficiently and precisely verify the short- and long-term objectives adopted.