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You have an e-commerce website and you want to setup tracking. It is possible to do, regardless if your shopping cart software is located on the same or on a different domain than that of your site.
We at HowToHosting.guide are going to show you how to implement tracking and have access to analytics in this hereby guide for beginners.
What is E-commerce Tracking in Analytics?
Analytics E-commerce Tracking is a feature through which you can track e-commerce data of a website, such as the following ones:
- Sales Amount
- Number of Orders
- Billing Location
- Average Order Value
Simply put, Analytics E-commerce Tracking will allow you to get detailed information about the visitors of your website, how they found it, if they bought something, what and for how much, etc. in the form of Complex reports.
Said reports could have their parameters modified to be made simpler and easier to understand in a shorter amount of time.
What you will need is to integrate Analytics software or a dedicated application to see the above-listed metrics and set up a Javascript tracking code to your e-commerce website.
If you do not have one, you should know how to Create a Website for E-commerce.
How to Setup a Tracking Code?
As Google Analytics is free and everybody can use it, let us view how to setup a tracking code in it and use it in a few easy steps.
You can install another Analytics program, but the one from Google is the most popular and arguably the most powerful one. So let us show you how to become a manager of a Google Analytics account, below.
Make a Google Analytics Account
To begin the process, go to the official website of Google Analytics. Afterward, you need to set up a new account, if you do not already have one.
During the setting up phase for your account, you will be prompted to enter the URL to your e-commerce website. Place the main link to the home page of your website there as asked in the appropriate field labeled My Website Name.
After entering all of your data settings, you will be asked to obtain a personal Tracking ID number. This is crucial, as you need to make certain to click on the button labeled Get Tracking ID to receive your very own Tracking ID.
Setup Your Analytics Tracking Code
The next step after generating your personal Tracking ID for your e-commerce website, you will need to copy the code shown in the following screenshot:
In case you need more insight about it, you should check out the Google Analytics e-commerce demo account. That will help you to familiarize, in no time, with the data that can benefit you.
The long code you saw displayed on the above screenshot will be inserted into the tag or tags on your websites. Be certain to place this on all pages of your website that you would like to keep track of.
Various different Content Management Systems such as WordPress have plugins that can do the whole process in an automatic fashion. Some people prefer a plugin doing the work automatically to avoid mistakes.
Enable Tracking of E-commerce Analytics
As you have your Analytics Tracking Code installed onto your e-commerce website or websites, you must enable the e-commerce settings.
You should navigate to them via the the Admin panel, and more specifically through Admin > View Settings > Ecommerce Settings.
Inside of this menu, make sure to enable Ecommerce Settings and Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting as shown in the picture below:
That is all there is to it. Now you need to research and test different metrics and variables inside the Analytics platform.
In case you want to measure shopping behaviors and purchases on site, you will need to delve deeper into the Google platform with Enhanced Ecommerce Data.
As a follow-up, you have to set up a few Javascript codes to be able to access these in-depth analytics. Under the name of gtag.js, you will find these scripts which allow you to send the following to Google Analytics:
- Impression Data
- Product Data
- Promotion Data
- Action Data
Google also has a dedicated troubleshooter when it comes to disambiguation of various questions you might have of this huge platform.
The easiest step, which requires money, is to pay a developer who can integrate Google Analytics Tracking with your e-commerce websites for you, in no time. But given how easy it is, you should do it by yourself if you have the time.
E-Commerce Reports
Specific reports are made available once you have connected Google Analytics to your e-commerce website. You can gain access to all reports by navigating to Reports > Conversions > Ecommerce.
Let us review the main types of Analytics E-commerce reports, such as the ones present in Google Analytics. You can analyze everything from your audience to your conversions with the help of these reports.
The Audience Report
An Audience Report is called that as it provides you with insights into your audience, such as their general behavior, geographical location, demographics, what device they used, and more.
It gives you a general overview into how well is your website performance, with metrics such as page views, bounce rate, new and recurring users, plus the average session duration of visitors.
The Acquisition Report
Acquisition Report is insightful as to your website traffic and everything related. For instance, you can see whether your traffic is coming from:
- Social Media
- E-mail Campaigns
- Organic Search
- Direct Traffic
- Referral Links
Know that it could also track other sources of information which can help you understand the origin of your traffic, as in how you acquired said traffic.
The Behavior Report
The Behavior Report delves into the behavior of your visitors, such as what pages they are looking at, how much time they spend on those pages, the actions they take, how much time it takes for your website to load the pages, as well as other information.
Behaviors Report is beneficial into providing an understanding of how your visitors are navigating through your site. That is inexplicably useful for E-commerce site design, as it indicates what is proper and working okay and what should be improved.
The Conversions Report
Last, but not least of the main types of reports is the Conversion Report. You should know that the Conversions Report is crucial. This report shows in-depth information about each of your conversions.
You will also be able to tamper with settings and modify goals as well as choose from different conversion types for tracking by making it a habit of checking your Conversion Report.
Conclusion
The basics needed to setup E-commerce tracking are covered in the above paragraphs of this guide for beginners. We hope that you have understood everything and now know what to do to start.
Google Analytics or other Analytics tools can be used and it is up to you to learn how to use them, what interface you feel more convenient and easy for you to learn to use.
Here are more guides for beginners that are related and can be quite useful:
The Beginner’s Guide to How to Host a Website
Beginner’s Guide to Digital Advertising
Email Marketing – The Beginner’s Guide
Beginner’s Guide to Image File Types and Formats