Data can be more valuable than oil. To make sure you’re handling such a valuable asset effectively, use Google Analytics E-Commerce Tracking to make your life easier

In today’s world your website is like your storefront. Websites are viewed as branches for product and service brands (headquarters even, for some businesses). The reason for this is that consumer behaviour has shifted to rely heavily on online platforms, which makes the online market an important one for almost all businesses. Therefore, collecting data using tools such as Google Analytics is essential for you to be able to analyse and modify your website or online shop to operate at maximum efficiency.  

In this article, we will introduce you to this brilliant tool which is essential for any business with a website, especially if you would like to conduct e-commerce tracking. 

What is Google Analytics or GA?

Google Analytics is a free tool from Google that collects data on the visitors to your website. The idea is to use that data to analyse and make decisions on different areas of your business, such as marketing strategies, ad purchasing, UX/UI design, and so on. All of this is done to enhance the experience for your website visitors. 

Moreover, Google Analytics can tell you which one of your products or services receives the most attention. This means that you can solve any problems in a timely manner, and access other business growth opportunities as well. The data that GA collects is important data such as gender, age, and device used to access the website (so you can discover which is used most, mobile or desktop, and improve the stability of your website accordingly). 

The GA tool can also tell you where your visitors are coming from, for example, from a link shared on Facebook, through Google search results, clicking on a Facebook ad, or other channels. In addition to this Google Analytics looks at user behaviour including the number of pages accessed by a visitor, time spent on the website, products purchased from the website, and more in-depth data such as who accesses your website, and the age range that makes the most purchases. You cannot buy this data elsewhere, you have to collect it yourself. It’s certainly worth it to help you improve your website’s efficiency. 

And this is the reason you should use Google Analytics.

**Note: Google Analytics is a tool for tracking and viewing results only. If you want to install tracking codes, you have to do it via a tool called Google Tag Manager (GTM). 

What’s in the GA Reports Menu? 

Real Time

This number shows the real time sessions on your website, and which pages were visited. This is presented in the form of a real-time graph.

*1 session lasts for 30 minutes so 1 user can have many sessions.

Audience 

An overview of visitors to your website including age range, interests, location, and device and operating system used when accessing your website. 

Acquisition

Tells you where your visitors came from, for example, through Google (organic search), by clicking on Google ads, typing your direct link into the browser, through social media platforms, and so on. This information can help you improve your website to increase access from each channel. 

Behaviour

This menu will tell you which pages are visited most and which page people go to next, plus the number of clicks to other pages. You can use this data to improve the usability of your website.

For example, if a customer repeatedly clicks the ‘add to cart’ button, but your sales rate doesn’t align with the statistics, you may need to see if there’s a problem with your payments page. 

Conversions

You have to set which website activities count as conversions for your business. Generally, if a user stays on a website for more than three minutes then that is counted as a conversion. For an e-commerce website, you may set conversions as when someone clicks the ‘Add to Cart’ or payment button, for example. 

You can set and track up to 20 conversions in Google Analytics. This data can help you narrow down the target group for your Google Ads campaigns, or plan your marketing strategy. Google Analytics will calculate and display the percentages (Conversion Rate) so that you can view the data in an easily digestible format. 

How to use Google Analytics 

To create an account, the first thing you need is a Gmail account (if you don’t have a Gmail account, you can create one at https://mail.google.com/). The sign-up process is as follows: 

1. Go to https://analytics.google.com/

2. Click the blue button: ‘Set up for free’

3. Create your account name, then click Next

4. Choose the platform you want to measure, select Web, then click Next

5. Fill in the information required, then click Create

6. Next the Terms and Service Agreement page will show up, choose Thailand in ‘Country’, click to accept both points, and then click ‘I Accept’

7. The system will then show this page (accessed by clicking the gear icon in the bottom left corner on the Property tab, click Tracking Info, then select Tracking Code). Copy the code (Global Site Tag) and install it on your website

8. Wait for Google Analytics to update the data, which can take up to 48 hours, then you can start tracking the data on your website

E-Commerce Tracking

In short, E-Commerce Tracking is the tracking of consumer behaviour via e-commerce website data. It is the same as using Google Analytics to track but the difference is that E-Commerce Tracking tracks the purchase and sale of products, so that shop owners can use the information to analyse and develop their marketing strategies. We use the feature called Enhanced E-Commerce to track the results.

The data you’ll receive by installing Enhanced E-Commerce will include: the channels visitors used to access your website, your best selling products, total sales in THB, the most used payment method, popular shipping methods, etc. To put it simply, every action the customer takes on your website will be available for you to analyse. 

We all know how important data is these days. If your business has its own website, we recommend installing a tool like Google Analytics to collect data on the visitors to your website. That is treasure that you cannot buy. Sure, there is perhaps some information which can be bought, but specific information about people who visit your website, only you have access to.