E-Commerce Tracking in Google Analytics: Set-Up, Rookie Mistakes & More

Google Analytics is a digital marketing tool that allows business owners to analyze the clicks, feedbacks, and visits on their websites and business social media accounts. As a business owner, it is quite beneficial for you to set up E-commerce tracking as it would help you to know how to improve your page to suit your clients.

The world has gone digital to the extent that virtually anything can be done on the internet, not excluding commercial awareness. It used to be the days of advertising businesses in newspapers and billboards.

But, guess what? Digital marketing is a big deal today. According to Data Scientist, Clive Humby said, “Data is the new oil”.

As part of reaching out to your existing and prospective customers, the E-commerce tracking in Google Analytics helps you to keep tabs on the statistics of how people are performing on your web page(s). Suppose you put out a paid advert for your business on Google asking people to check out your website or Instagram account, you can easily analyze visitors on your website.

By doing this, you will also be able to decide which particular individuals to target with your adverts.

Setting up an E-commerce tracking is quite easy as long as you follow these necessary steps.

Steps Required to Activate E-Commerce Tracking

1. Create a Google account

The first vital step required for you to track your electronic commerce is to create a Google account. Creating an account allows you to set up tracking on the adverts as well as contents on your business’ website and social media pages. You will also be able to check how your customers are performing on your website, customers’ behavior and what your focus should be on.

To create a Google account, access theGoogle Analytics page and then follow the procedures necessary to create an account. Once you have created an account, you will be requested to provide a website that you intend to track for your E-commerce. After providing the business website address, you can then proceed by clicking on the “Get Tracking ID” icon.

2. Install the provided Tracking ID on your E-Commerce website

After you have created a Google account and have obtained a tracking ID, you will have to install the tracking code on your website so that data generated on your website can be sent to Analytics to analyze. This tracking code installation can be done by copying and pasting the tracking code assigned to you on every single page on your website.

3. Set up customer behavior and goals tracking

There are a whole lot of goals that you can track with Google Analytics.

To add these goals to your e-commerce tracking, select the Admin panel icon on the bottom left from the right-hand menu bar. Once you do this, tap on E-commerce settings displayed on the right column, and then click Enable E-commerce and switch on Enhanced E-commerce.

From there you need to add the right tracking code for your products and items to the thank you pages people encounter when they complete a transaction on your site. This video provides a clear overview of the steps involved:

Several people make mistakes while trying to set up E-commerce tracking. Such mistakes could be as little as forgetting to tick a hidden box or more. We’ll cover this in the next section.

If you are a brand interested in A/B testing and optimization, most CRO tools like Convert Experiences play nice with Google Analytics, providing tight integration with the platform and allowing the import of GA goals directly into their system.

Rookie Mistakes Made While Setting Up E-commerce Tracking in Google Analytics:

1. Missing tracking code

A lot of websites who report about not being able to track their websites properly are often found to have missed inserting the tracking code on all pages of their site. As much as this mistake seems insignificant but could prove to have a remarkable implication on your website tracking.

Such implications include lower reporting of the traffic earned on your website such that you do not have access to all data of people visiting your e-commerce website.

Missing tracking code can also cause what is called a blind spot, that is, the inability to view what your prospective clients are looking at on your page before they decided to make a purchase.

2. No Analytics code on the subdomain

A subdomain remains a vital part of every brand or commercial organization. A mistake such as having missing analytics code on your subdomain may deny you access to seeing how customers interact with the contents that you put out on your website and subdomains.

3. Incorrect admin settings

The admin settings on your Google analytics are very vital as they can determine the fate of your tracking. Most companies or business owners do forget to exclude their IP addresses. As a result of this, they tend to mix up the staff data for that of existing and prospective clients which renders the tracking ineffective.

4. Incorrect destination page

One important thing that you must ensure during the tracking setup is that your goals are attached to the right destination pages on your site.

Most users make the mistake of tying their goals to the wrong page and then end up getting unexpected reports. To correct this, you should always ensure to double-check your destination pages.

Other mistakes include internal referral exclusion list, single goal with different goal funnels,  unspecified targeting forgetting to exclude robots and search engine spiders from the e-commerce tracking, and several others. You should try as much as possible to be careful not to make some of these mistakes in tracking your website.

The next step involved in the very vital tracking is Reporting. This is exactly how Google Analytics presents the result of the tracking process that is done on your website.

 If you would like to view your e-commerce statistics, click on Insights and then Reports and thereafter, eCommerce. Once you have made some sales on your website, you can check the reports of traffic periodically. Just login to your Google Analytics account, then proceed to Conversions, e-Commerce and click on Overview. 

How E-commerce Tracking in Google Analytics Plays Well with Testing Tools

As already discussed, Google Analytics plays well with most A/B testing tools. Being the preferred free and robust data slice and dice tool of most marketers with an analytical bent of mind, Google Analytics not only serves to point testers in the direction of possible improvements, it also ties to the back-end of A/B testing tools like Convert Experiences allowing detailed revenue tracking and goal tracking.

All you have to do is copy and paste the Convert Experiment code immediately after the title tag on your website.

Ensure that you carry out this testing using the latest version of Google Analytics E-commerce tracking. Avail yourself the opportunity to determine the rates of conversion from activities made by your existing and prospective clients on your website.

Reports that You can View with Google Analytics

• Real-Time shows what happens on your website in real-time.
• The Audience shows reports of how audiences are visiting your website.
• The Acquisition shows the rate at which the traffic from each source was converted into revenues, that is, it shows the conversion rates.
• Behavior shows the activities and behaviors of visitors while they are on your website
• Conversions show information on sales and revenues.

Going by these steps, setting up an E-commerce tracking service on your Google Analytics is quite easy. The benefits you stand to get from this are numerous.

With the right data and insights into your website performance, you will be able to take the required decisions on how to grow your commerce. The best way to track your business’ websites and social media pages is through Google Analytics. These simple setup steps will help you actualize your business tracking goals.