Turn more shoppers into buyers with Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce

The Weekly Shop

Enhanced Ecommerce is the latest feature to come to Google Analytics and is the first feature utilising the power and potential of Universal Analytics. Universal Analytics for those that don’t know is a tracking code update that lays the foundations for cross device tracking, data import, custom dimensions and metrics. Most importantly, it means you can stay up to date with new features and updates such as Enhanced Ecommerce.

As Google says, “Together they help online retailers see further and understand customers better than ever before.”

We’ve been utilising Enhanced Ecommerce for a number of our clients and thought we’d share some insight into how implementing Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce can have a big impact on a retailer’s revenue:

  1. Shopping behaviour analysis – This feature allows you to see how many people view products, add them to the basket, start checkout and most importantly convert. The new setup will offer greater insight over the current goal and funnel, allowing retailers to identify problems in the checkout process and any issues that arise when customers are moving from the basket to checkout.
  2. You can also analyse how far shoppers get in the shopping funnel and where they drop off. It allows you to understand which products are viewed most, which are frequently abandoned in the basket and which ones convert well.
  3. Upload refund data – Previously, Google Analytics didn’t support refund data. With Enhanced Ecommerce, you can see what channels and products are refunded the most and identify what patterns are linked to returns to get a more accurate calculation of ROI and product popularity.
  4. Upload product categories – This allows you to see which product areas are under performing. You can see which product categories perform well and at what times of year and then make decisions based on seasonal historic analytics data.
  5. Discounts – retailers can now see the true effect of their discount codes as these can now be recorded with every transaction.
  6. Internal promotions – For the first time, retailers will be able to garner a greater understanding of how effective their internal promotions really are.
  7. Segments – This last feature allows you to create segments directly from funnel reports and see which products were abandoned and on which devices so you can target and recapture those users.

All these features will require some development to ensure the data is being recorded, but once implemented the potential returns to retails looks pretty impressive. We’ve started building this feature in for some of our clients and are already starting to gain some valuable insights into shopping behaviours of their customers. Again, Google does the best job of a summary here and states that “Enhanced Ecommerce is all about the bottom line. We’ve designed it to help you improve your total experience and turn more shoppers into buyers.”

Leave a reply

What do you think? Please leave a comment below

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *