They say content is king, but it’s data that places the crown. Having oversight of who is visiting your store, what they’re doing, and where they convert gives you an incredible advantage in eCommerce. Google Analytics for Shopify gives you this data and allows you to do great things with it.
Merchants drive traffic to their Shopify stores through organic traffic and paid ads. But how do they know which ads are effective? How do you know what kind of content you should be producing to drive more traffic to your site? Simple: data.
The key is knowing who your customers are.
If you understand your customers, then you can produce content that resonates with them and people like them. With data, you can target your ads to certain age groups, geographic areas, or prioritize ads on a particular social media platform that your target audience is likely to use.
Google Analytics can be integrated with your Shopify store to provide you with a full oversight of who is visiting your store, where they’re coming from, which pages they spend most time on, which pages they bounce on, what device they’re using, and more.
This data allows you to optimize your content, website, and marketing strategy to best fit the needs of your audience. It allows you to create sales funnels that will increase your site’s conversion rate, you can also improve your ranking on search engines by optimizing your SEO strategy, and much more.
The sheer volume and value of this information are not to be taken lightly. Using Google Analytics for Shopify gives you a birds-eye-view of your business and everyone who comes and goes to it. You can see who bought your products and how they got to your site, meaning you learn which content and ad campaigns are working, and which ones need the boot.
Shopify has its own system for collecting data called Shopify Analytics. Some merchants point out that Shopify Analytics goes into more depth when it comes to transactions because their system is integrated with your store at its heart.
However…
Shopify Analytics only credits the direct path that visitors take to get to your store and ignores previous campaigns that they may have interacted with. This is why pairing Google Analytics with Shopify Analytics is the best path.
Setting up Google Analytics for Shopify isn’t difficult. It’s essential that you get the first steps right, otherwise, you’ll make your life difficult further down the line. But first, make sure that you know how to set up a Shopify store.
Step 1: Sign up to Google Analytics using your main Google account. Also sign into your Shopify store and go to the Dashboard.
Step 2: Follow the instructions until you get your tracking code
Step 3: Switch back to your Shopify dashboard
Step 4: Go back to Google Analytics
Step 5: Go to ‘Audience’ in Google Analytics (it’s the little person icon on the far left of your screen)
You’ll have to wait for around 24 hours before Google Analytics starts analyzing the data it receives from your Shopify website.
Enhanced Ecommerce on Google Analytics allows merchants to gather deeper insights into transactions, marketing campaigns, and Shopping Behaviour Analysis.
I’ve covered how to activate Enhanced Ecommerce earlier in this article, in Step 4 under How to set up Google Analytics on Shopify (for profit).
Most merchants only scratch the surface when using Google Analytics for Shopify. I don’t blame them, it’s a difficult tool to master. The following hacks will allow you to get more out of Google Analytics and eCommerce analytics for Shopify to know your customers and explode your conversion rate.
If you’re not using audience data when strategizing your marketing campaigns, then I honestly don’t know how you’re going to make good sales. There’s a lot of data that you can bring into your marketing campaigns on GA, but the audience data is a great place to start.
Location reports allow you to better target ad campaigns and optimize your site for different countries.
Slow loading pages crush your conversion rate and cause you to rank lower on search engine results pages (SERPs). Google research found that 53% of mobile users leave a page that takes longer than 3-seconds to load.
Google Analytics allows you to identify slow loading pages so you can optimize them. You’ll likely notice that your bounce rate is higher on these pages. Go to Behavior > Site Speed > Page Timings.
Most users won’t wait three seconds for a page to load when browsing on mobile.
People point out that Google Page Speed Insights aren’t that important because they don’t always judge the overall speed of your website - they’re more focussed on improving its existing speed. This doesn’t mean you should ignore these reports, but make sure you’re testing your site speed yourself on a regular basis.
Using your internal site search data is a fantastic way to gain a deeper understanding of what your visitors expect from your site. If you see lots of people searching for a page you don’t have, then it’s probably time to build that page!
More than 50% of online shoppers go straight to the search bar when they land on an eCommerce store.
Go to Behaviour > Site Search > Overview to see a breakdown of your internal site search data.
Google Analytics doesn’t explore the Internal Site Search data well enough. The Boost Analytics feature allows you to measure how users interact with filters on your collection pages, including measuring the value of each filter.
Boost Analytics allows you to see internal site search terms that don’t show any results.
It also lets you see data for searches that don’t yield any results, which you can use to better meet user expectations. You can see synonyms and stop words that people use, and much more.
Install the Product Filter and Search app by Boost Commerce on the Shopify App Store if you’re serious about utilizing internal site search data.
Properly mapping the journey that users take on your website will allow you to plug exit holes, create better sales funnels, and increase your conversion rate. Go to Behaviour > Behaviour Flow to see the path users are taking on your site and where they’re dropping off.
Mapping the behavior flow allows you to track your funnels and plug drop off holes in your website.
Identify pages that have a high drop off rate and take steps to plug these holes. You can also try adding a Call to Action button somewhere on a page with a high drop off rate and see if this convinces users to dig deeper.
Your visitors should be able to get from their starting page to the checkout in three clicks. Try to funnel them to the product or collection pages you want to push.
Landing page reports are a gold mine for boosting your conversion rate. Go to Behaviour > Site Content > Landing Pages to see which pages people are being greeted by. You can use this information to optimize funnels from these pages to get users deeper into your product collections.
You might be tweaking your homepage every day when in reality most visitors are landing on your blog. This means you need to put more attention on your blog and set up sales funnels to get people from reading your content to filling out their card details.
Seeing where your site visitors are coming from helps you to find out what content works best on what platforms.
You can view information, including landing page reports, in Acquisition > Social > Overview / Landing Pages. This allows you to see where the people landing on different pages are coming from and how high the bounce rate is for this type of traffic.
For example, posting collection pages on Facebook might not be as effective at bringing in traffic as posting blog posts. You can recognize what works on social media and what doesn’t. The same tactics can be applied for Google Ad referrals and more.
Setting up goals and funnels allows you to measure the value of your customers. A funnel is a pathway of pages you expect visitors to follow to reach a goal.
If you don’t give yourself something to aim for, then how can you measure progress?
Goals could be receiving a sign-up, a purchase, or sharing a blog article on social media. A great example of a website goal would be a user reaching the ‘Order confirmed’ page, or a ‘Thanks for signing up’ page.
Tracking your goals helps you to measure the success of your website, sales, and marketing.
Go to Conversions > Goals to set and edit your website goals.
Funnels help you to make sense of other data, like exit pages. Setting up funnels allows you to identify pages that slow progress towards reaching a goal - these pages are known as bottlenecks.
It’s essential to make funnels if you want to continually improve your conversion rate.
You now have a deeper understanding of how to use Google Analytics for Shopify to boost conversions than most merchants. I haven’t covered every nook and cranny of Google Analytics. Quite simply, there’s just too much to mention.
One final thing that I will say is that you should combine the data you get from Google Analytics with more traditional data like customer surveys, product and UX reviews, and other user feedback. Always keep channels of communication open with users.
Finally, make sure that you also use Shopify Analytics to gain a deeper insight into the metrics of your store performance. Use Boost Analytics to get the most out of internal site search data and improve your SEO, UX, and better meet customer expectations.