Creating an Ecommerce Tracking Plan for Google Analytics

The REI Ecommerce Website

Someone asked me how I would set up Google Analytics for an ecommerce website. And, before I get into all of the setup details, I wanted to lay the foundation from a business perspective. I’ll describe the Google Analytics features and how to configure them in another post. So this post is all about my [...]

5 Google Analytics Custom Variables for Ecommerce

Custom Variables for Ecommerce

I believe that every business can use Google Analytics custom variables. Especially ecommerce businesses. Custom variables inject new data dimensions that are crucial for segmentation. As analysts we need to do segmentation to understand user behavior. And ecommerce sites have certain unique behaviors that are not tracked with a basic Google Analytics implementation. For those [...]

Google Analytics E-Commerce Tracking Pt. 4: Tracking Lead Gen Forms

Google Analytics Transaction Report for Lead Gen Site.

One thing that I try to stress in my client work and training is that Google Analytics is a platform. If you understand the framework you can use it to track many different things. E-commerce tracking is one part of Google Analytics that is particularly flexible and can be used many different ways. There’s a [...]

Google Analytics E-Commerce Tracking Pt. 3: Why EVERYONE Should Use It

Google Analytics Visits to Transaction Report

The Google Analytics e-commerce reports contain two specific reports that I believe are critical to understanding the behavior of site visitors: Days to Purchase and Visits to Purchase. These reports are the only way to measure the online sales cycle using Google Analytics. But, as their names imply, these reports are focused on commerce. But [...]

Google Analytics E-Commerce Tracking Pt. 2: Installation & Setup

Google Analytics E-Commerce Reports

This is part 2 in my series on Google Analytics e-commerce tracking. In part 1 I described, at a conceptual level, how GA e-commerce tracking works. In this post I’ll get into the specifics of the code and how to install it. This isn’t the most exciting stuff (that will be part 3), but a [...]

Google Analytics E-Commerce Tracking Pt. 1: How It Works

This post is the first in a series of e-commerce transaction tracking with Google Analytics. Why is e-commerce tracking important? Well, transaction data is a vital piece of information when analyzing online business performance. Sure, it’s great to measure things like conversion rate, but revenue is much more tangible to many business owners. Having the [...]