If you want to scale your Shopify business, it's essential that you make adjustments based on data analytics and not assumptions.
But fear not, with Google Analytics in your arsenal, you'll be able to scale your business with ease. It's like a trusty GPS, guiding you to success with data-driven insights and real-time performance reports.
In this guide, we'll go over how to set up Google Analytics on your Shopify store and then walk you through the basics of getting started.
Lets gooooo!
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool that helps you measure your digital presence and make data-driven decisions. It’s the most widely used platform for measuring website traffic, goal conversions, mobile app usage, and more.
Google Analytics can help you better understand who your customers are and how they interact with your business online. Once you have Google Analytics implemented, you can see whether your campaigns were effective.
For example, you can determine how many users interacted with the campaign (i.e., saw or clicked on an ad) and how many of those interactions resulted in revenue for your business.
Why do I need Google Analytics?
If you are not using Google Analytics, you might have been using Shopify Analytics. Though you can still use Shopify Analytics, you will lose a lot of valuable information by not implementing Google Analytics.
It provides valuable insights into how visitors interact with your website, what drives traffic, and how customers engage with your products. By using Google Analytics, you can gain a deeper understanding of your customers and make data-driven decisions to drive sales, increase customer engagement, and improve the overall performance of your store.
Here are a few reasons why you need Google Analytics on your Shopify store:
1. Understanding customer behavior.
Google Analytics provides detailed information on how visitors interact with your website, including their location, device, and behavior patterns. This information can help you tailor your marketing and sales strategies to meet the specific needs of your target audience.
2. Improving website performance.
Google Analytics provides valuable insights into how visitors use your website, including which pages are the most popular, where visitors are coming from, and how long they stay. This information can help you optimize your website to improve engagement, conversion rates, and overall performance.
3. Missing out on valuable insights.
Without Google Analytics, you'll miss out on the valuable insights and data that can help you make informed decisions about your online business. You'll have limited information about how customers interact with your website, making it difficult to improve your sales and engagement strategies.
And without GA, literally, you will be like,
Google Analytics vs. Shopify Analytics.
Google Analytics and Shopify Analytics are powerful tools for tracking your store's performance, but each has unique strengths and weaknesses. It's like comparing apples to oranges - they're both fruits but different in their own ways.
Google Analytics is like a swiss army knife; it has many features, and you can use it to track almost anything. It's like the secret weapon for data analysis. On the other hand, Shopify Analytics is like a trusty hammer; it does its job well and is excellent for tracking actual store performance.
Here are some key differences between Google Analytics and Shopify Analytics:
1. In-depth analytics.
Your Shopify Analytics dashboard can give you a snapshot of your store's online performance and trends. It also has prebuilt reports that require minimal setup and are easy to use, but they have drawbacks (as explained above).
For example, if you want to know the breakdown of traffic sources or what devices are commonly used when making purchases, you will need to use Google Analytics. If you find that most of your users are accessing your site on a mobile device, this information can be used to optimize the user experience for those types of devices.
2. E-commerce Tracking.
Google Analytics provides robust e-commerce tracking capabilities, including sales, conversion rates, and product performance.
In contrast, Shopify Analytics focuses on core e-commerce metrics such as sales, order volume, and average order value. Now you might be thinking the same about Shopify:
3. Customization.
Google Analytics allows users to customize their reports, whereas Shopify Analytics doesn’t offer this feature. With Google Analytics, you can create custom reports based on specific parameters such as traffic sources or location. You can filter your data by device type (desktop, mobile), operating system (Android, iOS), and more.
4. Integration.
Google Analytics has a robust API that allows you to integrate your e-commerce data with other platforms, whereas Shopify Analytics doesn’t offer this feature.
This makes it easier for business users to access important information and make critical decisions based on the latest data.
5. Conversion tracking.
Google Analytics has a powerful conversion tracking feature that allows you to track every aspect of your website’s sales funnel, including how many people visit your store and how many people add items to their carts and then abandon them before checking out.
On the other hand, Shopify Analytics provides basic conversion tracking information such as sales and order volume, but its capabilities are more limited in comparison.
How to Add Google Analytics code to Shopify?
Here's the step-by-step process for adding Google Analytics code to Shopify:
Step 1: First, you will need to create a free Google Analytics account by going to https://analytics.google.com; if you already have a Gmail account, use that to sign in, or else create one for yourself and then log into analytics with it.
Step 2: The next screen will show you options for selecting between the website and mobile app. You must select "Website" as your tracking method.
Next, you need to enter a name for your analytics account. This can be anything—it's just a helpful label. Next comes the website name and URL; then, pick an industry category from the dropdown (leave this as-is). Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the Get Tracking ID button.
Click Get Tracking Id to start setting up your Google Analytics account. You can access your Google Analytics account when you agree with the terms and conditions shown on-screen.
Step 3: The first time you visit your analytics account, you will land on a page that displays all the information about your website. You'll see two crucial pieces of information:
1) The tracking ID and
2) A portion of the script code
Step 4: To view a tracking code in another section, click the Admin icon at the top of your screen. Under “property,” you can find "tracking info" and then scroll down to see which Tracking Code is active for that particular property.
Step 5: Now open your Shopify store dashboard. Go to the Online Store and open Preferences.
Step 6: Paste the tracking code into the appropriate Google Analytics account field. Click save.
From the Shopify admin, click Online Store >> Preferences, and in the Google Analytics Account field, check "Use enhanced e-commerce tracking."
Click Save, and you are all set to go.
How to Enable E-commerce Tracking?
Enabling e-commerce tracking codes gives you a clearer picture of the user experience. You can leverage two distinct options for implementing e-commerce tracking code:
1. Basic eCommerce tracking.
This helps you track the transaction and revenue data with the help of a confirmation landing page. Here's how you can enable basic eCommerce tracking in GA.
- Go to Google Analytics.
- Then click Admin Settings.
- Under Ecommerce Settings, turn the Enable Ecommerce button on.
2. Enhanced eCommerce tracking.
You can track users' interactions with your website before they purchase. This includes tracking what pages the user visits, whether or not items are added to their shopping cart, and if/when an order is placed (either successfully or resulting in a return).
Here's how you can enable enhanced eCommerce tracking in GA.
- Open your Shopify store dashboard. Go to the Online Store and open Preferences.
- Make sure the Use Enhanced Ecommerce option is turned on in Google Analytics, then click Save.
- Go to your Google Analytics and navigate through Admin Settings View>>Enhanced E-commerce Tracking button.
- Turn on the "Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking" button, and you are good to go.
What To Track With Google Analytics?
In addition to tracking the basics, such as page views and bounce rates, you can also track more specific data points in Google Analytics. These include
1. Traffic sources
Understanding your website traffic sources allows you to allocate your marketing resources effectively and optimize your website for better performance.
For example, if most of your traffic comes from organic search, you should focus on improving your Google SEO. If social media is a significant traffic source, you can invest in creating more engaging content for those channels.
By doing this, you can get more for every buck you spend on marketing.
2. User behavior.
User behavior metrics such as bounce rate, session duration, and pageviews per session provide insights into how users engage with your website. A high bounce rate, for example, may indicate that your website is not providing the information or experience that visitors are looking for.
By analyzing this data, you can identify areas for improvement, such as redesigning pages with high bounce rates or optimizing the website for better performance. If slight modifications can get more customers, why not leverage the same?
3. Conversion rate.
The conversion rate is a critical metric for online stores, as it measures the effectiveness of your website in generating sales. By tracking your conversion rate over time, you can identify trends and patterns, and make informed decisions about improving it.
For example, suppose you see a low conversion rate on a particular product page. In that case, you can analyze the page to identify design or content issues impacting the user experience. If everything works fine, the price tag or the number of reviews on the page might be the price tag.
But how can you pinpoint the exact reason? Well, shall we ask your users directly?
Yes, it's possible with BiteSpeed. It helps you knock down their DMs on WhatsApp to know why their cart abandonment is. You can automate the flow to ask customers about their reason for abandoning the cart and then reply with a customized solution.
This way, you can eliminate all the guesswork from your marketing efforts and focus on what matters.
This automation gets triggered when the user abandons the cart. You can customize the message per your brand tone, as this will help you recover your lost sales.
4. E-commerce tracking.
E-commerce metrics such as revenue, average order value, and transaction volume provide insights into the financial performance of your store. By tracking these metrics, you can determine the effectiveness of your pricing, promotions, and marketing campaigns and make informed decisions about improving your store's performance.
5. Product performance.
Product performance metrics such as product impressions, clicks, and sales allow you to understand which products are the most popular and in demand among your customers. This information can inform your product development and marketing strategies and help you decide which products to promote and stock.
If a product performs well, you can upsell/cross-sell to your existing customers through WhatsApp. Again, BiteSpeed will help you.
You can send automated upsell/cross-sell messages to your existing customers and potentially increase your revenue.
6. Customer demographics.
Demographic data such as age, gender, location, and interests provide insights into your customer base, which can inform your marketing and sales strategies. For example, if you see that a particular age group or gender is particularly interested in your products, you can create targeted marketing campaigns to reach this audience.
Pro tip: Create "Click to WhatsApp add" to lower ad spending.
7. Mobile performance.
Mobile performance metrics such as mobile traffic, sessions, and conversion rate provide insights into how customers use your store on mobile devices. By understanding how mobile performance differs from desktop performance, you can optimize your website for mobile users and ensure a seamless experience in your store.
8. Goals and funnels.
Goals and funnels allow you to track the customer journey from the first interaction with your store to the final conversion. By analyzing your checkout and purchase process steps, you can identify any friction points or bottlenecks impacting the customer experience and conversion rate.
For example, if you see many customers abandoning their carts during the checkout process, analyze the checkout page and make improvements to reduce friction and increase conversions.
To better understand what makes users abandon their carts and make them purchase the product, you need to give them a solid reason to complete the purchase. This is where you have to ask your users: what is stopping them from completing their purchase? If they say "Shipping cost" is their primary concern, you can try reducing or offering free shipping.
Oh yeah, we have an in-depth strategy too: How about boosting your sales with cart abandonment strategies?
Conclusion.
In conclusion, tracking key metrics with Google Analytics can give you a wealth of information about your Shopify store and help you make informed decisions to improve your store's performance. By adding Google Analytics to your Shopify store, you can gain insights into your customer behavior, conversion rate, e-commerce performance, product popularity, and more. Using business analytics will help you to track your customers behaviour.
And all boils down to effective sales when you leverage it right. Moreover, we know how difficult it will be for a Shopify store owner to manage the store and keep track of all the data. That's why you need a partner like BiteSpeed to help you get things done without lifting a finger. Yes, we are…
With BiteSpeed, you can utilize the data and turn that into a map that will help you make informed decisions to improve your store’s performance. From capturing the customer's information through popups to collecting reviews, it's the one-stop solution you need for your Shopify store.
No more abandoned carts to pore over like dirty dishes in a college dorm room; let BiteSpeed do the work for you, as we're here to save the day (or at least your sales). Schedule a demo and let's get revenue to your store; what say?
