Do you currently sell a product or service online? Google Analytics offers a number of reports that can allow you to monitor and continue to improve your website in order to sell more products. Here are a few reports to get you started:
Goal Tracking
This is probably the biggest and most helpful report if you sell your product online. If you don’t currently use this feature, make sure to set it up as soon as possible.
- What is it?
Google Analytics goal tracking allows you to define a page (among other options) that a user will need to visit. Once they do, they have completed a goal. If they visit the website but never get to that page, then your conversion rate will reflect it. - How will it help me?
By placing a goal on the “thank you” or “order confirmation” page you can determine which type of users are more likely to convert. In addition, you can easily run reports to see the effectiveness of any online advertising or marketing campaigns. If you would like information on how to set up this report, click here.
Goal Flow
This report goes hand-in-hand with goal tracking. In order to use this, make sure you have goal tracking set up.
- What is it?
The goal flow report allows you to see the path a user took through your website to complete a goal. It will show the common pages they visited or paths they took. - How will it help me?
If the purchase process on your website takes several steps to complete, a user might abandon the process before they complete the purchase. The goal flow report allows you see which pages people are leaving from which would allow you to make changes or simplify the process in order to increase the goal completion rate.
User Flow
The user flow is similar to the goal flow but it does not require any set-up.
- What is it?
The user flow allows you to see the common pages and the order that a user visits them. This report will show what page a user started on and all of the pages they visited before leaving. - How will it help me?
Any report that allows you to better understand your users is worth looking at. If one of the common paths doesn’t include the purchase screen, this could be an indication that users can’t find it. Thus, adding more “buy now” buttons could be helpful.
There are a number of other reports within Google Analytics that can help you monitor your website’s performance. In addition, these reports can provide valuable insight into areas of improvement. You may have an idea of how users utilize your website but Google Analytics gives you the data to back it up.
If you would like help understanding your report data, contact Informatics.
Make sure to check out our Google Analytics videos for more reporting tips and tricks.
photo credit: Maria Elena via flickr cc
