What is Google Analytics ecommerce tracking and how to use it

If you have an online store, you can’t just depend upon the analytics reports provided by your shopping cart. You need to set up Google Analytics ecommerce tracking to get better reports.

By using Google Analytics ecommerce tracking , you can correlate sales data with website usage data. For example, You can see product and transaction information, average order value, ecommerce conversion rate, time to purchase, and other data.

Find the reports

You can find your ecommerce metrics on the Ecommerce Explorer tab of many standard reports. You can also see Ecommerce-specific reports.

1. Sign in to Google Analytics account. 
2. Navigate to your view.
3. Open Reports.
4. Select Conversations > Ecommerce.

Ecommerce tracking : Available data

Ecommerce data is composed of transaction and item data. Transaction data is made up of the information collected about each transaction that occurs on your site or app.

For example, there is Transaction ID -> Always collected and visible in reports -> The transaction ID (e.g. 1234) or you can find Affiliation -> Optionally collected -> The store or affiliation from which the transaction occurred. An item represents an individual products purchased as part of the transaction. For example Name -> Always collected and visible in reports -> The item name (Red jacket).

Based on the data you collected, you can develop an understanding of :

• Which products sell well, and by inference, which products are best suited for your customer base and which are supported by your best marketing efforts.
• The revenue per transaction, and the number of products per transaction. For example, if the number of products per transaction is lower than you’d like, you might benefit from offering better quantity discounts, or eliminating shipping costs if customers meet a minimum money amount.
• How long it takes customers to make the decision to purchase. If customers routinely make numerous visits before they purchase, you might think about a site design that leads more easily to your purchase pages, or options that let users compare your products and prices to your competitors.

Enable Ecommerce for a view

You need to enable Ecommerce for each view in which you want to see the data.

1. Sign in to Google Analytics account.
2. Click Admin and navigate to the view you want.
3. In the View column, click Ecommerce Settings.
4. Set Enable Ecommerce to ON.
5. Click Save.

If you are using Shopify, read our guide, how to set up Google Analytics ecommerce transaction pixel/tag.