Top Metrics You Should Be Tracking Using Google Analytics

Insight is everything when you’re an eCommerce operator. Analytics is something that can help you understand where you are, compared to where you need to be. Moreover, Google Analytics is the primary tool that’s used to track all kinds of useful metrics.

In this article, we look at the top metrics you should be tracking with the popular web analytics tool, but first, for those new to the concept, we take a closer look at Google Analytics.

What Is Google Analytics?

Without wanting to explain things too deeply, Google Analytics is a web analytics tool that can be used for marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. It’s a service that comes with the Google marketing service and is free to use with your Google account.

It’s a service that can be used to track website performance, as well as collect visitor insights and allow businesses to determine how successful they are in marketing online.

This also helps by providing demographic insight, as well as trends and patterns within user engagement. So, it would be accurate to say that it’s a tool that many businesses will struggle to do without.

What Traffic Analysis Tells Us About the Customer Journey

As an eCommerce marketer, there are numerous advantages to being able to understand where your traffic is coming from. Analysis can help you:

• Measure your marketing efforts - when driving traffic to your website is the primary objective, traffic analysis gives you what you need to know.
  
  
• Better understand visitors you get - Google Analytics allows you to determine customer aspects like channels used and geographic location, making it easier to create targeted messages and SEO improvements.
  
  
• Get new content ideas - thanks to metrics like bounce rates, you can discover which of your website pages offer the best content, allowing you to ensure your messaging is aligned.
  
  
• Highlight site gaps - if you find that your customer journey is breaking down at a certain point, you can use the insight to improve the experience, eliminating gaps in your approach as you do.
  
  
• Focus on best-performing channels - when you know which are your best-performing channels, you can focus more of your effort there and achieve even greater returns.

As we can see, the insight provided by analyzing your traffic metrics can be key, so you avoid it at your peril! Now we get to the heart of the matter by looking at those top metrics.

Top Metrics to Track

Under the umbrella term of ‘analytics’, there are numerous metrics that can be tracked. Here we talk you through some of the most important ones.

Engagement Reports

Our first metric is engagement, which is measured by the different events that are triggered by the user. Be it on app screens or web pages, you can identify the areas of your website that get the most time spent on them. Analysis of engagement can also help you obtain important insights, like:

• Conversion rates from web pages
• Issues that provided friction to the buyer’s journey
• Errors that may have occurred
• Time spent before leaving your site and why that occurred

Engagement is key to understanding your marketing channels, ensuring that all elements are working together to attract visitors and convert them.

Monetization Reports

Our next metric is monetization, which, as the term alludes to, provides insight into the revenue that is generated from your website and overall advertising campaigns.

It’s also possible to use Google Analytics to identify the number of customers who view the products that you’re selling, as well as the quantity of ad impressions you’re getting.

Other subcategories that can be evaluated in this way are:

• Transaction information
• Average purchase value
• Average revenue per user
• Highest-performing subscriptions/products
• Customer lifetime value

Again, this is highly useful information that can help you understand which products and services are generating the most revenue for your business, allowing you to build upon it.

Data-Driven Attribution

Another great feature of Google Analytics is its machine learning, which helps eCommerce business owners to comprehend how each element of their marketing funnel is performing.

This represents a non-laborious way to understand the paths your customers take on the way to a converted sale. This methodology uses your account data to highlight the campaigns, ads and keywords that have the biggest impact on you reaching your business targets.

Ad Campaign Performance

There is perhaps nothing more important in terms of eCommerce metrics than the performance of your advertising campaigns. You’ve likely invested quite a bit of time and money into your marketing, so understanding what it’s producing is key.

By tracking your ad campaign performance, you’ll gain insight into metrics like:

• Number of conversions (including purchases/signups)
• Cost per conversion (how much does it cost to get a buyer?)
• Total number of leads your ads have produced
• Cost per lead (ad spend divided by leads generated)
• The number of clicks you’re getting on links in your ad
• Amount of times people viewed your ad/ads

By having a tight grip on these important ad campaign metrics, you’ll know exactly where you’re doing well and what needs to be adjusted. Without this insight, you can’t efficiently use your marketing budget and focus it where the best returns lie.

Making Better Business Decisions

Whichever way you slice it, data analytics are essential for eCommerce operators, as they allow marketers to make all kinds of decisions based on cold, hard facts.

It’s insight like the elements we’ve covered that can be used to ensure company growth, as it takes in the full gamut of factors from the competitive landscape to your own approach.

Their effect pervades everything you do as an online business, allowing you to improve productivity and streamline the processes that are holding you back. Actionable insights are worth their weight in gold, and you can bet your bottom dollar, your marketplace competitors are using them.

Know Your Business From Top to Bottom with Google Analytics

As they say, knowledge is power, and the knowledge provided by Google Analytics certainly fits into that category for online businesses. Utilizing Google Analytics to drive your marketing plans will help you understand what methods are most successful and how to best connect with your audience and grow your business.