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The data is essential to expansion. It lets you know how your customers are responding to your marketing campaigns so you know what's working and what to improve in order to boost revenue. A lot of store owners do not make use of the data available to them however taking even a little bit of time analyzing your data leads to faster revenue growth.
In this piece we'll explore the methods to gather and analyze basic reports if you're just beginning to get started. In the next article, for more advanced users, we'll look at two brand new features that will make things more efficient: UTM tracking and Google Analytics Pro.
If you're only beginning
If you're not sure what the various figures mean, start tracking right away. The sooner you start recording data, the more information you'll have to analyze as the time comes.
Note: Click any image within this article to view an in-depth look.
The above report provides a wonderful instance of the staggering information available through Google Analytics. The report can be found by navigating to Acquisition Overview. Overview. You can see the volume of traffic from a variety of broad (social media organic, natural, referral traffic and more.) sources, as well as the bounce rate and amount of pages visited for each. Additionally to the right screen, you'll be able to look at the revenues that are attributed to each source.
If you click on a category on the left side (outlined by red), you can access additional information. If you click Social You'll be able to see an overview of the platforms that generated visitors to your website (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest among others) as well as the exact information on each one: traffic volumes pages viewed, bounce rate, etc.
The revenues for each platform to the right. In this instance, YouTube generates the most users, yet noneof the revenues. From the traffic statistics alone it's possible to conclude that it's time to invest more on YouTube ads, even though YouTube isn't generating actual sales -- the revenue data is key. This is because Facebook actually is the most significant source of revenue from social media traffic.
To increase the size of stores
In this section we'll look at two other sophisticated analytics tools that allow you to make better, decision-based decisions about your business based on data. Either of these utilized on their own, will improve your tracking capabilities. If you combine them together, you'll have the most sophisticated data analysis accessible. Discover how to:
- Find specific sources of traffic as well as get more detailed information by using your Google Analytics dashboard.
- Get access to advanced reports on eCommerce.
Track specific sources with UTM parameters
Note:The acronym UTM stands for "Urchin Tracking Module" and is a trademark of Urchin Software Corporation. Urchin Software Corporation which was acquired by Google in 2005. The company developed an application that could observe and track web traffic, which was later renamed Google Analytics.
UTM parameters are extra information which you may be able to include at the end of links in your ads. They don't affect the destination of the URL but provide Google crucial information about the person who clicked on the link. If you've had the experience of seeing incredibly lengthy URLs that didn't seem to make sense, you may be reading a URL that has UTM parameters attached.
What do you need to know?
You can track the following categories using UTMs:
- Origin: Where traffic originates (Facebook, Google, a specific website, etc.)
- Medium A general advertising medium where this link appears (paid search banner, banner, email campaigns, etc.)
- Campaign Terms: The keyword or the audience you're aiming at
- campaign content: the name you use for your advertisements so that you know what they are.
- Campaign Name:The Name of your broader advertising campaign. It could be called "anniversary."
To create UTMs, UTM marketing strategy, they begin with the principal URL and then add a question mark to separate it from tracking data. Then they add:
- "utm_"
- The type of parameter
- "=title" of the parameter
An ampersand (&) connects each parameters.
In practice an internet link may be a lookalike of:
www..com/example-marketing-campaign?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=anniversary&utm_content=red
The above link is for a CPC (cost per click) Facebook ad as part of a possible anniversary promotion. The ad uses "red" within the Content parameter to track the performance of ads using an red background. To create ads that are blue you can simply alter the ending to "&utm_content=blue."
Why would online shops make use of UTMs?
Using parameters allows you to get more information about the results of your campaigns. You can differentiate site visitors from different advertising sources, as well as more, and use that information to make smarter decision-making, and better.
If you don't have UTMs, Google Analytics may show that 20% of your traffic was generated by Facebook and had an average bounce rate of 60. But with UTMs, it is possible to differentiate paid and organic traffic or differentiate traffic coming from different campaigns.
If you're planning sales to commemorate your store's anniversary. UTM parameters can tell you that banner ads that have a red background generate visitors with various characteristics (lower bounce rates, higher average order values and so on.) than the same ad with a blue background. You can also distinguish between campaigns and target groups.
It's possible that you're targeting two different audiences through the anniversary promotion: your existing customer base, and new people who have expressed an interest in your products and live in a certain location. If you're using UTMs, it's possible to find that the top website for those who were new to your business was your "clearance" page, while traffic from your existing customers preferred to go to the "new release" page. With that knowledge that you have, you can enhance any future campaigns by tweaking your ads to promote clearance items to new audiences and new products to your existing customers.
Influencers and affiliates
A lot of stores collaborate with affiliates, influencers, or other companies for promotions. You can use UTMs to identify this traffic and determine which affiliates provide you with the best worth.
Watch it live
Earlier, you learned that YouTube was the main source of social media traffic, but Facebook was responsible for the most sales. Without UTMs they wouldn't be able to differentiate between organic as well as paid Facebook traffic. So, if you paid to increase the reach of Facebook posts previously and see that Facebook is the one that generates much of the revenues generated from social media channels, you could believe that you should be running more promotional campaigns.
Through UTMs, you'll also observe that the majority of the revenue you earn from Facebook comes from "Facebook.com /referral" instead of what you had used to create the hyperlink in your ads, "Facebook.com / CPC". It's natural traffic. you may be hesitant about spending more money on ads.
It is possible to do this for more than social media referrals. Go to Acquisition All Traffic Source/Medium to view the outcomes for all your source/medium tags. On the right side of the column, sort your revenue from highest to lowest, to find the most effective sources for sales.
Go further
Let's go one level deeper and discover why UTMs are so powerful. In the past, you've used the UTM tags for medium/source and have superior information. But let's say you're not only boosting posts on Facebook and you're running multiple campaigns at the same time. The distinction between paid and referral traffic on Facebook will not help you decide thepaid Facebook campaign is performing well and which ones you need to eliminate. That's where the campaigntag is crucial.
Click Acquisition to view Campaigns - All Campaigns.
It is possible to see the outcomes for each campaign that you've named and assess its effectiveness. Add a secondary measure (outlined in red) for the medium or source if you have numerous campaigns across multiple platforms. This allows you to quickly distinguish the best performing campaigns across all platforms.
Design your own UTM
While UTMs are able to be built in a manual manner, it's possible to slip up. We recommend Google's URL builder to streamline this process.
You can use any type of text for parameters, but keep in mind:
- This is public view. Do not include any information you would not wish your customers to see.
- Create a pattern, and avoid using parameters that are not in line with the original purpose. UTMs are case sensitive and without standard procedure they can become uncoordinated and complicated quickly.
- Maintain a spreadsheet that lists every link you've created. Use it to keep the track of your links and for a way to store additional context and information.
Now that you've segmented the data you have and put all of it together for review, it's time for even deeper insights.
Google Analytics Pro, advanced analytics reports to eCommerce
Visible funnels to show which customers abandoned the checkout process and how many customers tried coupons, or how many customers logged in and removed their accounts- all information you can use to improve the sales. It is possible to track when a purchase is successful but the buyer isn't able to get to the thank you page. Many ad platforms rely on this thank-you page to collect conversion data, and may miss the significance of conversions. Google Analytics Pro gives you more accurate data.
Without UTMs Google Analytics Pro makes it simple to unlock deeper insights accessible through Google Analytics; you just will not be able to categorize traffic based on specific attributes. So, you can get new information on Facebook traffic, however it won't distinguish between paid and organic traffic, or even specific campaigns.
- Track average order values the conversion rate, average order value, and sales by product or category. After that, you can filter them by other metrics for enhanced conclusion, such as which source of traffic provides the highest average total of orders.
- Get more accurate user counts. Eliminate the shop manager from monitoring in order to avoid skewing your data.
- Use advanced event tracking to more precisely identify the trends that require improvements. Track the time when coupons are added or removed, items are added to carts, the quantity is changed, customers sign in, customers select a payment method as well as many other things.
- Enjoy the enhanced attribution for links. Find multiple links that are on the same URL from the same page.
- Find out the metrics of hidden sales that happen when the checkout is completed but the customer doesn't get to the thank-you page.
Checkout Behavior Analysis
One of the best features of Google Analytics that's unlocked with the Pro extension is the Checkout Behavior Analysis.
It allows you to view through a funnel diagram the extent to which your customers successfully completed the checkout procedure. What is the most likely cause for the largest percentage of people to abandon the procedure? Do you think it's the shipping information page? Customers shouldn't like the information they are seeing. Are they looking earlier within the Create an Account section? Maybe they don't want to make an account.
You could also separate these groups more (e.g., e.g., everyone that went through step one and step two but did not go to step three -- to get further insight into what individuals from this particular group have in common and how you can improve their experience for more revenue.
Utilizing UTMs, you will be able to observe how certain segments moved through the funnel. For instance, perhaps your client's Facebook group who click the blue advertisement typically abandon checkout at the same point.
Access access to Shopping Behavior Analysis report above on Conversions - Ecommerce - Shopping Behavior. It's sorted according to the campaign (highlighted by red below).
The far right column shows the sessions that have transactions. Though the top row has the highest number of transactions, the fourth row has the best conversion rate by percent. Let's assume this was an untested campaign that just ended. In light of this research, you might want to invest more funds into the campaign, and then see whether it's an excellent performer.
Comparing "Sessions that include Add to Cart" against "Sessions that include Check-Out" to identify trends. From the two campaigns, the second row shows the most dropoff between add to cart and checkout, so take a examine your experience for customers within this section to determine how this is impacting your customers. Maybe you have a pop-up showing related products which appears after the user adds something to their shopping cart. The particular customer could be annoyed enough that they'll leave the site completely and therefore you may want to turn off the function when running this type of campaign again in the near future.
If you look further, you can see that the second row is also the lowest proportion of views per session and the highest ratio of product views. In light of this, and knowing that this audience completed zero transactions despite being the second-largest user of the site, it may be best to believe the campaign is an utter failure and not attempt to correct it. There are other promising campaigns that you should be focusing on first.