Analytics is a complicated subject. At first glance, it can be overwhelming to identify what kind of analytics you should be tracking and why. That’s why Fyresite has rounded up the need to know about analytics, why tracking them is important, and how tracking them can help you and your Shopify business.

What are Analytics?

Analytics, simply put, is data that is collected and analyzed for the purpose of forming conclusions. What data is being collected and analyzed can vary based on the merchant, and what data they’re looking for. Knowing this data can help merchants optimize their site for more consumer interaction.

What Analytics Should I Be Tracking?

When we talk about eCommerce, there are a few analytics that are really helpful to track. Some of the important ones include:

Sales Conversion Rate 

This tells merchants how many of the people visiting your website make purchases. Tracking this is important because it tells you how successful your site is at encouraging purchasing. Calculate this by dividing the number of sessions by number of purchases, then multiply by 100. 

Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

Abandoned shopping carts are an issue for many merchants. Tracking this is important because it tells you if you need to be more proactive with measures against abandoned carts, such as with marketing automations. Calculate this by dividing the number of completed shopping carts by the number of shopping carts created, then multiply by 100.

Returning Customer Rate

ECommerce stores should track their returning customer rate to see if there’s anything in your customer experience that may need tweaking or if you’re doing well with your current experience. Calculate this by dividing your number of returning customers by the number of total customers, then multiple by 100. 

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate tells you how many people viewed your website, but left without engaging with the page. This is a metric tracked by Google Analytics.

 

Google Analytics 

Knowing how important it is to track analytics, you may be asking yourself “how?”. Google Analytics is a favorite of Fyresite and many eCommerce merchants. Why? GA allows you to analyze the data for your business in one place. Google Analytics work with Google’s advertising and publisher products, which allows you to see better how your ads are working. Analytics insights gives you the ability to see automated and custom insights. With these insights, you can see what about your site and ads are working, and what still may need some fine tuning. You can see things such as your SEO, how successful your ads are, and how your consumers behave.  While currently there is GA and GA 360, these plans will be completely replaced by GA4 and GA4 360 by the middle of next year. 

Heatmaps 

Heatmaps are a helpful tool that visually show trends on a website page using color. Using this, you can determine what is and isn’t working on your site. At Fyresite, we recommend using Hotjar. On top of being able to connect to Google Analytics, Hotjar has multiple different heat maps that show you where consumers are on your site. They have scroll maps, which shows you the percentage of people that scroll to any point on a page, click maps, which show where people have clicked on your website, and move maps, which show where people have dragged their cursor on a page. They also have heat maps that allow you to see the difference between desktop and mobile, so you can see the difference in how potential customers interact with your site on different mediums. 

What Now?

If you’re not happy with what your analytics have told you, what now? Some people may find it helpful to make modifications to their site to improve what they see in their trends. Fyresite may be able to help. To see if we would be a good fit for your company, contact us here.