Key Google Analytics Reports for Really Understanding Your Ecommerce Business

You work hard to make your business all it can be, so when you need to make important choices, you want them to be informed decisions. Fortunately, there is no shortage of information available to you, especially with tools like Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is so effective that nearly 70% of the top 10,000 sites online are using it to their advantage. Examining the proper data, you will receive tremendous insight into the performance of your site and the aspects that might need a little or a lot of improvement. The key is knowing which reports to focus on. With so much data available to you, you could find yourself feeling a bit overwhelmed.

Here are some of the key Google reports for really understanding your ecommerce business:

 

Audience Overview

The Audience Overview report may just be the most useful tool available in Google Analytics, providing an overview of the traffic visiting your website. This report lets you see where your traffic is coming from, and the engagement and conversion rates for each traffic source. Using this information, you can gauge the effectiveness of your marketing and make any necessary adjustments to your strategy. The report will also let you see changes in your traffic sources over time.

Other useful information includes visitor activity. Are your site’s visitors looking at multiple pages? How long are they staying on your site? What is your bounce rate?

Knowing the answers to these questions will help you understand how your site is being viewed by users so you can better retain their interest and increase the likelihood of conversion.

 

Demographics

Demographics data gives you information about users, such as age, gender, and interests. This provides a snapshot of which users you are appealing to most, which can prove useful particularly when you are targeting a specific demographic. Are you reaching them?

 

Acquisition Overview

Use this report to check traffic trends and analyze user groups over time. You can also check top keywords and review the effectiveness of particular landing pages. Which ones are working, and which ones need help?

The acquisition overview will let you know when traffic is coming from a paid or unpaid source. Is social media sending you more visitors than your paid efforts? Which channels are receiving more conversions? Get that information here.

This is a useful report to help you focus on and optimize the channels that are doing well for you. If you are using paid ads, you can highlight those that are converting well and focus on them while working to optimize other products.

 

Landing Pages

Where are visitors arriving when they reach your site? The landing pages report will show you which pages are being interacted with the most. It also provides information on bounce rate, percentage of new sessions, new users, and more. This information can guide you to where you should be investing your time and effort. If, for example, you discover an unusually high bounce rate on a given page, you can look into the reasons behind it.

When reviewing the effectiveness of your blog posts and other evergreen content, the landing pages report can highlight where you are gaining or losing traffic, allowing you to work on your optimization and link building.

When reviewing the landing pages report, setting your filter to organic search can give you some insight as to the effectiveness of your keyword targeting and optimization on those pages.

 

Mobile Overview

For quite some time now, users have been moving away from their desktop and laptop computers to make greater use of mobile devices. With smartphones being nearly omnipresent in today’s world, having an understanding of mobile is vital. This report can give you guidance on opportunities for mobile improvements, and how to best meet the needs of smartphone users.

By now, your website should be optimized for mobile, but if it is not, or if there is still room for improvement (and there always is), this report will help you achieve it, leading to greater traffic and an improved ranking. If your site is not optimized for mobile, Google may be penalizing you with a decreased ranking.

With growing numbers of mobile users, you want to be sure that you are doing all you can to appeal to them.

 

Behaviour Flow

You probably still hear it said that “content is king.” It is therefore important to know whether the content is appealing to your visitors, or not. This will allow you to not only make adjustments to existing content, but also give you a guide as to what you might choose to invest in going forward.

Google is focused on user experience, and that certainly includes content that appeals to users. Pages with a high drop-off rate are likely not providing enough value to visitors, indicating a need for reworking them.

While many reports can tell you about what brings visitors to your site, the Behaviour Flow report gives you insight into what is happening once they arrive.

 

Goal Overview

The Goal Overview report is one that you should be analyzing to help you set your website and conversion goals. It helps you to determine which parts of your site are being interacted with so that you can better optimize for conversions. As with other reports, it lets you see which areas of your site need work.

This report helps you understand the path customers are taking down your funnel to your product pages, the number of pages travelled, the number of conversions, and more, so that you know which pages are driving conversion.

The form can also be customized to show types of interaction, such as downloads, form submissions, and other goals that you set.

Making the most of your ecommerce business means having a better understanding of the behind-the-scenes goings-on of your website. With these reports from Google Analytics, you can do just that without wasting too much time in a sea of information that might not apply to your situation.