Setting Up E-commerce Goals and Enhanced E-commerce Tracking

If you run an e-commerce store, Google Analytics is your most powerful tool for understanding your customers and your business's performance. But a standard, out-of-the-box Google Analytics setup will only show you your traffic and your user behavior; it won't show you your sales data.

To unlock the most valuable and actionable insights for your online store, you must set up e-commerce tracking.

E-commerce tracking is a feature in Google Analytics that allows you to collect and to analyze detailed data about your customers' purchasing behavior.

Why is E-commerce Tracking So Important?

When you enable e-commerce tracking, you can answer critical business questions like:

• Which of my products are my best-sellers?
• Which of my marketing channels are driving the most revenue?
• What is my website's conversion rate?
• What is my average order value?
• Where are my customers dropping off in the checkout process?

Without this data, you are flying blind. With it, you can make smart, data-driven decisions to grow your business.

Standard vs. Enhanced E-commerce

There are two levels of e-commerce tracking.

• Standard E-commerce Tracking: This is the basic level. It gives you data on your transactions and your revenue. You can see which products were purchased and the total value of each transaction.
• Enhanced E-commerce Tracking: This is a more advanced setup that gives you a much more detailed view of the entire shopping journey. In addition to the standard transaction data, it can also track:
  • Product impressions (when a product is viewed on a category page).
  • Product clicks.
  • When a product is added to or removed from the shopping cart.
  • The performance of your internal promotions.
  • The performance of your checkout funnel.

If possible, you should always aim to set up Enhanced E-commerce tracking.

How to Set Up E-commerce Tracking

The exact steps for setting up e-commerce tracking will depend on the e-commerce platform you are using (e.g., Shopify, WooCommerce). However, the general process involves two main steps.

Step 1: Enable E-commerce Tracking in Google Analytics

First, you need to turn the feature on in your Google Analytics account.

1. In your Google Analytics 4 (GA4) property, this is enabled by default for the standard e-commerce events. You just need to make sure your website is sending the data correctly.
2. In the older Universal Analytics, you would go to Admin > E-commerce Settings and toggle the switch to "On." You would also turn on "Enable Enhanced E-commerce Reporting" here.

Step 2: Add the Tracking Code to Your Website

This is the more technical part. Your website needs to be set up to send the detailed e-commerce data to Google Analytics when a user takes an action (like adding an item to the cart or making a purchase).

The good news is, for most businesses, you do not have to do this manually.

• If you are using a major e-commerce platform like Shopify:

  • Shopify has a simple, native integration with Google Analytics. In your Shopify admin settings, you can go to the "Online Store > Preferences" section, and there will be a box to paste in your Google Analytics tracking ID.
  • When you do this, Shopify will automatically handle all of the necessary e-commerce tracking for you. It will automatically send all the product and the transaction data to your Google Analytics account.

• If you are using WooCommerce (on WordPress):

  • You will need to use a plugin to connect your store to Google Analytics. There are several plugins available that will automatically implement the enhanced e-commerce tracking code for you.

• For a custom-built site:

  • This is a more complex process that will require a developer. They will need to manually add the necessary JavaScript tracking code (the "data layer") to your website to send the e-commerce data to Google Analytics, usually via Google Tag Manager.

Verifying Your Setup

After you have set up your tracking, you should place a test order on your website to ensure that the transaction data is appearing correctly in your Google Analytics e-commerce reports. It can sometimes take up to 24 hours for the data to appear.

Conclusion

Setting up e-commerce tracking in Google Analytics is an absolutely essential step for any online store. It is the key to unlocking the data and the insights you need to understand your customers, to optimize your marketing, and to make the informed decisions that will lead to profitable growth. If you are using a platform like Shopify, the setup process is very simple and is something you should do on day one.